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Confession #63: I Wonder If the Doctor Gets Vacations

Do you suppose the Doctor’s vacations ever go to plan?

There have been a few times here and there where we’ve witnessed him taking his various Companions off to some particular (intended) place and time for the sole purpose of relaxation and recreation. Most often, the results are less than ideal, as the TARDIS crew gets pulled into some brand of local trouble.

For example, in the eponymous tale, the Fourth Doctor took Romana II to the Leisure Hive to make use of its famous facilities. Of course, they find themselves smack in middle of serious political machinations instead. More recently, Ten took Rose off to New15 York in New Earth, only to discover something seriously wrong with the medical research facility. Even when he merely takes a moment out of his otherwise full schedule to fish (see, e.g., The Androids of Tara or The Two Doctors), things soon go all wahooney-shaped.

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Confession #62: I Hate Spoilers

Fans are notorious for, shall we say, extreme enthusiasm in anticipation of new material. It’s a key characteristic, no matter the fandom. Along with that fervor, though, comes a more controversial byproduct: the spoiler.

The Internet really seems to have changed the way we interact with our media of choice. Whether it be film, television, books, or any other format, fans now have near-instantaneous contact with both creators and other fans. Creators, who are still accustomed to the traditional idea that they can control how their stories are presented to their audiences through the specific publicity they sanction, have sometimes had difficulty adjusting to the new realities of cyberfanaticism.

This issue is especially prevalent in visual media, like Doctor Who. Instead of images, potential plot points, and other juicy details coming directly from the production team when and as they see fit, eager fans (or unscrupulous insiders) tend to leak them to social media, where they spread like wildfire. Such spoilers change the intended narrative, and sometimes ruin what were meant to be surprises carefully crafted over as much as months. Thus, as you might expect—and like absolutely everything else in fandom—spoilers tend to polarize fans.

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Nu-View #18: Special Surprise

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Planet of the Dead (Series Four Special; 2009)
Viewed 03 Jun 2014

Doctor/Companion: Ten, Lady Christina de Souza
Stars: David Tennant, Michelle Ryan
Preceding Story: The Next Doctor (Ten, Jackson Lake)
Succeeding Story: The Waters of Mars (Ten, Adelaide Brooke)

Having finished the Ninth Doctor’s tenure last time, the Ladies and I are ready to leap into the Tenth Doctor’s debut. Fate is, however, against us.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2009 BBC

It turns out that my Doctor Who evangelism is as disorganized as the rest of my life right now. Around New Year’s I’d loaned my DVDs of Series Two to a friend whose kids were just getting into Who, and never asked for them back. I only discover this oversight for our WhoFest viewing plans as the Ladies are setting themselves up with wine and snacks.

Not to waste one of our increasingly rare opportunities to spend time together with each other and the Doctor, we decide to postpone our watch-in-order exercise for another time and select an episode that we collectively know less well, at jE’s request. It’s an unexpectedly good choice; not only has jE seen it only once, but we discover that jA has never seen it at all! (I’m not sure how this egregious error came about; it’s good we’re correcting it now!)

So off we go on the Lonely God’s last “romp.” First we meet our bored, aristocratic cat burglar as she takes advantage of the “worst security system ever” (as jA puts it). For someone who’s meant to be so clever, Christina’s a bit of a dullard for ripping off her identity-concealing mask whilst still inside the museum she’s in the process of robbing.

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Confession #61: I Want a 50th Boxed Set

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Over the weekend, reports surfaced that The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot; the unofficial-but-officially-sanctioned half-hour special written and directed by Fifth Doctor Peter Davison and co-starring Colin Baker (Six), Sylvester McCoy (Seven), and (briefly) Paul McGann (Eight); would at some point be released on DVD. The source of this information is apparently C. Baker himself, sharing the news at a Doctor Who Appreciation Society event. Details are ridiculously sketchy, pretty much only including the fact that it’s slated to happen and that it will be part of a “special set” focused on Matt Smith.

Folks are already speculating wildly about what will be on this rumored set, though most (like me) seem to have settled on the idea that it will be something 50th anniversary-related. My favorite overly enthusiastic and admittedly too optimistic list of items that might be included encompassed everything from the Proms to Hurt interviews to a specially created farewell to Eleven.

Admittedly, if it does turn out to be an anniversary set, there is a lot of material from which to choose. A lot of material was only available in one part of the world or another (e.g., the aforementioned Proms, or the Doctors Revisited series which didn’t make it to the UK until mere weeks before the anniversary). But how likely do we really think it is that BBC Worldwide would include videos of panel interviews, for instance? Realistically, there’s a pretty short list of what they’re likely to use.

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Confession #60: I Wish the Doctor Would Challenge Us More

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Sometimes I wonder what would happen if the Doctor was more often forced by circumstances to stay and face the consequences of his interference in events. Margaret the Slitheen called Nine on that in Boom Town, when the TARDIS needed more time to refuel, requiring the crew to keep her with them until she could be returned to Raxacoricofallapatorius. She made some good points (though her arguments were inherently flawed), and her very presence made the others acutely uncomfortable.

One of the things that I love about Doctor Who, perhaps most particularly the pre-Hiatus era (which did this more often), is that it can make us think about how our own society is messed up by showing us an analogous situation in some completely alien (often literally so) culture and demonstrating how horrible it would be to suffer certain indignities.

Because I am a coward, I won’t go any further and draw any specific analogies to the way American or British society treat certain of its members. Anyone who cares to can certainly draw their own parallels (and if you find that you can’t, then perhaps you need to start listening more than you talk when such topics come up).

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CONsole Room 2014 Recap

This past weekend, for the first time in over twenty years, a dedicated Doctor Who con was held in the Twin Cities (that’s Minneapolis/St Paul, for those unfamiliar with the moniker). I was thrilled to have a con right here in my own town, and I have to say the organizers acquitted themselves well. While it was a very different experience—both on the con floor and off—than I’ve had at Gally, I had a great time, and look forward to next year.

So what was it like? Glad you asked!

Thursday
Since I didn’t have to contend with the expense of airfare or lodging, I felt justified in springing for one of the “extras” available: the Pre-Con Mixer on Thursday night. Not having done any events like it before, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, other than the advertised details: there would be hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar, and the two guests of honor (Deborah “Victoria” Watling and Sophie “Ace” Aldred) were scheduled to attend.

I have to say, the event was a greater success for me personally than I could possibly have imagined. Although awkward at first—none of my friends were attending the con, let alone the mixer—I found my groove eventually. I chatted with someone I’d seen on Twitter, and before long, Deborah Watling herself had moved to our table. We talked about her recovered episodes and what we liked best about them before she moved on to other attendees.

In fact, that transition led directly to my making some new friends. As I stood uncomfortably alone at the table while conversations swirled around me, the eye of a verbal storm, I couldn’t help but notice that one of the two women Deborah was engaged with had a brilliant fandom mashup tattoo. When they parted ways, I felt compelled to follow these other fans, tapping one on the shoulder.

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Launching a New Chapter

Review of Storm Warning (#16)
Big Finish Release Date: January 2001
Doctor/Companion: Eight, Charlotte “Charley” Pollard
Stars: Paul McGann, India Fisher
Preceding Story: The Mutant Phase (Five, Nyssa)
Succeeding Story: Sword of Orion (Eight, Charley)

Welcome to my new series of reviews! As of today, I’m officially adding Big Finish audio adventures to my repertoire. Bowing to the will of reader poll voters and using the advice of friend and podcaster Paul Greaves, I’m starting with Eighth Doctor Paul McGann’s first foray into audio.

I’ve heard Paul say, when asked, that he started fresh with his characterization of the Doctor when he began audio work. He’d not really had a chance to develop Eight much in The Movie, so it makes sense he’d jump at the chance to explore the character further. Every once in a while, I could hear a tinge of the Doctor of the TVM here, but for the most part, I have to concur that Eight is a “new man” on audio, and it’s a man I quite adore.

You may remember from my previous post about Big Finish that I’ve heard a few adventures before (most of the four series of Eighth Doctor Adventures, Dark Eyes (the first set; the second still awaits its turn in the earphones), and two or three individual stories with other Doctors). I’d also managed to get my paws on Storm Warning before—though it’s been a couple of years—so as I listened this time, I mostly knew what was coming.

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Confession #59: I’m Sick of the Omnirumour

Part of the mythos of our show is the sad fact that many of the early episodes from the first two Doctors are no longer in the BBC archives. Pretty much ever since the advent of home video, fans have hoped that some—or preferably all—of those would some day be recovered. We’ve had our share of happy surprises, most recently when The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear were returned last year.

There are nearly a hundred still absent, though, and someone somewhere always brings up the idea that more are out there, just waiting to be revealed to the public. It’s the Omnirumo(u)r—the rumor that will not die—and it has many forms. One particular collector is hoarding [“The Smugglers” / “Marco Polo” / all remaining missing episodes] (strike as relevant). The aforementioned episode(s) have been found in some backwater of Africa / Asia / wherever. And so on.

Of course the BBC’s tendency to deny things that later turn out to have been fuzzy versions of truth keep fans frothing. “The BBC’s just being coy!” “They’re covering their behinds!” “If Doctor Who Magazine (DWM) denied it, it’s just that they don’t know better!” And I really think the BBC buys fully into the old saw about there being no such thing as bad publicity.

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Confession #58: I’m Spoiled for Choice

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You may have noticed that I’ve been doing lots of Confessions lately. Now that the DVD range has effectively come to an end (barring any future recoveries or reconstructions), I just don’t have new material to review. Sure, I could go back through the catalog and cover the older releases, but that feels like grasping at straws. Instead, I’d like to branch out from the “canon” (ha ha—as if that meant the same thing for every fan) of the televised adventures and start exploring the Big Finish audio adventures.

One of the big reasons I want to go this direction is that I think it’s a wonderful but less well known branch of the Whoniverse. I’m almost certainly suffering a bit of “this is how it is for me, so that’s how it likely is for everyone,” but if there’s more to be discovered here, why not bring my readers along for the ride?

Further, I’m thinking back to a panel I sat in on at Gally this past year. The topic of Big Finish audios came up, and I remember the moderator asking how many in the audience had ever listened to one. A decent number of hands went up—maybe half. Then he asked how many planned to listen to one at some point in the future. A sea of hands filled the air. The panel seemed impressed. Cleverly, I thought, they followed up with “How many of you don’t plan ever to listen to one?” Every hand went down, and not a one went up.

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Confession #57: I’m Sad About Convention “Business”

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Earlier this week I learned that not only Karen Gillan but also Matt Smith would be across town at the end of next week for a convention. My first reaction was surprise. The second was glee. The third—which has continued ever since—was dejection.

Why such a gamut? To start, I never expected such big stars to visit my adopted home town. Living in the American Midwest, I’ve become inured to the disadvantages of “flyover country.” No one would ever have a (major studio) film opening in Chicago—the only city “important” enough to have a chance at shaking off its flyover status—let alone here in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis is not the place to go for “sightings” of film or television stars at restaurants or social hotspots du jour.

So hearing that Minneapolis Comic Con (the Wizard World run convention) had wrangled both recent Who stars (among an impressive list of others) came as a bit of a shock. That’s when I started dancing in my chair. “Woo hoo!” I thought. “I could meet Matt and Karen!” The mere idea that they’d be within a half-hour drive made me giddy. While I am not one of those folks who thinks their characters were the best thing since sliced bread, I liked them both well enough, and respect Matt and Karen as actors.

The relevant weekend is fast approaching, though. I wasn’t sure I’d have time, and cash is certainly in short supply lately. How much would it be just to get in the door? I knew I wouldn’t go all three days, but a single day might be do-able. Those tickets range from $35-45 (currently ~£21-27). That’s a little more than I’d like to spend, but I could almost justify it, to see Matt and Karen. Once I was in, though, I’d want access—after all, that’s what I’ve come to expect at Gally. Even if I couldn’t afford to get photos, I reasoned, I’d at least want autographs.

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