Whoniversaries 15 May

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i) births and deaths

15 May 1925: birth of Roy Stewart, who played Toberman in Tomb of the Cybermen (Second Doctor, 1967) and Tony in Terror of the Autons (Third Doctor, 1970).

15 May 1937: birth of Darrol Blake, director of The Stones of Blood (Fourth Doctor, 1979)

15 May 1990: death of Peter Grimwade, director of Full Circle (Fourth Doctor, 1980), Logopolis (Fourth Doctor, 1981), Kinda (Fifth Doctor, 1982) and Earthshock (Fifth Doctor, 1982) and writer of Time-Flight (Fifth Doctor, 1982), Mawdryn Undead (Fifth Doctor, 1983) and Planet of Fire (Fifth Doctor, 1984).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

15 May 1965: broadcast of "The Final Phase", fourth episode of the story we now call The Space Museum. The Xerons revolt and kill the Moroks, allowing the Tardis team to escape.

15 May 1971: broadcast of sixth episode of Colony in Space. The Guardian destroys the ancient weapon, and himself; the IMC surrender to the colonists; the Master escapes, and the Doctor and Jo return home.

15 May 2010: broadcast of Amy's Choice. Amy is forced to choose between different versions of reality by the Dream Lord.

iii) dates specified in canon

15 May 2008: death of Donna Noble's father, Geoff.

15-18 May 2009: events of Gary Russell's 2009 novel, Beautiful Chaos.

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Friday reading

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Current
The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant
City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett
All the Fabulous Beasts, by Priya Sharma
Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens: Exploring the Worlds of the Eleventh Doctor, by Frank Collins

Last books finished
Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keneally
Cloud on Silver by John Christopher
DIE, Volume 2: Split the Party, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles

Next books
Wonder Woman: The Golden Age, Vol. 2 by William Moulton Marston
The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, ed. Alex Dally MacFarlane

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Whoniversaries 14 May

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i) births and deaths

14 May 1925: birth of Ysanne Churchman, the voice of Alpha Centauri in The Curse of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1972) and The Monster of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1974), a Spider in Planet of the Spiders (Third Doctor, 1974), and returned at the age of 92 to reprise Alpha Centauri in The Empress of Mars (Twelfth Doctor, 2017), which must make her the oldest person to have been creatively involved with the show in any medium

also 14 May 1925: birth of Tristram Cary, who wrote incidental music for six First Doctor stories and two later ones. Here’s “The Forest”, from the story we now call The Daleks.

14 May 1927: birth of Dennis Chinnery, who played Albert C. Richardson (the first mate of the Mary Celeste) in The Chase (First Doctor, 1965), Gharman in Genesis of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and Sylvest, father of the twins in The Twin Dilemma (Sixth Doctor, 1984).

14 May 1942: birth of Prentis Hancock, who played a reporter in Spearhead from Space (Third Doctor, 1970), Vaber in Planet of the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1973), Salamar in Planet of Evil (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and The Ribos Operation (Fourth Doctor, 1978).

14 May 1973: birth of Indira Varma, who played Suzie Costello in two episodes of the first series of Torchwood (2006).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

14 May 1966: broadcast of "Johnny Ringo", third episode of the story we now call The Gunfighters. Ring arrives in search of Doc Holiday, with fatal consequences for Charlie the barman and (indirectly) Warren Earp.

14 May 1996: broadcast of Doctor Who: The Movie on Fox. The Doctor arrives in San Francisco at the end of December 1999, and regenerates after being shot; the resurrected Master attempts to take the Doctor's body and/or destroy the Earth, but Grace prevents him.

14 May 2005: broadcast of Father's Day. Rose prevents her father's death, causing tremendous paradoxes which can be fixed only for a very high price.

14 May 2011: broadcast of The Doctor's Wife. The TARDIS as you have never seen her before.

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Whoniversaries 14 May

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i) births and deaths

14 May 1925: birth of Ysanne Churchman, the voice of Alpha Centauri in The Curse of Peladon (1972) and The Monster of Peladon (1974), and a Spider in Planet of the Spiders.

also 14 May 1925: birth of Tristram Cary, who wrote incidental music for six First Doctor stories and two later ones.

14 May 1942: birth of Prentis Hancock, who played a reporter in Spearhead from Space (1970), Vaber in Planet of the Daleks (1973), Salamar in Planet of Evil (1975) and The Ribos Operation (1978).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

14 May 1966: broadcast of “Johnny Ringo”, third episode of the story we now call The Gunfighters. Ring arrives in search of Doc Holiday, with fatal consequences for Charlie the barman and (indirectly) Warren Earp.

14 May 1998 1996: broadcast of Doctor Who: The Movie on Fox. The Doctor arrives in San Francisco at the end of December 1999, and regenerates after being shot; the resurrected Master attempts to take the Doctor’s body and/or destroy the Earth, but Grace prevents him.

14 May 2005: broadcast of Father’s Day. Rose prevents her father’s death, causing tremendous paradoxes which can be fixed only for a very high price.

14 May 2011: broadcast of The Doctor’s Wife.

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The 14th Mons International Political Posters Triennale; and flints.

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Today being a day off work, I took myself off to Mons for two minor attractions which I hopes would together justify the visit. (They didn’t quite.) The Mons Memorial Museum is hosting the 14th Mons International Political Posters Triennale, which is a collection of about a hundred posters, plus a couple of dozen more from Portugal, on political themes. It wasn’t realy for me, though a few caught my eye for different reasons. This is the overall winner:

I liked these two.

I am not sure what this commentary on Bart De Wever actually means, but I can probably get behind the sentiment.

These three posters about North Korea are interesting because the creators are all from the People's Republic of China.

Of the Portguese posters, this caught my eye for its use of colour.

There is a tank outside the museum.

The neolithic flint mines near Mons are probably worth visiting in non-COVID times when you can actually descend into the depths. I may return in better days.

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Whoniversaries 13 May

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i) births and deaths

13 May 1938: birth of Milton Johns, who played Benik in The Enemy of the World (Second Doctor, 1967-68), Guy Crayford in The Android Invasion (Fourth Doctor, 1975), and Kelner in The Invasion of Time (Fourth Doctor, 1978)

13 May 1946: birth of Tim Pigott-Smith, who played Captain Harker in The Claws of Axos (Third Doctor, 1971) and Marco in The Masque of Mandragora (Fourth Doctor, 1976).

13 May 1949: birth of Zoe Wanamaker, who played Lady Cassandra in The End of the World (Ninth Doctor, 2005) and New Earth (Tenth Doctor, 2006).

13 May 1957: birth of Frances Barber, who played Madame Kovarian in Series 7 of New Who (2011).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

13 May 1967: sixth episode of The Faceless Ones; last appearance of Michael Craze as Ben and Anneke Wills as Polly. The Doctor brokers a deal between Earth and the Chameleons, and departs with Jamie.

13 May 1972: broadcast of sixth episode of The Mutants. Ky is transformed into a superbeing and kills the Marshal; Sondergaard stays on to help the other Solonians transform.

Neither The Faceless Ones nor The Mutants is my favourite story of the era, to put it mildly, but it’s an odd coincidence that the six episodes of each were broadcast on the same dates, five years apart.

13 May 2006: broadcast of Rise of the Cybermen. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey arrive in a parallel world where Rose’s father is still alive and the Cybermen are coming.

13 May 2017: broadcast of Oxygen. The Doctor, Bill and Nardole investigate a strange space station, but are interrupted by walking dead in spacesuits… and the Doctor is blinded.

May 2011 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

The big adventure of May 2011 – ten years ago this month! – was the triple vote in Northern Ireland, for the Assembly, the 26 local councils and the UK-wide referendum on the Alternative Vote. (Yes, the AV referendum – remember that?) It started with an extraordinary conversation with a Belfast taxi driver.

I was in the studio for four days, I think, and still recovering from my minor but painful operation which made me a bit grumpy at times. You can see me looking uncomforatble at 1:29 here:

In the Assembly elections twelve seats out of 108 changed hands, the DUP and Sinn Fein holding their vote and ganing four and two seats respectively, and the UUP and SDLP slipping with Alliance gaining.

The only other trip was a family visit to a menhir (which I went back to last November).

In the wider world, Garret Fizgerald died and Ratko Mladic was arrested. Back in 2003, Garret came to the launch of the book I had jointly written with the late great Noel Whelan, spotted that one of the tables had been left blank in the rushed editorial proces, sat down and filled it in correctly.

I read only 14 books:

Non-fiction 4 (YTD 27)
The Alexiad, by Anna Comnena
Age of Atrocity, edited by David Edwards, Pádraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait
The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
Who On Earth Is Tom Baker? An Autobiography

Fiction (non-SF) 2 (YTD 21)
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder

SF (non-Who) 4 (YTD 29)
Speaking in Tongues, by Ian McDonald
The Shaping of Middle-Earth, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lifecycle of Software Objects, by Ted Chiang
Feed, by Mira Grant

Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane, K9 2 (YTD 33)
The Dimension Riders, by Daniel Blythe
Doctor Who Annual 1984

Comics 2 (YTD 8)
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers vol. 4, by Fumi Yoshinaga
Fables vol. 13: The Great Fables Crossover, by Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges

~4,500 pages (YTD ~33,300)
5/14 (YTD 19/118) by women (Comnena, Tait, Lahiri, Grant, Yoshinaga)
3/14 (YTD 9/118) by PoC (Lahiri, Chiang, Yoshinaga)

Standout book of the month for me was Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects, which you can get in the Exhalation collection, followed by Tom Baker's autobiography, which you can get here, essays on violence in early modern Ireland, which you can get here, and Ian McDonald's short story collection, which you can get here. Nothing particularly awful for a change.

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Whoniversaries 12 May

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i) births and deaths

12 May 1968: birth of Catherine Tate, who played Donna Noble in New Who from 2006 to 2010.

12 May 2001: death of Norman Kay, who composed the incidental music for An Unearthly Child (1963), The Keys of Marinus (1964) and The Sensorites (1964).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

12 May 1973: broadcast of sixth episode of Planet of the Daleks. The Doctor, Jo and the Thals trap the Daleks in the ice volcano.

12 May 1996: first broadcast of Doctor Who: The Movie on a local cable channel in Edmonton, Canada. Canonical release date is 14 May so I'll do the picture then.

12 May 2007: no Doctor Who episode shown today, the series taking a break for the Eurovision Song contest between The Lazarus Experiment and 42. The winner was the Serbian entry "Molitva", which lays its cards pretty clearly on the table.

iii) date specified in canon

12 May 1999: birth of Adelaide Brooke, who we meet in The Waters of Mars (2009).

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420 days of plague

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Glad to say that Belgian numbers continue to go in the right direction. Even gladder to say that I have now got appointments for both my vaccinations, on on 21 May – Friday week – and one five weeks later on 25 June, another Friday. So there's a real feeling of transition. Belgian restaurants and cafes opened outdoor service on Saturday, but we have not yet sampled our new freedom, mainly because Anne anf F are both a bit oppressed by their academic work at the moment. I plan to attend a drinks event in Brussels tomorrow evening.

We had an outside leaving party in a park near the office last week for a colleague, and people were actually pretty respectful of the need to gather in groups of ten or less (at least while I was there). It looks like a large bunch in the middle, but actually it's several different groups who happen to be in roughly the same line of sight.

.

Unfortunately, the Grim Reaper has continued his recruitment campaign, with two chaps who I knew, both aged 60, dying of non-COVID causes in the last two weeks. Hans van Baalen died on 29 April; I knew him as president of Liberal International and then of the European Liberals, and we'd worked together on a number of things. I wasn't especially close to him myself, but a lot of my friends were. And then Rory Mac Dermot, The MacDermot, Prince of Coolavin died a week later, on 6 May; he was my second cousin once removed (my great-aunt Caroline married his great-grandfather). We had only met a couple of times, but I knew his parents a bit better. His father, Rory's predecessor as The MacDermot, died in 2003; his mother is still alive. So even without the bug, lives can be unexpectedly truncated (as with our dear friend Liz).

But in general the good weather is cheering me up, and I am really looking forward to travelling again. The last time I left Belgium was when we nipped over the French border to find my great-uncle's grave in September. Since we moved here in 1999, I don't believe that there have been seven months that I did not leave the country; in fact, in my entire life I don't think there have been seven months that I did not cross an international frontier (given family visits to Dublin when I was a child). It's a peculiar and awful situation, and I hope to live long enough to tell my grandchildren about it.

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Whoniversaries 11 May

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i) births and deaths

11 May 2001: death of Douglas Adams, writer of The Pirate Planet (1978) and Shada (unbroadcast but would have been 1980), co-author of City of Death (1979) and script editor for Season 17 (1979-80); best known, of course, for other things

ii) broadcast anniversaries

11 May 1968: broadcast of third episode of The Wheel in Space. Cybermats have infiltrated the Wheel, and the Cybermen have laid a trap in their spaceship.

11 May 1974: broadcast of second episode of Planet of the Spiders, the one with the interminable chase sequence.

11 May 2013: broadcast of Nightmare in Silver. Children, Cybermen, an abandoned amusement park and a script by Neil Gaiman.

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The Orphans of Raspay, by Lois McMaster Bujold

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Second paragraph of third section:

Port, five gods be thanked. Maybe.

Another of the great sequence of novellas featuring novice sorceror Penric and his possessing demons, this time kidnapped by pirates and thrown together with two young parentless girls. Bujold is one of the very few genre authors who can convincingly take parenthood (in this case, surrogate parenthood) as a major theme of her stories, and makes the relationship between Penric and his unexpectedly acquired wards drive a well-structured narrative. I had forgotten also how complex the World of the Five Gods is, with varied languages and cultures. It’s also, as usual with Bujold, very witty. Recommended. You can get it here.

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Whoniversaries 10 May

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i) births and deaths

10 May 1998: death of Dalek operator Robert Jewell

10 May 2017: death of Geoffrey Bayldon, who played Organon in The Creature from the Pit (1979) and the alternate timeline Doctor-who-never-left-Gallifrey in Big Finish audios Auld Mortality (2003) and A Storm of Angels (2005). Also Catweazle.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

10 May 1969: broadcast of fourth episode of The War Games. The Doctor and Zoe start to explore Central Control, and in a chilling moment the Doctor and the War Chief recognise each other.

10 May 1974: broadcast of fourth episode of Revenge of the Cybermen, ending Season 12. The Doctor succeeds in deflecting the Nerva beacon so that the Vogan's missile destroys the Cybermen.

10 May 2008: broadcast of The Doctor's Daughter. The Doctor, Donna and Martha land on the planet Messaline where they are caught up in a war between humans and the Hath, and encounter Jenny, the Doctor's newly cloned daughter.

10 May 2010: broadcast of Mutant Copper, eighteenth episode of the Australian K9 series. A robot policeman goes rogue.

10 May 2020: webcast of The Zygon Isolation. Osgood talks to Osgood in the pandemic.

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Giddy UUP: Doug Beattie’s challenges as the next UUP leader

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It’s funny how two buses can come along at the same time. Steve Aiken, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, resigned yesterday, following the resignation the previous week of DUP leader Arlene Foster. The UUP has very much lost its way since the days when it could win every Westminster seat in Northern Ireland (1964, since you ask). It came fifth in the 2019 Westminster election, and sixth in that year’s European Parliament election. Successive recent leaders have tried to lead from the centre, but been somewhat sabotaged by their own grass roots which remain more conservative and traditional. Doug Beattie, Assembly Member for Upper Bann, is seen as the automatic choice for new party leader. I know him, and Aiken, and Aiken’s predecessor Robin Swann who is health minister at present, and Swann’s predecessor Mike Nesbitt, and Nesbitt’s predecessor Tom Elliott. They are all decent enough chaps. But that’s not enough.

There’s a very good insider analysis on Slugger O’Toole of the party’s current travails. I posted this comment in response:

I won’t join in the general decrying of the UUP as having no coherent message. That has been true for most Northern Irish political parties for most of history. Voters want to know who will represent them most effectively. For most voters that means asking first which party they identify with on a communal (or non-communal) basis, and then looking at competence. Policy coherence is quite a distant third.

The UUP has no chance at present of reaching deep into the so-called liberal unionist vote. Liberal voters, almost by definition, are not deeply invested in the Union, still less so after Brexit. They voted UUP before 2001 in large numbers, because the Nationalist parties wanted to destroy the state, the DUP were far too scary, and Alliance did not look as if they could deliver. The DUP were able to convert a lot of that vote by being visibly more competent than the UUP and less scary than they had been.

It now turns out that you can have Sinn Fein in government without the world coming to an end. At the same time Nationalists continue to bang on about Irish unity, which these voters do not care about unless it can demonstrably improve on the NHS (and so far it can’t). So they are not motivated to vote for Nationalists, but not really to vote against them either. Meanwhile Alliance has shaken off its previous reputation for being small and ineffective by becoming bigger and more effective. A liberal voter will not vote for the UUP when they can vote for the real thing.

There remains a very large chunk of voters who are motivated more by their desire for competent communal representation than anything else. The UUP should concentrate on them. First and foremost, they need to fix the service delivery problems identified by Choyaa. Irish voters, both sides of the border, expect a certain level of service from public representatives. Steve Aiken’s Nolan interview was crucial here; if you cannot explain your own reasoning on the biggest issue of the day, why should you be believed on anything else?

The UUP’s target should be the DUP. That’s where most of their votes went, and that’s where they can be got back from. And the grounds of attack should be not ideological but competence. Look what a good job we’ve done with health. Look what a bad job they have done in their leadership roles. If we want to save the Union, we must demonstrate that Unionists can deliver. Their incompetence is endangering our future. Don’t take the bait of the culture wars; you’re not going to win.

Personally I don’t think that it can be done. But it’s probably worth a try.

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Whoniversaries 9 May

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i) births and deaths

9 May 1940: birth of John Black, who directed The Keeper of Traken (1981), K9 and Company (1981) and Four to Doomsday (1982).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

9 May 1964: broadcast of "Sentence of Death", the fifth episode of the story we now call The Keys of Marinus. Ian is accused of murder, and the Doctor is his defence lawyer.

9 May 1970: broadcast of first episode of Inferno. The Doctor is tapping energy from the controversial Inferno project; meanwhile people contaminated by subterranean gas are turning into monsters.

9 May 2003: webcast of second episode of Shada. The Doctor examines the mysterious book from Professor Chronotis' laboratory.

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  • Sat, 09:35: RT @Allan_D_Kennedy: Is Scotland the only country in the world in which a political party can win by 20+ points and have the defeated oppos…
  • Sat, 10:45: RT @JohnRentoul: Excellent by @paulwaugh: 6 reasons Labour lost 1 Vaccine bounce is real 2 Johnson is a master storyteller, Starmer isn’t 3…

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Whoniversaries 8 May

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i) births and deaths

8 May 1928: birth of John Bennett, who played General Finch in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974) and (shamefully in yellowface) Li H'sen Chang in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977)

8 May 1931: birth of Douglas Camfield, who directed the third episode of Planet of Giants (First Doctor, 1964), also The Crusade (First Doctor, 1965), The Time Meddler (also First Doctor, 1965), The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1965-66), The Web of Fear (Second Doctor, 1968), The Invasion (also Second Doctor, 1968), much of Inferno (Third Doctor, 1970), Terror of the Zygons (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and The Seeds of Doom (Fourth Doctor, 1976). One of the greats. I bought his biography a few years ago, but lost it before I could read it.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

8 May 1965: broadcast of "The Search", third episode of the story we now call The Space Museum. Vicki helps the Xerons to plan their revolution against the Moroks.

8 May 1971: broadcast of fifth episode of Colony in Space. The colonists capture the IMC guys, and then the IMC guys capture the colonists; meanwhile the Master is holding Jo hostage to ensure the Doctor's cooperation.

8 May 2010: broadcast of The Vampires of Venice. The Doctor, Amy and Rory visit Venice, to find aliens disguised as vampires infesting the city.

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Friday reading

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Current
The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant
Cloud on Silver by John Christopher
Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keneally

Last books finished
The Evidence, by Christopher Priest
In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. Wells

Next books
City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Wonder Woman: The Golden Age, Vol. 2 by William Moulton Marston

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The Serpent Sea, by Martha Wells

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Nothing had changed since last night. The others in the hall breathed deeply in sleep, except for some of the warriors on the far side of the room. From the soft noises, they were enjoying each other’s company under the blankets. Good idea, he thought, and flipped the blanket back up to settle down again and nuzzle Jade’s neck.

Second book in the series about shape-shifting dragons in a slightly steampunky world. Our hero from the first series must try and retrieve a crucial item from the groundlings (ie humans). Decent enough, but I don't quite grasp the enthusiasm that some people clearly feel for the series. You can get it here.

Believe it or not, this was the top unread book on my shelves by a woman. Next on that stack is Boys in Zinc, by Svetlana Alexievich.

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Whoniversaries 7 May

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i) births and deaths

7 May 1908: birth of Valentine Dyall, who played the Black Guardian in 1979 and 1983 and Slarn in Slipback (1985)

7 May 1964: birth of Craig Hinton, author of several Who novels and a Big Finish Who audio, and inventor of the work 'fanwank'.

7 May 1998: death of Seymour Green who played two villainous sidekicks, Hargreaves the butler in The Seeds of Doom (Fourth Doctor, 1976) and Mestor's chamerlain, Slarn, in The Twin Dilemma (Sixth Doctor, 1984).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

7 May 1966: broadcast of "Don't Shoot the Pianist", second episode of the story we now call The Gunfighters. The Doctor is mistaken for Doc Holliday, with potentially fatal consequences for Steven.

7 May 2005: broadcast of The Long Game. The Doctor, Rose and Adam visit the far-future broadcasting hub on Satellite Five.

7 May 2011: broadcast of The Curse of the Black Spot. The TARDIS is marooned onboard a 17th century pirate ship whose crew is being attacked by a mysterious and beautiful sea creature. Becalmed and beset by cabin fever, the pirates have numerous superstitious explanations for the Siren's appearance. The Doctor has other ideas, but as his theories are disproved and every plan of escape is thwarted, he must work to win the trust of the implacable Captain Henry Avery and uncover the truth behind the pirates' supernatural fears — and he must work quickly, for some of his friends have already fallen under the Siren's spell.

iii) dates specified in canon

7 May 1915: sinking of the Lusitania, as depicted in second episode of The Sirens of Time, the very first Big Finish audio in 1999.

7 May 2157: the Daleks destroy Pluto's satellite Charon, as described in Craig Hinton's 1997 novel GodEngine.

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April 2011 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

Lots of travel this month, starting with another visit to Chișinău, in the course of which I also visited Comrat, the capital of the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, one of those fascinating footnotes in constitutional history. The Gagauz are Christian Turks, culturally and economically very close to Russia; it was the day after the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the firs man in space, and the local museum had a display that made it clear that the Gagauz feel this was every bit as much their success as that of any other part of the former Soviet Union. (Still using my crappy HTC Desire camera, sorry.)

Mid-month, Anne, F and I had a trip to London courtesy of my mother, taking in the Doctor Who exhibition at Earl's Court, the experience a bit dampened by the news of Elisabeth Sladen's death which broke that morning. On 30 April I arrived in Belfast again, ready to do BBC commentary for the Assembly election results.

My birthday was again a painful one health-wise. Like most of us who have too sedentary a lifestyle, I occasionally suffer from piles; this particular case got very bad and required minor but painful surgery on my birthday itself. My journey to Northern Ireland a couple of days later was not comfortable.

I read 34 books that month.

Non-fiction 8 (YTD 23)
Elizabeth's Irish Wars, by Cyril Falls
A is for Ox, by Lyn Davies
The Unsilent Library: essays on the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who, edited by Simon Bradshaw, Antony Keen and Graham Sleight
Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft
On the Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill
In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, by John Chryssavgis
Toujours Tingo, by Adam Jacot de Boinod
Running Through Corridors, Volume 1: The 60s, by Robert Shearman and Toby Hadoke

Fiction (non-SF) 4 (YTD 19)
The Onion's Our Dumb World: Atlas of the Planet Earth
The Not So Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen, by Mitali Perkins
A Question of Blood, by Ian Rankin
Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence

SF (non-Who) 8 (YTD 25)
Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce
To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
Year's Best SF 12, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Monsters of Men, by Patrick Ness
Declare, by Tim Powers
Generosity, by Richard Powers
The Time Dissolver, by Jerry Sohl
A Song for Arbonne, by Guy Gabriel Kay

Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane, K9 11 (YTD 31)
Department X, by James Goss
K9 and the Time Trap, by David Martin
K9 and the Beasts of Vega, by David Martin
K9 and the Zeta Rescue, by David Martin
K9 and the Missing Planet, by David Martin
Judgement of the Judoon, by Colin Brake
Blood Heat, by Jim Mortimore
Doctor Who Annual 1983
The Face Eater, by Simon Messingham
More Short Trips, ed. Stephen Cole
Deadly Download, by Jason Arnopp

Comics 3 (YTD 6)
The Tides of Time, (mostly) by Steve Parkhouse
Kuifje in Amerika / Tintin in America, by Hergé
Tintin and Alph-Art, by Hergé

~8,500 pages (YTD ~28,800)
5/34 (YTD 14/104) by women (Wollstonecraft, Perkins, Pearce, Willis, Cramer; Lyn Davies is a man)
1/34 (YTD 6/104) by PoC (Perkins)

The best of these were Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft and On the Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill, which you can get in a single volume hereThe Unsilent Library: essays on the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who, edited by Simon Bradshaw, Antony Keen and Graham Sleight, which seems to be out of printTom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce, which you can get here. Hergé's Kuifje in Amerika / Tintin in America is awful, and you can get it hereThe Onion's Our Dumb World is even worse, and you can get it here but I really do not advise it.

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Whoniversaries 6 May

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i) births and deaths

6 May 1945: birth of Nicholas Mallett, who directed The Mysterious Planet (Sixth Doctor, 1986), Paradise Towers (Seventh Doctor, 1987) and The Curse of Fenric (Seventh Doctor, 1989)d02-2k-c291[1].jpg

6 May 1976: death of Alethea Charlton who played Hur in An Unearthly Child (First Doctor, 1963) and Edith in The Time Meddler (First Doctor, 1965). Here she is from the same angle in both stories.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

6 May 1967: broadcast of fifth epside of The Faceless Ones. The Chameleons explain that they lost their identities. In an explosion.

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6 May 1972: broadcast of fifth episode of The Mutants. The Marshal forces the Doctor to work for him by holding Jo hostage.

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6 May 2006: broadcast of The Girl in the Fireplace. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey land on a far future spaceship and the Doctor become involved with Madame de Pompadour.

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6 May 2017: broadcast of Kock Kock. Bill and her friends rent an old house to live in, but the floorboards and the walls are creaking, and there's a creepy Landlord lurking around. Can the Doctor save the day as creatures come crawling out of the wood?

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6 May 2020: webcast of Pompadour, a creepy take on The Girl in the Fireplace.

iii) date specified in canon

6 May 1997: setting of Lance Parkin's Virgin New Adventure The Dying Days, featuring the Eighth Doctor and Bernice Summerfield.

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The Gameshouse, by Claire North

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

You will not find it now – no, not even its gate with the lion-headed knocker that roars silently out at the night, nor its open courtyards hung with silk, or hot kitchens bursting with steam, no, none of it, nothing to see – but then it stood in one of those little streets that have no name near San Pantaleone, just north of a short stone bridge guarded over by three brothers, for there are only two things that Venetians value more than family, and those are their bridges and their wells.

I’ve generally loved Claire North’s novels, which all seem to involve different riffs on immortality. This is a set of three novellas, originally separately published, and I’m sorry to say it didn’t work as well for me. The first one, The Serpent, is great: a young woman in Renaissance Venice becomes part of a secret game-playing fraternity, which sucks her into the high politics of the city. The Thief, set in Thailand in the 1930s, is a hunt where the protagonist is the prey. It somewhat stretched my suspension of disbelief. In the final section, The Master, the protagonists of the first two novellas become involved in a game for the future of the world with implausibly high stakes. I think my recent disappointed re-reading of Foucault’s Pendulum put me in a suspicious mood regarding vast secret conspiracies. As I said, the first bit is very good. You can get it here.