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Confession #120: I Love a Retrospective

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My kids had spring break last week. We spent some lovely time with family members whom we don’t get to see often enough, and returned home with a couple of spare days to laze around the house. The girls and I have been making our way through modern Who together over the past few months, and before we headed out of town, had reached the end of Tennant’s run. Although they were resigned to the change, they were (much like their mom at that stage) not really ready to move on.

However, with several more days of spring break stretched out in front of us, and the Smith era just waiting there invitingly, the girls decided to dive in. They grudgingly agreed to give this not-Tennant guy a try, knowing that eventually we’d roll back around to Capaldi (remember that they started modern Who by watching Series Ten), but they weren’t harboring any high hopes.

We started on Wednesday the 4th with The Eleventh Hour (S05E01, a day late for the eighth anniversary of its first broadcast) and binge-watched nearly two full series, finishing The Girl Who Waited (S06E10) by Sunday the 8th. That’s twenty-four episodes in the span of five days—a serious feat, if I do say so myself. Somewhere in the middle they reached the fourth of the five stages of the Whovian’s regeneration cycle (counting “Regeneration” as the first), though I don’t know that they necessarily rank Eleven as their favorite. Still, they’re on board with him being the Doctor, and they adore Amy, Rory, and River. Result!

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It’s the Pits

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Review of The Creature from the Pit (#106)
DVD Release Date: 07 Sep 10
Original Air Date: 22 Oct – 17 Nov 1979
Doctors/Companions: Four, Romana II
Stars: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward
Preceding Story: City of Death (Four, Romana II)
Succeeding Story: Nightmare of Eden (Four, Romana II)

Looking over my spreadsheet of Classic stories I have yet to review, I can see that I’ve made some progress over the last seven-plus years. However, there are still a couple of Doctors whose runs are, proportionately speaking, underrepresented. So how do I choose which stories from those eras to review in the coming months?

I decided to go with a theme of Bad Reputations.

It was surprisingly easy to make suitable selections. You see, a person naturally gravitates towards the stories she likes when she has a choice of which ones to talk about. After all, if you have to watch something again to refresh your memory, it’s no surprise the enjoyable ones rise to the top of the list. This far into the game, then, there are going to be a fair number of clunkers left. And since Verity! podcast last week released their interview with Lalla Ward from last November’s LI Who, one of the stories discussed therein—Lalla’s first one on set—seemed a perfect place to start.

The Creature from the Pit (TCftP) has a well-deserved reputation. It is, hard as it tries, a hot mess from start to finish. K-9’s voice is wrong (David Brierley voiced him for this single season instead of John Leeson); the folks on Chloris, the planet where the story is set, have precious little imagination (“We call it ‘the Pit'” and “We call it ‘the Creature'” are among the more scintillating lines of dialog…); and the plot ranges from poorly considered to straight up non-sensical. And all that says nothing of the Creature itself.

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Confession #119: I Love Sharing Who With My Kids

Over the last couple of weeks, I have had the immense pleasure of binge-watching Doctor Who with two members of the Target Market™. My daughters, who became fans by watching Twelve and Bill and later fell in love with Seven and Ace, have been getting up-to-speed on the modern storyline. It’s been a richly rewarding experience for me to watch them watch Who.

They liked Nine and Rose (especially Rose), and weren’t so sure about this weird-looking replacement guy. Pretty soon, though, they were fully invested in Ten and Rose (especially Rose). When Doomsday rolled around, there was ugly crying—which, I have to admit, they come by naturally; that was pretty much me ten years ago, when I first saw it. RTD did his job well, ripping out their hearts. They just weren’t quite ready for a new Companion.

But then they got to know Martha, and let’s be honest—she’s actually pretty damn awesome. Soon they were just as attached to her as they’d been to Rose (or very nearly). And when we got to Blink—well. Let’s just say all of their reactions were exactly what I imagine the production team envisioned with wicked glee as they wrote (Moffat) and created (RTD) the episode.

As the Series Three finale approached, the girls got nervous. How would Martha’s time with the Doctor end? They’d been burned before. One girl wanted me to tell her before we went any further; the other was in favor of a just-watch-and-see-how-it-plays-out approach (let no one ever tell you that identical twins are “the same”). I told the former in private just enough to satisfy her: after bad stuff happens, Martha chooses to stop traveling with the Doctor. Hers is the best departure (from the characters’ POV) of the modern era.

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Cirque du Docteur

Review of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (#152)
DVD Release Date: 05 Aug 08
Original Air Date: 14 Dec 1988 – 04 Jan 1989
Doctors/Companions: Seven, Ace
Stars: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story: Silver Nemesis (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: Battlefield (Seven, Ace, the Brigadier)

Usually in mid- to late February, I post a recap of my entire Gally experience for the year, complete with photos. This year I didn’t have much in the way of shareable pictures, though, and I didn’t want to let February slip away without including a monthly review.

It seemed appropriate, therefore, that I compromise by giving a nod to Gallifrey One 2018 by reviewing a serial that was relevant to the con. Since many of the cast and crew of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (TGSitG) were guests at Gally this year (including Sylvester McCoy [Seventh Doctor], Sophie Aldred [Ace], Jessica Martin [Mags], Dee Sadler [Flowerchild], Adrew Cartmel [script editor], Stephen Wyatt [writer], and Mark Ayers [composer]), it seemed a perfect choice.

I don’t actually remember when I last watched TGSitG, but it has definitely been a number of years—enough so that my perspective on the setting seems to have changed significantly. I am fortunate to live in an area that has a circus school, and I’ve seen the students there perform some amazing feats over the last several years (including my own kids), so something that stuck out like a sore thumb this time around that I seem to have glossed over before is the nature of the “circus skills” the members of the Psychic Circus possess.

Bellboy tells Ace at one point that all the circus members had their own specialities, and that his was creating and repairing the robots that play such a prominent role (they are most of the background performers—clowns who tumble and ride unicycles). Flowerchild’s “skill” was creating kites. What the hell sort of circus has robots and kites? A psychic one, I guess, but it threw me for a loop when it was stated outright that those were the things that allowed those folks to become an integral part of the circus.

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Gallifrey One: The 29 Voyages of Gallifrey One – Day Three

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I always get surprised by how fast Gally is over on Sunday. Objectively, it’s a shorter day, ending after Closing Ceremonies around 7pm instead of programming running into late night hours. But even knowing that and that LobbyCon will still be in full swing into the wee hours like every other night, I can never quite believe it’s time to say goodbye to my friends for another year.

The day started off great, though, as I finally had the chance to spend time with my local friends. We had a lovely time together, and they got me back in plenty of time to go grab my badge and such and head down to the con floor.

Aside from snagging my last couple of autographs, my first event was a panel called Stories from the American Trenches [Panel: Ken Deep, Jan Fennick, Steven Warren Hill, Jennifer Adams Kelley, Shaun Lyon, Robert Warnock]. It covered both the production and contents of the book Red White and Who: The Story of Doctor Who in America. The main goal of the work is (I would say) to collect, clarify, and preserve stories and facts about fandom in the US, from the beginning until 2017. The result is a 700-page tome filled with treasures.

Although when specific experiences were discussed, they were pretty much those of the panelists and thus primarily from the perspective of those who came to the show as children in the Classic era, there is more in the book. I found myself having an odd reaction to the conversation, and realizing I fit in a really weird in-between space. I am of an age with those panelists, and have an innate cultural understanding of things like the public television pledge drives that were such a big part of American fandom in the 1980s—but my own fandom is only ten years old. That made for something of a surreal panel.

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Gallifrey One: The 29 Voyages of Gallifrey One – Day Two

For a day spent primarily sitting in one room, my Saturday at Gally was really tiring.

It started in Program A with the live commentary on Twice Upon a Time, the most recent Christmas special and Capaldi’s final episode. The guests were Stephen Moffat (showrunner/writer), David Bradley (First Doctor), and Brian Minchin (executive producer). It’s always as fascinating to hear the kind of personality each guest presents as the behind-the-scenes tidbits. Moffat is certainly funny and personable, though his opinions also shine through (which can be good or bad, depending on to what degree one agrees with them).

One of the highlights for me, though, was the roaring cheer that encompassed the room when Jodie Whittaker appeared on screen. There’s been a lot of love for her here this year (so much cosplay!), and it’s been wonderful to see. I can hardly wait for next year, when we’ve had some actual episodes upon which the cosplayers can build their ideas.

Speaking of cosplay, Saturday was the day for my costume. I finally put together my Seventh Doctor costume, complete with big, flowy pants; a nice, soft cardigan; custom brogues; and a hatband ribbon on the end of my hair fork. It got me noticed by Andrew Cartmel (script editor from the McCoy era) on my way through the Dealers Room. (The man’s got a good sales game; I bought his book, even though I wasn’t in the market.)

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Gallifrey One: The 29 Voyages of Gallifrey One – Day One

It’s feels really strange to be posting my first update when the con is effectively half over already, and yet here we are. Though Gally “officially” opens on Friday morning, there’s an organized event on Thursday evening (the ice cream social and dance), and LobbyCon begins well before that.

As I understand it, the term LobbyCon began as a description for the pre-con socializing in the lobby on the Thursday night before Gally. Over the years, though, as people arrive earlier and earlier (some folks get in on Monday or even Sunday), LobbyCon has expanded to fill the available space. There was already plenty of LobbyCon’ing happening on Wednesday night (my first night this year), and I imagine there was even some on at least Tuesday.

As for ribbon trading, that began in earnest this year in the early afternoon on Thursday, an hour or two before registration even opened for folks to pick up their badges. I didn’t bother to attach them all to my badge that night, starting fresh on Friday, and I literally have a stack of ribbons 2-3 inches thick waiting for attention. The ribbon game is still strong.

However, I think I can safely say this year that a trend I had started to notice in the last couple years is now a full-blown Thing: ribbons aren’t the only tradables changing hands. Aside from my friend’s fabulous and ever-popular commemorative coins, people are making their own knitted ribbon/badge bling, tiny bowties, or buttons. So. Many. Buttons.

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Bon Voyage: It’s Gally Time!

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This morning I’m off at a ridiculous time of day (at “the sparrow’s fart,” as some Brits and Aussies might say) to haul my carcass across the continent to Los Angeles for my annual pilgrimage to Gallifrey One. Every year, though there are obviously common elements, the con is its own unique experience. For me, at least, every single one (this will be my seventh!) has been wonderful.

I haven’t been to a whole lot of cons—there’ve been three, maybe four different venues I’ve attended since my first-ever con at Gally 2012—so I don’t have an extensive base from which to draw comparison. But there’s something special about Gally that I’ve not yet found anywhere else. It has an energy about it, a warmly friendly, familial atmosphere that makes one—makes me—feel instantly at home.

Aside from seeing all my many friends (which is, let’s be real, the most important part of Gally for me now, and has been since my second, or possibly third, year), there are several things I’m especially looking forward to this year:

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Nu-View #21: Disgust & Side-Eyes

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Love & Monsters (Series Two, Ep. 10; 2006)
Viewed 15 Jan 2018

Doctor/Companion: Ten, Rose Tyler
Stars: David Tennant, Billie Piper
Preceding Story: The Satan Pit (Ten, Rose)
Succeeding Story: Fear Her (Ten, Rose)

It’s been some three-and-a-half years since I last did one of these. Aligning four adults’ schedules often enough to keep up on new episodes with the Ladies—let alone review old ones—has proven a serious challenge. We are, in fact, still in the middle of Series Ten. I’m hopeful we’ll get caught up with the Christmas episode by midsummer.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2006 BBC

When Verity! podcast released their Love & Monsters commentary a couple weeks ago, though, I knew it was time to relaunch a new version of the NuViews. It felt like Fate, because my 11-year-old twin daughters’ introduction to the modern show had paused right at that exact episode. If I could convince them to watch with me again, I could both get them back in the proverbial saddle and share their unique perspective with my readers.

The girls were game, and so we sat down (not without trepidation on my part) to watch Elton’s vlog about his encounters with the Doctor. I realized immediately that this would be a different kind of experience than watching with the Ladies. To start, H & V are still quite new to Who; they don’t have a whole lot of context upon which to draw for comparison. For another, they are for the most part still simply absorbed in the story; any comments they make tend to be direct gut reactions rather than the snarky comments of jaded adults. It’s refreshing, even if it means there are fewer mid-episode impressions to report.

Since it had been years since I’d seen the episode myself, it was almost as interesting to gauge my own reactions as to see the girls’. For instance, I got something of a Torchwood vibe from the pre-credits sequence (interesting in retrospect, since this is the series that led up to the whole Torchwood storyline).

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Confession #118: I’m Anxious About S11

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Hope is a strange thing. It is simultaneously uplifting and crushing. Especially during this turbulent time in the world, I need something positive in my life, and yet even the possibility of my anticipation ending in disappointment looms like a specter over every potential bright spot. Perhaps that’s why I’m feeling particularly apprehensive about the upcoming Series 11.

While I am among those who have been on board for a female-presenting incarnation of the Doctor for years, the pending (no—current!) reality fills me with Hope—that wonderful, terrible mix of potential for brilliance and anathema. It is encouraging that her first words reflected a delight at her new face, but it is not enough to assuage my fears completely. That will only come with consistently good writing.

The problem now is that we have ages to wait until we see her in action for real. (Yes, I know the break between Christmas and the following autumn is pretty standard. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s the better part of a year until the next new episode.) That’s months for my brain to devise ideas about how it thinks she could/should be portrayed, building up all sorts of potential for disaster when things don’t go as I’ve projected.

I try not to project too much, but it’s a difficult task for someone who dabbles in fiction writing. One can’t help but devise one’s own scenarios for a character who has both a well-known history and a completely unknown personality. It’s that latter bit that alarms me most, though. As a woman who has loved science fiction and fantasy for effectively her whole life, I have come to recognize that women protagonists written by cisgender men don’t always act (and react) in a way that I, or the other women I see around me in my real life, would.

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