Do You Love Anyone Enough?

Nature Sad news. Rolo the 'dog sheep' famous for her herding skills has died:

"A sheep who gained international fame for her dog-like performing skills has died despite efforts to save her.

"Rolo rose to stardom in 2006 after Emlyn Roberts tapped into her talents and started taking her to local shows to herd ducks.

"Mr Roberts said the death last month had left him devastated as Rolo, eight, was like one of the family."

In Praise of Adric.

TV And so my anniversary watch through all of Doctor Who nearly reaches the end of the fourth Doctor era. Tomorrow, Logopolis. Today, The Keeper of Traken and a real surprise. Even having seen the story a few times before in relative isolation, on VHS, as part of that transitional dvd boxed set, what I hadn't noticed is just how incorrect one of the series great reputation misnomers actually is.

Reputationally, Adric as played by Matthew Waterhouse is a terrible, terrible character, and in truth some way into the Davison era he does fulfill that criteria, especially when he's turning against his team mates and acting like a smart arse.

But early on, when twinned with the Fourth Doctor, he's actually really rather good and more importantly, Waterhouse isn't awful and against expectations and despite the supposed problems off screen, has some really quite useful chemistry with Tom.

The relationship is one of tutor and student, a return in some respects to the Leela years, but the Doctor knows that Adric is something of a genius and actively engages him and asks for his second opinion and not always because he knows the answer himself. On a couple of occasions, for example in relation to the source (you'll have to watch the story to understand what that means), Adric provides some useful inspiration.

I know!  I know!  Imagine my surprise given how Adric's become a byword for how not to do a companion and the key element in the argument against then producer John Nathan Turner, at least terms of what was on screen.

Since Adric's more of a guest character in Full Circle, barely meets Tom in State of Decay and spends most of Warrior's Gate wandering the void or getting up Lalla, sorry, Romana's nose, his only real stories with Fourth of Traken and Logopolis.

In such situations, the spin-off materials from the wilderness years and onwards usually flowed in desperate to create new stories.  As I've discussed during Who 50, that certainly happened for the Fifth Doctor and Peri, whose own on screen collaboration similarly only lasted about a story and a half.

There are a few E-Space set Companion Chronicles from Big Finish with Romana II & K9 also on board, but presumably because of his reputation and for reasons of commerciality and writers being interested in producing material to fill the gap between Traken and Logopolis, there's practically nothing that's been officially licensed.  A contemporary annual containing five short stories and a short trip.  No Virgin Missing Adventures, no BBC Past Doctor novels.  Even Dodo's had more appearances.

Now that Big Finish have revealed Waterhouse's participation in some Fifth Doctor stories, now that everyone's older and wiser, what do you think are the chances that he and Tom will gather again for a season of stories?  Or that a well known author will look at what's missing and decide to write one of those BBC eBooks.  Come on Jenny Colgan, you know you want to...

Please Shut the Gate.

Space A lot of people are game for a one-way ticket to Mars — more than 100,000 of them:

"Mars One, the Dutch nonprofit that’s offering one-way tickets to the red planet, appears to have hit a milestone. Back in April, when the project first began accepting applications from the general public, we asked whether anyone would be willing to take them up on the offer. Apparently, more than 100,000 people would. That’s right, more than 100,000 people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars."

Let's hope at least some of them are poets.

Jennifer Lawrence's Vogue Cover.

Fashion The full article is here. I'm watching the athletics so haven't had a chance to read it yes, but here's a choice quote:

It’s not a secret that the Internet has created a new, more hellish reality for actors, partly because everyone is paparazzi now—e.g., the woman sitting next to us. Before you cue the tiny violins, Lawrence does have a point: “If I were just your average 23-year-old girl,” she says, “and I called the police to say that there were strange men sleeping on my lawn and following me to Starbucks, they would leap into action. But because I am a famous person, well, sorry, ma’am, there’s nothing we can do. It makes no sense.” What really gets to her is when people say, “You have to make peace with it.” “I am just not OK with it,” she says. “It’s as simple as that. I am just a normal girl and a human being, and I haven’t been in this long enough to feel like this is my new normal. I’m not going to find peace with it.”

The Longest Story in the World.

Words Or rather the longest joke ...

"So, there's a man crawling through the desert.

"He'd decided to try his SUV in a little bit of cross-country travel, had great fun zooming over the badlands and through the sand, got lost, hit a big rock, and then he couldn't get it started again. There were no cell phone towers anywhere near, so his cell phone was useless. He had no family, his parents had died a few years before in an auto accident, and his few friends had no idea he was out here...."

Shakespeare's Spanish Tragedy.

Theatre Scholarship moves on again. The New York Times reports that further proof has been found or at least suggested that some of the additional passages in The Spanish Tragedy were by Shakespeare:

" ... a professor at the University of Texas says he has found something closer to definitive proof using a more old-fashioned method: analyzing Shakespeare’s messy handwriting.

"In a terse four-page paper, to be published in the September issue of the journal Notes and Queries, Douglas Bruster argues that various idiosyncratic features of the Additional Passages — including some awkward lines that have struck some doubters as distinctly sub-Shakespearean — may be explained as print shop misreadings of Shakespeare’s penmanship.

“What we’ve got here isn’t bad writing, but bad handwriting,” Mr. Bruster said in a telephone interview."

Eric Rasmussen and Jonathan Bate are enough convinced that they're including it in their upcoming collection of Shakespeare collaborations for the RSC (though that does include some of the apocrypha for reasons of dismissal it seems). Perhaps the Arden will be shifting series should their edition be reprinted...

Shakespeare's Spanish Tragedy.

Scholarship moves on again. The New York Times reports that further proof has been found or at least suggested that some of the additional passages in The Spanish Tragedy were by Shakespeare:

" ... a professor at the University of Texas says he has found something closer to definitive proof using a more old-fashioned method: analyzing Shakespeare’s messy handwriting.

"In a terse four-page paper, to be published in the September issue of the journal Notes and Queries, Douglas Bruster argues that various idiosyncratic features of the Additional Passages — including some awkward lines that have struck some doubters as distinctly sub-Shakespearean — may be explained as print shop misreadings of Shakespeare’s penmanship.

“What we’ve got here isn’t bad writing, but bad handwriting,” Mr. Bruster said in a telephone interview."

Eric Rasmussen and Jonathan Bate are enough convinced that they're including it in their upcoming collection of Shakespeare collaborations for the RSC (though that does include some of the apocrypha for reasons of dismissal it seems). Perhaps the Arden will be shifting series should their edition be reprinted...

Spored.

Books Find above the customary author interview/hostage video for the new Puffin Doctor Who ebook release, with Alex Scarrow talking about his Eighth Doctor story, Spore. For anyone with even a passing knowledge of the wilderness years, it's curious document as Scarrow repeats his suggestion that the reason he chose to write for the Eighth Doctor because "we haven't seen much of him and because it would give me more wiggle room to come up with more character, to put more flesh on those bones."

What we could ask is what his research consisted of, because googling Eighth Doctor brings us to the Wikipedia page and the TARDIS datacore pages both of which are full of the mythology. So either he doesn't know this stuff exists for whatever reason or has been told to deny its existence because of licensing issues and because the presumed target audience of the the ebooks which presumably skews lower than the age range Alien Bodies or Scherzo are aimed at.

Much of the rest is clips from the TV movie and Scarrow explaining his creative choices in a way which is probably best left skipped until after reading the story, that is until the bizarre moment at the end when he seems to also not have noticed the existence of The Deadly Assassin, The Five Doctors or Arc of Infinity, let alone Neverland, Lungbarrow or Gridlock as he says we've never learnt his name (Theta Sigma), who is family were (Susan), what it was like to live on Gallifrey, what there whole culture is like (see above).

Bless.  As I've said before, I'll reserve judgement until I've read it and that's probably fine.  For all we know it could be a massive bluff and within its electronic pages there are references to the Faction Paradox, Divergent Universe and Destrii.  But it is a shame that somewhat as expected someone who isn't so obviously a fan of this version of the character is writing it rather than someone who seems, judging by this video, to be treating it as more of an intellectual exercise.  I'll let you know.

The Queen of Eros.

The Not-So-Sinister Sponge.

Food Simplistic in design but voluminous in its content, The Food Timeline is everything you'd seemingly ever need to know about any food. The cake page is a particularly expressive example, with history recipes and trivia from a range of sources. Example: Why are cakes round?

"Excellent question! Food historians offer several theories. Each depends upon period, culture and cuisine. Generally, the round cakes we know today descended from ancient bread. Ancient breads and cakes were made by hand. They were typically fashioned into round balls and baked on hearthstones or in low, shallow pans. These products naturally relaxed into rounded shapes. By the 17th century, cake hoops (fashioned from metal or wood) were placed on flat pans to effect the shape. As time progressed, baking pans in various shapes and sizes, became readily available to the general public. Moulded cakes (and fancy ices) reached their zenith in Victorian times."

The best way to read these pages would presumably be on a Kindle - they're certainly formatted for easy conversion.

A Town Called Eternity.

History Throughout the 30s, 40s and 50s, in Melbourne, Australia, the word Eternity appeared across the city on buildings in chalk copperplate handwriting. For years the identity of the graffiti artist was a mystery despite its iconic part of city life, until 1956 when a newspaper revealed it to be Arthur Stace, an illiterate former soldier, petty criminal and alcoholic who became a devout Christian in the late 1940s.

 His story is commemorated by this website, though The Sydney Morning Herald offered a potted biography of Stace in 2009:

"Back in Sydney, Stace's physical and psychological problems were exacerbated by alcohol and he often found himself in front of the magistrate. In 1930, when he was in danger of being sent to prison, he made the decision to give up drinking. Against all the odds, he would remain sober for the rest of his life, supported by a new-found faith in God.

"It was several months after his initial conversion that Stace heard the evangelist the Reverend John Ridley preaching in Darlinghurst. Significantly, Ridley was not only a man of God but a decorated WWI veteran. He had been awarded the Military Cross for valour during the Battle of Bullecourt in 1917. When Ridley declared: ''I wish I could shout 'Eternity' through the streets of Sydney,'' the word resonated with Stace who, like Ridley, had faced his own mortality daily France. It was the genesis for his extraordinary 35-year mission in which he rose at dawn to walk the streets, anonymously chalking ''Eternity'' as he went."

"Eternity" also inspired an exhibition at the National Museum of Australia.

"Is anyone still reading this blog now that its become a Dr Who only zone ?"

Letters A observation/comment from Jess in the comments to today's Who 50 post:

"Just an observation, but is anyone still reading this blog now that its become a Dr Who only zone ?"

(1) The page views yesterday were 871 according to Blogger and over the last month, 19,154. I'm not sure I've mentionedd that before but there we are. I'm also not sure if that's a lot, about average or rubbish.  None of this is as high as when Doctor Who is on television and I'm publishing reviews, though I do know a few people who only come during the series and go away again when it's over.

(2) The Doctor Who posts are the most popular items on the blog, though to be fair the numbers are still relatively modest. Blogger says the write-up on Peter Capaldi has so far had about three hundred direct hits, though it's not clear where those numbers are from. The one about the viewing order went a bit viral so headed up to about five hundred and eighty. None of that takes into account things like RSS, where the blog has 192 readers via feedburner, though the sources are up the wall since Google Reader shut so I don't know how they're reading.

(3) Which isn't why I'm writing about Doctor Who by the way. I knew I'd be covering it a lot in the 50th anniversary year, especially since I'm watching a lot of it.  It's a nice writing exercise to choose a different story from a given year and try and have an original thought about it then ...

(4) The Who 50 tangent posts were and are designed so that the blog isn't a Dr Who only zone and again they're a useful research test.

(5) There are also posts about girl groups and art exhibitions I've enjoyed and the usual things I'm interested in. There's less personal writing in the traditional sense even though this is still a personal blog, I suppose, but long term readers will know that this sort of thing ebbs and flows. It's been a weird summer for various reasons, so I'm more inclined to write about the things I can write about rather than the things I don't feel like or don't quite understand yet.

(6)  I hope none of this comes across as defensive because it's not supposed to though I suspect it might.  As I've always said, this is what it is.  It's not Doctor Who blog though it does some of that.  It's not a culture blog, though it's been called that.  It's my blog however mediocre an idea that might be.

(7)  What kinds of things would you like me to be writing about?

WHO 50: 2000: Short Trips and Side Steps.

Books By some measure, in the year two thousand Doctor Who was experiencing one its most fertile periods of the wilderness years. Big Finish was in full swing having quickly shifted to a monthly release schedule after the unexpected interested in their initial releases (available on cassette and cd back then) (for goodness sake), BBC Audio (the old name for AudioGo) began properly releasing the narrated missing episodes on audio, The Robots of Death fired off regular dvd releases of the available stories, BBV was still producing the odd thing notably The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind and at BBC Books, the Eighth Doctor novels had reached a crucial moment with the partial reboot in The Burning with its ensuing "Earth arc" and the past Doctors range was heading into ever more experimental territory with Iris Wyldethyme making her debut in that line with Paul Magrs’s Verdigris and Dave Stone’s split-era curate’s egg, Heart of TARDIS. It was at the point of being made by fans for fans and everyone seemed happy with that.

In the middle of all that, BBC Books also saw fit to look at the slightly more bonkers history of the programme with the publication of Short Trips and Side Steps. The first Short Trips anthologies had been publishing in 1998 as an almost direct continuation of the Decalogue series from Virgin Books, allowing authors to turn ideas what weren’t long enough for a novels into shorter prose. Both of the first two books were pretty freewheeling in their own way, with direct sequels of television stories written in the first person or extrapolations of such fan concepts at season 6B, which back then meant a suggested series of missions for the Second Doctor before his exile to Earth rather than Mels, magnifying glasses and a minotaur. But they were still resolutely in keeping with the aims of the BBC’s existing two lines, especially the Eighth Doctor pieces which seemed designed to offer some psychological underpinnings to that series’s earlier, more simplistic instalments.

But Short Trips and Side Steps (edited by range stalwarts Jac Raynor and Stephen Cole) was different. Short Trips and Side Steps took a long look at Doctor Who’s history and wondered what would have happened if some of its more bonkers licensing excesses, the World Annuals, TV Action comics, the stage shows, Dimensions in Time had actually been viable versions of the programme, rather than what’s now usually considered apocrypha. Mike Tucker and Robert Perry’s Storm in a Tikka is a sequel to Dimensions which dovetails into Search Out Space. Countdown to TV Action by Gary Russell celebrates the version of the third Doctor who lived in a country house and travelled around in the car called Betsy. Justin Richards’s The House on Oldark Moor is another adventure for the TARDIS crew who featured in the 60s movies. The Ultimate Adventure’s Crystal, Zog, Jason return with their friend the Sixth Doctor return for Face Value by Steve Lyons. Season 6B’s back again too. Or is it?

About as free-wheeling a selection of Who prose ever published it had a precedent in Perfect Timing, a charity anthology produced a few years before produced by many of the same writers. That also took the view that all of Doctor Who in its media various incarnation was fair game, the authors intermixing stories about characters from “comics, novels, videos, cereal packets and more”. One of the stories is about how the Doctor’s final companion, upon witnessing his death decides to continue in his name with “all that entails” which sounds magnificent (PT is sadly unavailable now). Short Trips and Side Steps never quite scales the heights of some those stories, in which writers usually paid to write Who fiction within strict rules let rip with their best and worst fan fic excesses, there’s still enough experimental meat to set it aside from much of anything else in publication.

In the midst of the homages, are new alternatives. A future Doctor modelled on Merlin with his companion Guin. A Fifth Doctor and Peri story seemingly modelled on Wild, Wild West. A body swap story for the Sixth Doctor and Peri (yes, indeed) and one of my particular favourites, The Not-So Sinister Sponge, written by Clayton Hickman and Gareth Roberts in their earliest collaboration. There’s an element of in-jokery inherent in the anthology which would presumably befuddle some of the not we, especially Lawrence Miles’s final piece which is actually shorter than this sentence. But for someone like me who was just beginning the crawl back into the Whoniverse, it was like an entry drug reminding me of the merchandise I’d sold on, the stage shows I’d missed and just how flexible the format is, as we’ve discussed already capable of becoming all kinds of things while still inherently Doctor Who.

The Short Trips anthologies would later be revived by Big Finish, mixing in some of the spirit of the Decalogues so that the short fictions appeared within some kind of umbrella story or overarching thematic connection as well as Perfect Timings as they invited in characters from other licensees (thanks to authors retaining the copyright on their own characters), but they eventually ended (and now sell for hilariously large prices on ebay). Big Finish in general also continued the spirit of Short Trips and Side Steps in particular with audio adaptations of the stage shows and creating a new sequel and by heralding in the Eighth Doctor’s various companions on the audio anthology A Company of Friends while introducing a new one. No further adventures for the Cushing incarnation yet, but surely Cribbins would be game for something in the style of the The Lost Years recreations of previous unproduced stories?

But part of me wishes BBC Books would revive them again themselves especially in the digital age, with the Puffin releases and their own recently announced ebooks demonstrating that there’s a potential market for them. Particularly in this anniversary year, why isn’t BBC Books turning out anthologies mixing the various eras of the show, short pieces featuring the first eleven Doctors alongside new adventures for Sarah Jane and gang along with Torchwood? I’m now enough of a fan to notice that weirdness that the nature of nuWho licensing means that this year’s celebratory releases aside, only the newest incarnation features in new merchandised stories, nothing for 9th or 10th, which in old Who terms would have been like only putting out TARGET novelisations of Peter Davison stories when he was the Doctor. If nothing else, Short Trips and Side Steps reminds us of the franchise’s rich history and how much can be gained from investigating it.

The Thirteenth Doctor.

Nature Butterflies are the "canary in the coalmine" says Joanna Lumley:

"What frightens me more than anything is how humans are detached from nature. We look at it on the screen and think we know it but we are more distant from the natural world than ever before."

Him & Her.

Film



[Him]



Her.

Elizabeth Wurtzel's AMA.

Books Elizabeth's AMA is a typically brilliant affair with her view of the Prozac Nation film (which I bought from abroad years ago at great expense but can't bring myself to watch) and new that she's writing a new book based on her generally misunderstood New York Magazine article.

I hope she won't mind me quoting in full one of her answers (but I'll happily remove if it's stepped over a line) because I want to have it somewhere to refer back to because I'm stuck in a writing rut at the moment, as I'm sure you've noticed and it's all the things I seem to have forgotten:

"Being a writer is extremely hard. This has always been true. It was true for Chaucer. It was true for Shakespeare, who wrote plays to please the queen. No one cares if you write. It has to matter to you so enormously much that you visit your ego upon the world and give it no choice except to care. I agree that this is harder now, not just because there are all these outlets that don't pay, but also because there are ALL THESE OUTLETS. Because of the Internet, there is too much content and not enough audience. It is so hard to distinguish oneself. Here is the trick, I think: You have to be brave as a writer. You have to write in a pure voice that is distinct and rare. It really is not hard. That does not require facility with words so much as it requires lack of fear. Of course, that is hard. Fear is the thing that gets in the way of everything: love, happiness, success.

"I happen to think there were many more opportunities twenty years ago to get a job as an editorial assistant at a magazine and write little articles until you could get assigned bigger pieces. But in terms of becoming an author of a book, the odds are as stacked against you or for you as ever. It is really difficult. But I think if you are sure this is what you must do, you need to be fearless and proceed. It really only works if it is a matter of no other choice."

My italics.  I'm trying to remember.

The Eleventh Doctor.

Theatre Actors have busy careers. Back in 2005, Rachael Stirling and Jim Broadbent appeared in a stage version of Theatre of Blood at the National Theatre during which the latter gave this interview to What's On Stage:

"There are some very strong arguments for critics in the play and sometimes you get very good critics. I think there’s an argument for putting them out to grass at a certain stage when they get so jaded with it and don’t have a fresh approach and a natural interest in theatre any more because they’ve seen so much of it. But you have to be able to gauge reactions to work and get some objective opinions, so it’s good. There are some critics I know enough to have a chat with if I saw them at a function or on the tube, but I don’t think I’ve ever been round to a critic’s house. Oh yeah, years and years ago, there was one but I don’t know what happened to him, he might have died. It’s all very subjective which ones you like. I think “oh, he likes me” so then I like him."

"I chose him because I felt I had the most room to manoeuvre"

Books It's August, finally, and so the author who's taken on the challenge of writing the Eighth Doctor e-short Puffin thingy has been revealed. Let's unpick the press release...

TimeRiders author Alex Scarrow has penned the eighth adventure in our exclusive series of short Doctor Who ebooks.

I've heard of TimeRiders. Oh no, hold on, I've heard of Time Riders, the 1991 television series directed by Michael Winterbottom. So no, as with most of the other authors in this range, I've never heard of him or his books. But that's due to my ignorance.  Probably.

Spore, featuring Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor is set in a small town in the Nevada desert:

"Spore" Pretty direct title and actually in-keeping with many of the Eighth Doctor's previous adventures which have tended towards the single word, things like Endgame, Kursaal and Neverland. "Small town in the Nevada desert" - so it's set in the US just like the TV movie. Again, we'll reserve judgement.

An alien pathogen has reduced the entire population to a seething mass of black slime. When the Eighth Doctor arrives, he realises this latest threat to humanity is horrifyingly familiar – it is a virus which almost annihilated his entire race, the Time Lords...

Which all sounds very The X-Files, very Fringe, very much like people assumed Doctor Who would be like if the TV movie had been a goer. But hold on, what about the other alien virus which actually did wipe out Gallifrey in the Big Finish Gallifrey spin-offs? Well ...

Alex Scarrow commented: “I am squeeing like an over-sugared toddler at the thought of being part of this project. Doctor Who is an export this country can be proud of. We OWN time travel. My small part in this project was to breathe life back into the least known, Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann. I chose him because I felt I had the most room to manoeuvre, to explore a lesser known Doctor and add flesh to his character. In my story entitled Spore, we're getting a particularly grisly tale of an intelligent virus that liquifies and absorbs any creature it infects. All in all... quite gross - liquified people an' all.”

Oh hello question mark the size of my Eighth Doctor collection. We won't really know until he puts out the inevitable YouTube hostage statement if he's aware of the character's illustrious history, but just a couple of months on from the release of Dark Eyes, it's still bizarre seeing an author tasked with writing a project featuring the character saying things like "I chose him because I felt I had the most room to manoeuvre" and "explore a lesser known Doctor and add flesh to his character" as though McGann himself hasn't been playing it for the past decade. It is true that he is the "least known", the connoisseur's choice, but nevertheless ...

... we'll see what happens.  It could be amazing or it could be another A Big Hand For The Doctor.  At this point I'm assuming we're going to get a generic Doctor in the TV movie costume travelling alone that has nothing to do with what's been established in the past couple of decades.  Sigh.

Updated! 07/08/2013  The Guardian have uploaded their customary extract and actually, I've read worse versions of the Eighth Doctor, there is a TV Movie reference and the description of his costume is on the nose, the external details are fine.  But it's unfair to pass judgement on just a page or two...

The Tenth Doctor.

Fashion Owner’s appeal for information about mysterious England’s Lane shop sign:

"Ms (Andrea) Galer, who made the legendary overcoat worn by Richard E. Grant in Withnail & I at her workshop in England’s Lane, said the awning is likely to be derived from a less upmarket shop.

“It was all run down when I moved in,” she said. “There were squatters on the main street and nobody had spent any money on doing up houses, but people like Bob Hoskins all started in that area and gave it a newfound energy.”

Unrelated but equally hilarious, a Chinese restaurant has opened up in Liverpool's Hardman Street called the Hard Wok Cafe (and not the only one). It's up the road from a barbers called Ben Hair.

The Ninth Doctor.

Film Here's a really rather good interview with Rowan Atkinson at Empire's website.

It's a non-embeddable video, so you'll have to click above to see it.

It was conducted on the occasion of the release of Johnny English Reborn but covers a range of topics and has quite a funny bit about Pierce Brosnan.