Menu Close

Whovian “Badge” of Honor

2 Comments

A friend and frequent commenter posted about this site on Facebook (via a link to Joe Hill’s Tumblr—in which he’d gotten the result “Stephen King”; funny once you realize who Hill is). It’s an automated engine that takes a sample of your writing and compares it to a bunch of well-known authors based on your word choice and writing style.

Initially, I tried a piece of my fantasy writing (if you’re into that kind of thing, you’re welcome to pop over to that blog, too; it’s called The Dryad Chronicles, and I write there under the pen name Rachelle Wright). Depending on which chunk I chose, I was told I write like Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabokov, or Ernest Hemingway. Hmmm…

Knowing that my fiction and my blogging are a bit different, though, I thought I’d try submitting one of my posts, just to see what kind of difference it would make. I chose my review of The Name of the Doctor, as it’s most recent. The result could hardly have been more appropriate for a Whovian. Here’s the “I Write Like” badge I got:

Read more →

Reader Poll Roundup

11 Comments

You may have noticed that every week there was brand new Who, I posted a reader poll inviting visitors to the blog to rate the latest episode. It’s been fascinating to see the results, watching the overall trend toward high or low score – often away from my personal rating – and the distribution of votes. I had so much fun playing with the data, as a matter of fact, that I decided to share some of my findings publicly. (You can always go back to the poll archives to check my work yourself, if you feel so inclined.)

To start, I’m going to present the chronological list of ratings for all the Series 7 stories (7A, 7B, and the Christmas Special). These are the average (mean) ratings over all votes received. In other words, I took each star rating and multiplied by the number of votes the rating got, then added all those results and divided by total number of votes. This is how it panned out:

As you can see, the season overall was very uneven. I find it interesting that Series 7A yielded an inverse bell curve, with A Town Called Mercy being the nadir according to the sampled voters. In 7B, there were several dips, but the low point of the entire series – again, according to the votes received – was The Rings of Akhaten.

For those of you already trying to figure out how they all stack up against each other, try this on for size:

Read more →

Gally 2013 Recap

4 Comments

It’s a week later, and if my Twitter feed is any indication, I am very much not alone in my feelings of ennui at no longer being at Gally. There’s even a hashtag (#PostGallyBlues). I’ve seen a few good reviews of the weekend as a whole, though most of them seem to be, like my posts, recaps of personal experiences rather than analyses like I saw last year.

Since I’ve promised various people I would, then, I’ll keep my own “recap” to photos of my own forays into cosplay and my Saturday panel. We begin with Friday, and my femme!Three. Not as many people as I’d hoped recognized my costume for what it was, but those who did seemed appreciative. In return, I really appreciated seeing other cosplayers in costumes of related eras. When I saw someone dressed as the Brigadier, I had to ask for my photo with him. Then a Sarah Jane Smith (in her reporter guise) got in on the act.

Later, I saw someone dressed as SJS as she had been when sneaking into Irongron’s castle as a servant in her debut story The Time Warrior. Needless to say, we had a bit of fun fangirling at each other.

Read more →

24 Hours of Gallifrey One: Day Three

2 Comments

The wifi at Gally gets painfully slow – to the point where you can’t get any sort of real connection for long stretches of time, especially if you want to be going to panels instead of hanging in the lobby waiting (im)patiently for connectivity.

Hopefully yesterday’s post not going up till today now makes sense.

Actually, there was another, even more compelling reason that post didn’t get finished until today. Sunday morning I was fortunate enough to have a ticket to the Guest Brunch Banquet, which was capped at 56 members (attendees). Eight tables are set up. Seven members sit at each, and the final place at any given table is left for one of the convention guests. Every twelve minutes, the guests do a somewhat more organized version of musical chairs, and switch to another table, so that all the members (in theory) get to spend a few minutes in actual, honest-to-god conversation with each of the guests.

Last year being my first, I didn’t really know anything about the brunch, and if memory serves, it had sold out during the previous year’s con anyway. But I am super glad I managed to get in on this one; it was wonderful. Our table started with Michael Jayston, which made my little heart go pitter-pat. I’ve always thought the Valeyard was a super awesome foil (and everyone here seemed to consider him a Doctor; Jayston complained that the BBC are the only ones who don’t seem to know it). Jayston was followed by Philip Hinchcliffe (producer from The Ark in Space to The Talons of Weng-Chiang, 1975-77), Dick Mills (sound engineer from 1972-1989), Deborah Watling (Second Doctor Companion Victoria), Mark Strickson (Fifth Doctor Companion Turlough), and Frazer Hines (Second Doctor Companion Jamie; the longest-running Companion on-screen, and at Gally). Peter Purves (First Doctor Companion Steven) didn’t quite make it to our table before time ran out, but I did chat with him a bit at his signing table later. I simply can’t say enough good things about all the guests. To a one, they’ve been fabulous in person to me as a fan.

Read more →

24 Hours of Gallifrey One: Day Two

4 Comments

It was all about the cosplay on Saturday.

There was a group of us that had been planning for months to do a group cosplay (that is, we’d all dress up in related costumes) we’d dubbed “the TARDISpod.” Originally, we were all supposed to be a TARDIS representing a different decade. Since we love seeing other people’s TARDIS costumes, we also spent much of Friday telling others to come to our designated photo op on Saturday morning next to the second TARDIS (that is, the one not on stage). As a result, there were probably a couple dozen TARDISes (including a male TARDIS bathrobe). It was brilliant.

Despite the fact that there were several panels I wanted to see throughout the day, the only ones I managed were “Tooth and Claw,” about carving your own niche in fandom, whether it be podcasting, filmmaking, blogging, costuming, or whatever; and my own “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” panel. I was pleased at how well-received our panel about the differences between pre- and post-Hiatus Who seemed to be. I hope to see some reviews of it elsewhere online (if I do, I’ll post links). The basic take-away from the whole thing, as one of my fellow panelists put it: There is no wrong way to watch (or love) Doctor Who.

Later we managed to get eight of our TARDISes (or, as the man himself declared the correct plural: TARDII) together for a photo with Sylvester McCoy. He was a wonderful gentleman, and was quite gracious about us fangirling all over him (though we did try to keep it down to a dull roar).

Read more →

24 Hours of Gallifrey One: Day One

2 Comments

This year is already a bit different than last. It’s less about the guests and more about the friends.

On the official Day One (that’s Friday), programming doesn’t actually start until noon, unless you’re a first-timer going to the “Gallifrey 101” panel or a brand new panelist at the “Panelist Primer” one. Being on Central time still, though, I was up and dressed in my costume for the day (my femme Third Doctor) quite early. Most of my morning was thus spent meeting up with new-in-real-life/year-long-online friends, wandering the con, and getting photos with other cosplayers. I loved, for instance, getting pictures with a Brigadier cosplayer and another with a Sarah Jane Smith from The Time Warrior, while she was infiltrating the kitchens.

Among the wonderfully strange things about Gally is that the “talent” mingles with the fans. I sat at a table in the lobby drinking my coffee directly across from writer Richard Dinnick, who was himself between Ian McNeice (who played Churchill) and comedian Charlie Ross. It was beautifully surreal.

I’d wanted to go to the Radio Free Skaro podcast, but somehow that fell by the wayside. Instead, my first actual programming ended up being the Who Crack Video Track, run by ladies I know through The Corsair’s Closet podcast. Although they had some technical difficulties getting things started, the videos were well worth it.

Read more →

It’s Gally Time!

Today I’m off to Los Angeles for my second Gallifrey One convention.

I remember last year seeing all the activity on the relevant Twitter hashtag (which is now #Gally1), with people invariably expressing their keen anticipation. I didn’t quite get it. I mean, I was excited, too, but as a n00b, I really didn’t quite know what to expect, and a great deal of my anticipation was mixed with plain ol’ nerves. I only knew one person. Was I going to be sad and alone most of the weekend? What would the panels be like? Would I actually have any fun?

Well, this time I’m right there with everyone else who’s returning, and doing my part to ease the minds of first-time attendees. It’s an incredibly friendly venue, and now I have scads of new never-met-in-person-before friends with whom to share the experience. And tonight: LobbyCon!

Bring. It. On.

Read more →

Gally 2012 Recap

I have been seeing all sorts of great recaps of the Gallifrey One 2012 experience all over t3h intarwebs, and wish I’d been coherent enough to be half as clever as some of these thoughtful folks. For example:

There are loads more from much more popular blogs than this one, but those are a few that caught my attention. In fact, i09’s article has now got me thinking about what I might be able to pull off in the way of crossplay/femme cosplay myself next year. Hmmm…

But there’s something I’ve been promising you for a few weeks now that hasn’t come to fruition yet – the IAN shirt photo! Here’s what I advertised would happen:

 

Ian shirt + William Russell = squeeing fangirl
Read more →