Life   The Commodore 64 at 40: back to the future of video games is a short love letter by The Guardian's Keith Stewart to the second computer I owned.  Outside of school, it's practically all I did in my teenage years even if I was never very good at playing games and usually ended up resorting to the Action Replay.

"For much of its life television was an ephemeral media."

TV   Yet another creator reacts to their work being trashed by HBO Max.  Two whole completed seasons of Young Ellen will not now be seen by the public and the rest of its been pulled by the service.  What's so interesting to me, apart from the fact that Ellen Degeneres only spoke once and briefly to the showrunner of a cartoon about the talk show host's own childhood, is how technological development has changed the expectations of creators and viewers.

For much of its life television was an ephemeral media.  Creators would work for months or years on a project which would be seen only once, perhaps twice and then either wiped or disappear into a vault.  If a viewer wasn't there to watch when it was broadcast, it was gone and even if you were lucky enough to see whatever it was, it only then existed in your hazy memory.

It wasn't until new agreements were made with various creative unions did the programmes become viable again, either for repeat or release on the consumable of your choice and even then only when it was considered commercially viable.  There are hundreds of thousands of hours of television which are still inaccessible and although this has changed somewhat at the BBC for people at educational institutions, for the general public, nothing much has changed (legally at least).

But if you've lived in a world were the media which is important to you has always been just there both as a creator and viewer, this ephemerality feels like a pretty alien concept not least because unlike the days when the first time you'd read about a new drama was in the Radio Times a week before transmission, we're constantly bombarded with pre-publicity for these shows for months in advance.

None of which should be seen as McMillaneaque rant about how some of us have misplaced sense of entitlement.  There's every right to be outraged because the expectation has been put in place, because the technology now exists and if you're paying for a service on the expectation that what was once promised will be delivered, especially in the advertising, you're entitled to ask questions.

Nevertheless, it's still worth stopping now and then to glance at where we were then and where we are now.  Of course in an ideal world, the streaming of films and television would be treated the same way as music and everything would be available on a single service for a single fee with film and television studios leaving the technology for others to deal with.  But that's another discussion.

 Film  ShaderGlass is an "overlay for running GPU shaders on top of Windows desktop" and so has the ability to turn a PC screen into an old style CRT.  But the killer element is that any app can be fed through ShaderGlass as though its a separate screen which was mainly designed with retro gaming in mind but also means you can return the lines to DVD films running through VLC making them far crisper than usual.  I've most recently watched the non-anamorphic versions of the OG Star Wars films using the "crt-hyllian" shader which returned the analogue warmth of the image and looked amazing when I hooked my large television up to my PC via an HDMI cable.

Music  Doctor Who composer Segun Akinola was a guest on Friday's BBC Four Proms broadcast which included a Danny Elfman commission.  Watch here.

The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics at the Walker Art Gallery.

History  On numerous occasions over the many (many) years, I'd have a good moan on here about how little of London's non-contemporary art takes a trip up North.  Here's a version of the rant and although much has changed in the intervening years, through Tate Liverpool having a slightly more relaxed policy to including pre-1900 as a feature of their exhibitions and a few paintings from private collectors being included at National Museums Liverpool shows, I eventually decided to take myself to the art and spent the best part of four or five years visiting the various galleries in London on a monthly basis including spending whole afternoons just visiting a couple of rooms at the National Gallery.

That obviously stopped when the pandemic began but I just managed to visit the National Portrait Gallery at the beginning of 2020 to see the Tudor galleries at the end of a day spent following a Shakespeare walk around London, the chronology of the British monarchy laid out in a series of faces humanising these historical figures, albeit in the propogandist painting style of the period mainly by unknown artists copying earlier paintings by other unknown artists of Hans Holbein.  These works were often created as part of diplomatic missions, often with a dating aspect like a mid-1500s Twitter in which swiping left led to war.

So you can imagine how deep my eye roll was when I read that ironically what potentially could be the contents of the Tudor gallery at the NPG was going to be visiting the Walker.  Finally, a selection of the nation's treasures on tour ... which I just happened to have seen for free relatively recently and in an exhibition I'd now have to pay for.  But having complained for years about these national treasures not going on tour it seemed churlish to not pay to see them again and add to the all important visitor numbers which my be impressive enough to lead to more of this sort of thing find its way here.

And this really is most of the Tudor gallery at the NPG in a different venue, as though a portal has been opening up into the space in London.  The rare opportunity for the paintings to go on tour has been facilitated by the temporary closure of the gallery for refurbishment and an imperative to keep them accessible to the public in some form.  Before the Walker, The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics was at The Holborne Museum in Bath (or Barth) and perhaps the most impressive element is just how much of the exhibition is sourced from there.  This isn't an occasion when a few key works are padded out with elements from NML's own collection.

The lions share of the exhibition is themed around Henry VIII and Elizabeth I with Edward, Jane and Mary slotted in between.  At one end of the main room portraits of Henry's six wives are gathered and at the other end Elizabeth's "favourites" (fuckboys) so if you're interested in scandal, they're all here before so many of them lost their head before literally losing their head.  Although the exhibition includes the Walker's own world famous portraits of both, the Holbein copy and the Hilliard, there are multiple images of both monarchs from various, usually anonymous, hands.  But all of the key figures are represented.

If I had to make a recalibration in my expectations, it's that this isn't an art exhibition, its a history exhibition illustrated through painting.  Almost all of the portraits are accompanied by biographical information but very little that places them within an art historical context.  Obviously this is mostly to be expected.  Most these are works by unnamed artists and its the person who they depict which is of most interest.  But I would have preferred to see more of the kinds of information seen on the NPG's website about technique and attribution (although I could perhaps have simply had the website to hand via an ipad).

Plus this is my first proper exhibition in over two years (or indeed visit to an art gallery at all really) so I'm also a bit out of practice in navigating artworks and labels and other visitors.  Gallery fatigue set in quicker than usual which meant that when I reached the last of the three rooms, which looked at how the Tudors reflected out into the world, through exploration, slavery and culture its possible I could have spent more time absorbing the display.  But it's also true that once you've seen half a dozen roughly similar men in tights and ruffs and well appointed beards, they begin to blur into each other.

Unsurprisingly the advertised Shakespeare portrait isn't the Chandos - the painting with an accession number NPG 1 doesn't travel much - and I have it on my wall at home anyway (or a jigsaw at least).  The playwright is represented instead by the Martin Droeshout's engraving created for the First Folio (although this is apparently from one of the second or third editions).  But given how much of the collection is here, I'm very interested to know what the economics of the show were in terms of insurance and cost of travel.  The impressively massive Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth I is here which looks too big to fit through the doors.

So was The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics worth the advanced price of £13.  Yes, I suppose, kinda?  I know that if I hadn't seen the paintings in London already on a couple of occasions and the Henry VIII show at the British Library in 2009 (with which this also shares a few items) I'd probably have been a bit less blasé about everything, indeed I know I wouldn't.  But it was nice to be in a space with these important treasures and to have them within walking distance of home (just about) (took me about fifty minutes) rather then three hour train journey (including the tube).  More please, and soon.

The Sotheby's Folio Update.

Commerce    Back in June I wrote about seeing a Shakespeare First Folio in London ahead of its sale in New York.  As The Guardian reports, the book's been sold:

"An original copy of William Shakespeare’s first collected book of plays has been sold for more than £2m at Sotheby’s auction house in New York."

Hopefully whoever bought it will enjoy having it and perhaps loan it out once in a while.  A lot of the copies in private hands are sat in vaults in Tokyo.

This also means that the Folio was the most valuable item in the room that day.

Illumination (Short Trips: Christmas Around the World)

Prose  Izzy!  Of all the eras dipped into by other media, the Doctor Who comics is the rarest.  Other than the Izzy's Story audio, Miss Sinclair only appears in two Short Trips, Syntax from Life Sciences (which I'm still yet to catch up on) and Illumination from Christmas Around The World.  David Bailey writes both and here at least he captures the comics companion's voice perfectly from the enthusiasm to the 90s references.  He also takes time to knit this into comics continuity with a mention for Faye/Feyde/Fey (or however its spelt).  

As befits a Christmas story, this has lots and lots of snow as the Doctor takes Izzy to Lapland only to find himself kidnapped by Norse warriors and bumping into Adam of Bremen, the medieval historian (so this is a celebrity historical of sorts).  They observe the locals being even more bloodthirsty than usual in scenes which certainly wouldn't have been in the comic and set out to discover what's effecting their behaviour and attempting to convince Adam not to spread misinformation about the Vikings in a bid to promote Christianity.

In the opening few paragraphs, there's a conversation I'm not sure I've seen elsewhere in which Izzy badgers the Doctor to explain his attire which he admits is fancy dress.  Across media up until this point its generally assumed that the Doctor's wearing the same clothes he nabbed from a locker in San Francisco which means unless he stopped off every now and then to get them dry cleaned, they must be getting a bit ratty now.  Also the Eighth Doctor doesn't wear socks.  I don't think I've ever noticed that before.

Placement:  After TV Action.  It's one of the few clean breaks in the comics.

Transmission Ends (Short Trips: Transmissions)

Prose As the title suggests this is the final story in the Transmissions anthology and like the Decalogs of old ties all of the stories together, in this instance by utilises fragments of them as metaphors in a telepathic conversation between the Doctor and the alien threat.  

Despite only having read the Eighth Doctor related stories in Transmissions, the author senses this might be the case and gives enough information through the Time Lord's recognition to navigate the sense of what's being communicated by this entity which has become ensnared in the terraforming satellites of a colony world.  

These flashbacks make this a sort of cross between TNG's Darmok and also TNG's Shades of Grey, what a Doctor Who clip show might look like in prose form.  But they're cleverly refocused in the first person from the Doctor's POV which gives the whole story a more substantial, novelistic feeling.

The relationship between Eighth and the young boy who's helping him, Alex, is incredibly poignant, the poor boy having been the original target for the alien's attempts at communication.  It's another story about how the Doctor sometimes isn't able to save everyone, even the most courageous.  

Placement:  Huh.  The since the alien's using the Doctor's own memories for the communication it has to be set after all of the other stories.  So I'm arbitrarily going to put it before Situation Vacant, as though it's one of the reasons he's decided he needs to find someone new to travel with.

Lonely (Short Trips: Transmissions)

Prose  Written in 2008 when Twitter was still a friendly place and Facebook had only recently opened themselves up to anyone rather than students, Lonely is structured around an old fashioned IRC chatroom, with the story developing amongst the various members of a forum designed for lonely people (bit close, as they say, to home there love).  It nicely captures the element of random strangers getting to know one another from across the world, along with the bozo who turns up having completely misunderstood the point of that particular chatroom and does something pr0ny.  <jsmith8> inevitably shows up to sort out the problem which develops, although despite its vintage, he comes across more like the socially less aware 12th Doctor with a touch of the Seventh Doctor's genocidal nature, unless that's just how his online persona manifests itself.  Few of us are same in real life as we are online.

Placement: Absolutely no hints but given the Doctor's slightly brusque manner it's probably between The Girl Who Never Was and Blood of the Daleks.

War in a Time of Peace (Short Trips: Destination Prague)

Prose The twist at the end of this is similar to the reveal at the close of the Eighth Doctor's other story from this anthology, Lady of the Snows.  The Doctor decides to show Charley the titular city one Christmas Eve in the future when Earth is thriving thanks to the countries on various continents having joined together to create super states and eradicating war.  Except they discover a Prague shielded by a huge protective dome and a populace fearful for their lives due to the war which is ranging outside.  The rest of the story is about the Doctor biding his time until he's in a position to prove them wrong.  

There's much fun to be had.  Most of the story takes place in a prison cell with Charley becoming increasingly frustrated with the Doctor's apparent apathy but knowing deep down that he probably has a plan but he's not telling her.  The main supporting character Ilsa, a local police officer, is also particularly well drawn as she decides to help the TARDIS team against her better judgement.  There are some real gems hidden in these collectors items and its surprising that Big Finish haven't found some way of re-releasing them in another form, perhaps as audio books.

Placement: Between Embrace the Darkness and Time of the Daleks.  They seem very comfortable with one another.

The Long Midwinter (Short Trips: The History of Christmas)

Prose  The problem with reading festive stories out of season is you can be a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to the more obvious details.  The Doctor, Samson and Gemma visit a Pandora like planet in which a group of humans in the far future have been genetically modified to exist in a cold atmosphere by becoming branches of a tree essentially, but not until the end of the story did I realise why there even was a great tree in this particular short story.  His companions come across as being slightly less mature than in their other adventures, Samson in particular giving us some mild islamophobia.  But there's some nice poetry in here and it's one of those kinds of stories in which the Doctor can't really do much but inspire those he's trying to help to take the next step.  But that may be enough.

Placement:  Between Mary and Charley.

Not in My Back Yard (Short Trips: The History of Christmas)

Prose  Fucking hell this is good.  Eddie Robson delivers a love letter to the NAs, EDAs and DWM comics just as attention was shifting elsewhere in 2005.  The Eighth Doctor and a new bespoke travelling companion he's just bust out of prison pitch up in the Seventh Doctor's favourite village of Cheldon Bonniface at Christmas in a future time so that he can hide her in what was once a friendly UK immigration service for aliens.  Sadly there's now a government in place which is taking much the same approach as the one we have in 2022 with tabloids creating a similar level of fear.  As the detention centre awaits closure the Doctor decides to take everyone into the village for a final Christmas bash and there are hijinks.  Many, many hijinks.

He can correct me on this, but I think this was Robson's first full Eighth Doctor story and he just nails it.  The tone is humorous and a bit daft but with a thematically serious core.  There are moments of physical and verbal comedy which leap off the page and look ahead to the broader edges of the TV revival.  This might be seventeen years ago but it feels totally fresh right down the huge event which happened about 5/6ths of the way through and then another 8/10ths after that.  Eddie's mainly written audio adventures since and he began writing was just a bit too late for the novels and it's a real shame we didn't see an EDA from him.

Placement:  For spoilery reasons there are some continuity references and a conversation right at the end which put it after The Gallifrey Chronicles but before Endgame.  

The Heroine, The Hero and the Megalomaniac (Short Trips: A Day in the Life)

Prose Utterly superb.  Like a espresso shot of the EDAs, this is a multi-Doctor story with bite as Seventh or as he's described here, "dark and manipulative" remonstrates with Eighth about saving Charley and the implications it has for the universe.  As in the BBC books, they absolutely hate one another, philosophical polar opposites on how they should be using their gifts.  After being made aware of her presence "Dark and manipulative" clearly sees Charley has a threat that needs to be dealt with and where it not for us already knowing how her stories plays out, it feels as though she might be in mortal danger from this earlier incarnation until Eighth is able to talk him around.  Somewhat.

Told from three parallel points of view on the story as per the title, for Charley, for the Doctor and the Baron, the proto-Sabbath who's in charge of the colony with a suspicious technology but wants to rule the universe, it's not quite a Rashomon affair since were just getting more information on the same series of events, rather than anything contradictory.  But writer Ian Mond is  nevertheless able to utilise the structure to provide a couple of good twists in our expectations ultimately in a way which shows that no matter which daft old face the Doctor has and whatever his methods, they're still the same being inside with the roughly similar goals.

Placement:  Another story which references Seasons of Fear but no later, so I'll put it in the gap between that and Embrace the Darkness.  One of the strengths of the story is it feels of a piece with the rest of that season with Charley's status an important point.  

Before Midnight (Short Trips: A Day in the Life)

Prose This is the second half or first half or first quarter and last quarter of After Midnight and having read both it makes about as much sense as Dimensions in Time.  I understand the concept now, that these are the stories at either end of an anthology which takes place across 24 hours, albeit in different parts of space and time.  But in an effort to also join all of those stories together and suggest that a submerged consciousness is experiencing all of those tales in a time loop, it's the expression of that time loop and how it's created which isn't quite enunciated properly, especially the bit about the Doctor and his friends inhabiting the bodies of their former selves.  Still, it's at least pretty entertaining and its good to have some fun C'rizz action which doesn't involving him moping about something or other.

Placement: After After Midnight.

After Midnight (Short Trips: A Day in the Life)

Prose   As you will have gathered, I'm reading this Short Trips in isolation so I know that with After Midnight as the opening story in this anthology and Before Midnight as the closer, that some of the mysteries will be explained later.  As it stands this is a pretty fun round around in which the Doctor, Charley and yes C'rizz go to extraordinary lengths to thwart an intergalactic jewel thief.  The reveal of how they become part of the story I won't spoil, but it's in a way which wouldn't work quite the same in another medium as the prose style subtly shifts and its refreshing to have a story which doesn't read like a novelisation.

Placement:  C'rizz seems very confused by Earth customs so I'll put it just after Terror Firma.

Reversal of Fortune (Short Trips: Steel Skies)

Prose Placement:   There's nothing in this story to suggest the Doctor's appearance are concurrent from his point of view, but assuming they are it feels later in his travels, so between Shada and the Marys.

Perhaps Reversal of Fortune is just a bit too short to fully explore the premise.  Graeme Burk's prose captures the tragedy of a life led in the past, something most of us could do with internalising.  Which makes it difficult to read in places.  It's told in a reverse order from the protagonists perspective and although it seems to be the Doctor's dropping by in the opposite chronological direction it seems more jumbled up than that.  Like Greenaway in the same collection, another story about the Doctor visiting someone at various stages in their life.  They're also often so short that you can't really talk about them as individual pieces in any meaningful way without repeating yourself or try to do anything interesting.  I'm catching up on a number of these Short Trips, which is why the blog's overrun with them at the moment so as not to leave gaps in the Eighth Doctor checklist.

Faithful Friends: Part 3 (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)

Prose   This is the final entry in a trilogy of stories about the Brigadier at Christmas across his life.  Alistair awakens on the 25th December to find Eighth and Charley putting together a large lunch for a number of invited guests, a who's who of the old soldier's life.  When Osgood's introduced, it took me a moment to remember this was written in 2007 and it didn't mean her.  Side note:  Although Steven Moffat intended Petronella to be the daughter of Tom Osgood, presumably the man mentioned here, Dave Rudden took it upon himself to give her a whole different father and family in The Wintertime Paradox who may or may not have been involved at UNIT.  Perhaps Tom's her uncle instead.

Placement:  Has to be after Minuet in Hell but before The Shadows of Avalon (when the Brig was rejuvenated) which is narratively impossible but chronologically fine.  The less said about CyberBrig, the better.  Let's say they popped in after Seasons of Fear wanting a break.

Greenaway (Short Trips: Steel Skies)

Prose  One of the genre of stories in which the Doctor confronts the consequences of ordinary people becoming involved in his extraordinary adventures.  Over time various incarnations, including Eighth, visit a dying man, trying but failing to help him after he aided them in fighting a dangerous threat.  Perhaps the most interesting element of the story is the inclusion of a future Doctor, based according to the writer Peter Anghelides, on one of his university friends, with ginger hair, a big afghan coat smelling of patchouli oil.  The TARDIS Datacore has a whole entry for this incarnation offering various appearances and implying he's the source of the running joke after regenerations about still not being ginger.

Placement:  Eighth's behaviour suggests that for him this is early when he's still trying to sort out some of his past mistakes.

For the Man Who Has Everything (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)

Prose  Another brilliant entry from The Ghosts of Christmas anthology.  Spin-off veteran Dan Abnett offers up a two hander in which the Doctor chases a cosmic wish-giving bauble to the office of the Home Secretary and finds himself comforting the politician's private secretary spending another festive season alone.  As she outlines her years long platonic relationship with her boss, the Doctor reflects on how this reminds him of how he treats his companions and friends.  A lovely, well written story in which the Eighth Doctor's personality shines through.

Placement: Early, in the period after his regeneration when it feels like he trying to make amends and discover who he is.

Doctor Who and the Adaptation of Death (Short Trips: Transmissions)

Prose  Delightful.  Graeme Burk wrote one of my favourite tales in the original BBC anthologies, Turnabout Is Fair Play from Short Trips and Side Steps and he brings the same kind of Adamsian humour to this story of a screenwriter put on trial by a race of aliens for their portrayal in his movie adaptation of an alien invasion.  They're annoyed with the dumbing down of one of their heroes and the Doctor's omission from events.  

Cross cutting between parts of the script (to represent the film) and prose for the actual events (as drawn from the Doctor's own mind), Burke is discussing our predilection for nit-picking drama which allows excitement to make way for facts.  Burk knows his stuff (having authored several non-fiction books about Who)  There's an immensely funny joke about film studies based on a deeeep cut.

But there are many funny jokes.  Across its dozen or so pages, there more wit and excitement than a lot of Doctor Who and it's a real shame Burk hasn't had the opportunity to write something longer, assuming he has the interest. 

Placement:  Burk mentions the Doctor and Charley have been travelling together for years so I'm minded to place this between Embrace The Darkness and Time of the Daleks - any later than that and it's after the Divergent Universe and the tone doesn't feel right for then.