Who created Monopoly?

Games One my most vivid television memories is from the early eighties and the educational programme Eureka, which was a series about inventions. I remember an episode about the creation of the board game Monopoly, of a man becoming very excited after noticing the patterning on his table cloth and turning it into the familiar game board with properties and such.

The BBC Genome now tells me this was broadcast on BBC Two England on 25 November 1982 at 6.10pm and was written by Jeremy Beadle and Clive Doig and was the story of how "Charles Darrow got his inspiration for the game Monopoly from Atlantic City in America."

Except their version of events was wrong or at least glossed over somewhat the contribution of an earlier inventor.

As this book extract from The Guardian explains, "in 1903, a leftwing feminist called Lizzy Magie patented the board game that we now know as Monopoly – but she never gets the credit":

"To Elizabeth Magie, known to her friends as Lizzie, the problems of the new century were so vast, the income inequalities so massive and the monopolists so mighty that it seemed impossible that an unknown woman working as a stenographer stood a chance at easing society’s ills with something as trivial as a board game. But she had to try.

"Night after night, after her work at her office was done, Lizzie sat in her home, drawing and redrawing, thinking and rethinking. It was the early 1900s, and she wanted her board game to reflect her progressive political views – that was the whole point of it."

Mary Pilon, the author of the book has also written this opinion piece on the debacle.  Little by little, the history we thought we knew based on patriarchal propaganda is slowly being rewritten.

Knock on Torchwood.

TV There were rumours of a radio return but it looks like we'll never see a resolution to the end of "Miracle" Day. The Backlot asks the question:

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about Torchwood. Every few months there seems to be another story about how we may get more Jack Harkness. What’s happening?

RTD: I know! Bless that show, but I’m afraid not. John Barrowman is busy on Arrow. I can’t believe he’s actually joined a show that’s got his name inserted in the title. [laughs] Just call it Barrowman and be done with it! But I’m afraid no plans at the moment. But anything can happen because it’s a funny old world. But I know what I’m doing for the next two or three years and it doesn’t involve Torchwood. But who knows, the BBC is going in a different direction so who knows. Keep your fingers crossed.

Well, ish. Blames Barrowman for being busy (not that this stopped him ever) and doesn't rule out Torchwood without RTDs involvement exactly, but yes, that looks like it could be it. For now. Possibly.

Soup Safari #20: Chicken at Maggie Mays Cafe Bar.

Dinner. £2.75. Maggie Mays Cafe Bar, 90 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY. Phone:0151 709 7600. Website.

Phantom Photo Storage in iProducts.

Technology Recently I've been having dire warnings of my iPad's memory being over extended both because of Twitter's insistence of keeping a cache of all the tweets including images that it looks at (only fixable by deleting then reinstalling the app) and photos. The Usage list in Settings suggested my photos section was a bloated, bloated place.

Once I'd convinced the Windows 7 machine to find the relevant folders and copy the images I wanted to keep over there was then the problem of deleting what was still there. But even after having visited the Photos app and deleting everything, the app itself indicated that it was still holding a mass of data of some sort I couldn't see.

To Google and once of the most bonkers technological quirks since Y2K and a fix found on Apple's discussion boards from a user called scabthepoet which I'm going to reproduce below so that it's in more than one place.  I can't find more identity details for them so if it's you and you stumble here and you'd like me to take this down or provide better credit, let me know, but know you're an utter, utter genius:

• Go to Settings
• Date & Time
• Untoggle "Set Automatically"
• Manually change the date back. For example, if today is March 15, 2015, choose August 1, 2014. (You can change it back once we're done)
• Close out of that
• Open "Photos"
• Select "Albums"
• If, like me, you had already cleared out everything from the Camera Roll and "Recently Deleted" folder, you'll smile to see that your "Recently Deleted" folder now has thousands of images back. Those are your phantom photos
• Open it, "Select" and start deleting
• Now, go back into Settings - General - Usage - Storage - Manage Storage - and you'll notice your Photo & Camera is empty if you deleted everything

How messed up is that?  Sure enough, following these instruction I did indeed find two hundred odd images I thought I'd deleted hiding away which I was then able to clear.  Turns out 2gb of my problems had been to do with such files, which is quite a lot on an iPad 2 with just 16gb memory.

Just as an aside, the trick seems to be to take the date back to way before you bought your product - I went to 2012.  Later than that doesn't seem to work as well.  Let me know how you get on.

My Favourite Film of 2001.

Film Some films I simply remember the date and place that I first saw them because of something else which happened in proximity. My first viewing of Moulin Rouge! was on the 10th September 2001 in a double bill with A Knight's Tale. It was in screen six at the Odeon on London Road and I wrote about it on this blog that evening (and also A Knight's Tale)  I also remember the two films I watched the following day, Bullitt in the morning, then the first hour of Ever After, the rest of which I didn't see for six months after having turned it off in the middle for a toilet break something which didn't happen for ten minutes anyway because I'd happen to have the news channel tuned in on the VCR.

One of the repeated themes of this series is whether it's possible to uncouple your memories of seeing a film for the first time and the circumstances from your later ongoing appreciation of a film itself.  This depends.  Having waited for months I finally saw Luc Besson's Lucy during an otherwise quite boring day and I know that in the future I won't remember anything about that day but the film itself or even which day it is (for the future version of me that was the 18th March 2015 so I'll remember that now).  This blog certainly helps the memory too, though it's worth noting I'd remember that I saw these films on these days without the younger version of me's record of the event.

In the case of Moulin Rouge!, no I haven't.  I can't.  The events of the following day are too significant, not just in and of themselves but also everything which resulted from them, the effects of which are still being felt depending on your socio-historical perspective.  Each time I sit down to watch this mostly melancholy, often quite jolly musical, there is always a strange moment when I remember what it was like on September 10th, which in terms of events and context and the actual process of living as me wasn't that different, I wasn't directly affected, but the feeling of being pre-9/11.  Which is silly.  Or might be silly.  I don't know.

But why Moulin Rouge! ahead of all the other films released that year?  Perhaps because it's robust enough to move beyond that, for me to become lost in Luhrmann's day-glo post-modern interpretation of Paris, the way it, as is so often the case with the films in this list, and it is a list, presents images and sound and performance in ways which hadn't been seen before, reinventing what cinema is capable of.  Contemporary critics couldn't interpret the kinetics of the editing, with Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian typical of the cry for the everything to slow down so that the viewer can see the scenery  criticising "the great undifferentiated roar of colour and light and noise" as though they're bad things.

The great undifferentiated roar of colour and light and noise are the point.  Moulin Rouge! along with the other "red curtain" films (with Strictly Ballroom and Romeo+Juliet before) and his concept album, Something for Everybody (which is a spin-off from his A Midsummer Night's Dream stage show) which as this interview from the same paper explains is about appropriating certain elements of Hindi filmmaking within a Western format, throwing a mess of shapes at the screen whilst at the same time engaging with deeper, heartfelt themes.  If I'm being honest, I've never really seen a satisfactory explanation of "red curtain".  It's more of an attitude than a definable cinematic language.

It's an odd coincidence that I saw it in conjunction with A Knight's Tale, both of which utilise the trick of shifting contemporary music into an anachronistic setting as a substitute for what would be the popular music of the actual period.  They both successful at it in different ways, but it's the whole thing of Moulin Rouge!, whereas its just odd sectors of A Knight's Tale.  In any case, the reason I love Moulin Rouge! is because it dares you to engage with such things, or not.  To go with it, or not.  Too many films are timid now, unafraid to strike out and fail and ultimately fail anyway because of this.  I'll never know, but perhaps this would have been enough to keep it's initial viewing in the memory anyway, without the subsequent tragic events.

Talks Collection: Andrew Graham-Dixon.

Science Intevitably then. In recent years, plenty of the enthusiasm I have for paintings and sculpture is as a result of watching Andrew Graham Dixon's various television documentaries, his Art of [Insert Country] series and escapades on The Culture Show and in Italy.

Short PR interview with Penguin Books on the occasion of the publication of his book about Carravagio:




A short piece from Big Think about Carravagio:




To the Jaipur Literature Festival where Andrew gave a talk about Carravagio:




And joined a panel about the art of the biography:




As part of the Arts & Literature Festival in King's College last November,Graham-Dixon and historian Antony Beever are joined by literary historian Lara Feigel in teasing out the history of sheltering in the Second World War in London:




Finally, in January he was interviewed at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne:



For completion sake, there are also two channels here and here which collect together much of his television work from across the years.

"affable chitchattery"

Lifehacks As I think we've well established I'm a semi-introvert who doesn't drink but there's no denying I'll be trying the trick in this Conde Naste Traveller article suggested by someone who boastfully indicates they're a near opposite:

"I have a strange problem: I’m too approachable. I’ve always been big on small talk, never lost for words at parties. It’s turned me into the de facto seat-filling stopgap among my friends, the man seated next to an awkward guest to help smother their anxiety with affable chitchattery. In response, I’ve mastered an array of techniques to politely slip away from anyone who sticks to me like social chewing gum. One tried-and-true example: Never leave a bar without two drinks, so you can use the second as an exit strategy. Would you excuse me? I have to deliver this wine before it gets any warmer!"

I'm rubbish at smalltalk too.

"Was it just another performance?"

TV The NYT has a profile of the mighty Tatiana Maslany on the occasion of the new series of Orphan Black. I've italicised one interesting nugget:

"Wavy-­haired and theatrically dirty, Maslany spoke in Sarah’s lower-class British accent between takes. (She kept it up until they broke for lunch.) She was warm and self-­assured and modest and frank. She exuded a contagious ease. In our very first conversation, we bonded over the unsung virtues of the adult onesie. “I had one that had the butt-­flap until after high school,” she told me. I was as charmed as I was suspicious. Was it just another performance? Or an admission that she would prefer to be covered up?"

If I draw anything from the piece it's that in order to play each of these characters it's almost as though she becomes a different actress for each, that they're a performance shelled within a performance with the real Maslany hidden or obscured still further beneath.

Liverpool Food and Drink Festival. An Aerial History.

Easter 2015

The Conservative Manifesto 2010.

Politics As I've just mentioned on social media, I bloody love an election, especially a UK election. The chance for four-six weeks of empty righteous indignation in the face of specious political chicanery, the powerless ridiculousness of shouting at a press who're even more nakedly partisan than usual and living in a safe seat where it doesn't really matter how I vote because the same party will win again. Once you've decided to vote Green whatever happens because of climate change and their leader was nice to you on Twitter once you can pretty much let rip. I await the manifestos with a mixture of great and no interest.

But here's something which has been bugging me for five years. Here is the cover of the Tory party manifesto in 2010:



Apart from the hollow bullshit of "we're all in this together" and "the big society" and the rest of the fiction inside its pages, I've always remembered this cover because and here it is, that text looks misaligned to me.

Speaking as someone who's spent years trying to decide how to space the text in titles to blog posts before realising the process of finding the right place to put a "br" tag is ultimately futile, the weighting in the legend seems ill chosen and I've often wondered how it ended up that way.

If it had been me, I would have written:

INVITATION TO JOIN

THE GOVERNMENT

OF BRITAIN

or indeed

INVITATION TO JOIN

THE GOVERNMENT

OF GREAT BRITAIN

which seems even more balanced.

It's the same on the interior title page so Lynton Crosby's predecessors have to have chosen that design even though it looks like something which has been slapped on at the end rather like a student might on a report or dissertation five minutes before its due to be handed in, seconds before its comes bursting from a campus printer.

My guess is that they wanted to emphasise "join" in the reading to bunged it before "government".

But it's also closer to the margin than the outside edge on the pdf though I suspect that's just to do with making sure there's enough of a margin on the hardcopy even it would look utterly stupid if someone decided to print it out (I'll let you fill in the rest of that sentiment).

The slogan also has editorial problems outside of its meaning.

Why simply "invitation to join" not "an invitation to join" or "the invitation to join"?

Why Britain and not Great Britain?  I did wonder why not the United Kingdom for a while, though the Wikipedia set me straight.  Why seek support in a place where you have no sway.  Not that it's stopped the SNP this time.

None of the covers of the manifestos in that year were any good.  Labour had purple children in piece of screen printed socialist realism, the UKIPs had meaningless clip art, the Lib Dems looks like a junior school work book and the Greens this strange lower case italicised motif.

But none of them stuck in the memory like that damned Tory monstrosity.

"basketball-scene mannequin double of Michael J Fox from Teen Wolf"

Film Dazed & Confused visits a movie props auction. It's not exactly a ship of dreams:

"Premiere Props isn’t Sotheby’s: that much is apparent from the moment we step into the warehouse. Throughout the building, black curtains have been hung from ceiling to floor to hide clutter, but the debris that pokes through is surreal. An already sold, basketball-scene mannequin double of Michael J Fox from Teen Wolf faces the wall next to the copy machine like a punished wolfling. A box stacked high up in the lofted storage area reads “Indiana Joenes and the Tempel of Doom” (sic).

"In the back room area, a preview of the auction’s secondary items lies in chaotic disorder inside a display case. This is where things get really weird. Mundane objects jostle with important fragments of film history: a random jewel box from the set of the TV show Friends sits cramped next to a dragon maquette by legendary effects designer Ray Harryhausen from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Plastic bagels from Seinfeld rub up against a 105H shell MI mortar round projectile from the insignificant Johnny Depp vehicle Transcendence (2014)."

Dazzle Ferry.

Art At 9:30 this morning I was stood at the ferry terminal at the Pier Head in Liverpool for the press launch (literally in this case) of Everybody Razzle Dazzle, or what's otherwise known at the Dazzle Ferry, Sir Peter Blake's new dayglo design for Snow Drop one of the boats which commonly shifts commuters across the Mersey in the morning and tourists for much of the rest of the day.  Unlike some people there for whom its a daily means of transport, the last time I ferried across the Mersey (got there in the end) was for the Doctor Who exhibition at Spaceport in Seacombe in 2006 (review) (this happened later that same day) so I was more than a little excited about this short cruise.

The ship itself is very pretty.  I've always been a fan of visual chaos, of apparently otherwise relatively formal objects becoming canvases for patterns and shapes and colours.  That's why I like Sinta Tantra's work so much, why I much prefer it when otherwise blandly corporate vehicles are covered in sponsorship and advertising.  In his design, Blake applies some of the iconic symbols which have appeared in his art since the 60s, the target shapes and green/red/yellow/blue check whilst applying the wavy lines which are more traditionally part of Norman Wilkinson's original dazzle ship design.  Wouldn't Liverpool be a much jollier place to live if we let artists run creative riot like this on the surfaces of our buses?

After speeches we eventually embarked for a quick trip around the Mersey.  Living where I do, I have a permanent view of the Wirral side of the river so this was a welcome chance to see it from a different perspective.  Back in 2006, I was able to see the place where I do live but recent developments, especially the arena have blocked those views.  But it's still visually thrilling the mix of old and new architecture, the various towers contrasting with one another, distracting enough that there wasn't really time to see the display on board about the original dazzle ships and this particular project.  Snow Drop will look like this until the end of December 2016, so there's plenty of time to go back and have another look.

Soup Safari #19: Cream of Carrot at Chester Cathedral Refectory.

Lunch. £4.95. Chester Cathedral, 12 Abbey Square, Chester, Cheshire West and Chester CH1 2HU. Phone:01244 500964. Website.

My Favourite Film of 2002.

Film Much as I love Kissing Jessica Stein, and I love Kissing Jessica Stein, across time I have begun to wonder how its viewed in the LGBT community. After Ellen gave it a retro-review in 2008 and the four participants seemed in general ok with it with a few reservations.

Talks Collection: Hadley Freeman.

Journalism Hadley Freeman's one of my favourite Guardian writers, offering the "Ask Hadley" style advice column on a Monday (after having been a fashion editor there), Lost in Showbiz sometimes on a Friday and newsier pieces in between.

Firstly, here she is at The Cambridge Union Society proposing the motion, "This House Believes that Fashion is Elitist".



Even though she read English Literature at Oxford, her connection with their boat rivals is through taking her A-Levels at The Cambridge Centre for Sixth-form Studies which she returned to recently for a Q&A. Spot the moment when she calmly explains to a questioner that "freelance" doesn't actually mean who work for free.



One of her books is Be Awesome: Modern Life For Modern Ladies and here she is reading from it at Book Slam.



Freeman's other book is The Meaning of Sunglasses: A Guide to (Almost) All Things Fashionable and here she is being interviewed about it:



To Jewish Book Week, were Hadley interviewed Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor of The New Yorker:


JBW 2015 - Deborah Triesman and Hadley Freeman from Jewish Book Week on Vimeo.

She's also appeared in a number of videos at The Guardian website interviewing various film luminaries.

Residue.

TV It's the end of the month and as ever the always useful New On Netflix UK is collating new additions to the streaming service's database which on this occasion includes Residue, a three part sci-fi genre series starring Natalia Tena, best known as Osha in Game of Thrones (Walder's friend) (well, ok, Hodor's friend). The rest of the cast is a selection of character actors from GoT and Who and the like.  It's written by John Harrison from the Dune tv mini-series and I was entirely intrigued because it doesn't seem like something which has been on television already.

That's because it hasn't.  Residue was created without a broadcaster attached utilising an indie film funding model.  As TBI explains, Matador Television produced the series on-speck hoping to sell the rights to broadcasters or if that fails as a film.  It is self contained apparently but they're hoping that if it's a success for international sales to allow for a second, longer series.  Content distribution has previously handled their films which is presumably one of the reasons it's now turned up on Netflix.

Is this something new or has television been independently produced in this space for a while and we've actually been seeing this stuff on terrestrial tv already but with us assuming it was a channel commission?  Is television like this also being produced but going unseen in a similar situation to the glut of films which were produced and shelved during the initial glut of lottery funding?  What especially interesting is that its three one hours which don't easily lend themselves to commercial stations (unless alternative edits have been produced).

My General Election 2015 Prediction.

Politics Here we go then:

Labour/LibDem coalition minority government with SNP/Greens in confidence & supply. Another election in six months. #prediction

— Stuart Ian Burns (@feelinglistless) March 30, 2015

Let's see shall we. The whole fixed term parliament thing makes this extremely messy. A month to go ...

Karen?

Music Daphne & Celeste are back then and is customary there are the relevant reintroduction interviews with interested media parties. Firstly PopJustice where they talk about what happened just after the band split up, or rather stopped singing some of the most disturbing pop lyrics ever written:

"What did you do when you knew the band was over?
Karen: Well we both went home. Celeste was in New Jersey at the time and I was in New York. What was interesting was that Daphne & Celeste were never released in the US, so we had these two lives. At home we just had regular lives. When we first got back we both got back into acting and doing what we were doing before we were in the pop band.
Celeste: It was weird. It was like we’d auditioned for this gig, and we’d booked it. And it was kind of like we just, for better or worse, just went on to the next gig. We just continued.
Karen: We did go back a couple of times – like we did a show at G-A-Y once. And what I loved was that whenever that would happen we’d just perform the same three songs.

And The Guardian where they recall the Reading Festival 2000:

"They might have put a brave face on things, but being a target for mass booing and urine-filled missiles must have been a bruising experience. “Honestly?” says Cruz. “Our biggest fear at the time was that we would get on the stage and no one would come. We thought everyone would protest and go off and see bands they actually liked.”

"DiConcetto found the whole thing surreal: “Backstage, Slipknot and Rage Against the Machine were coming up to us and telling us how hardcore we were – how they wouldn’t have stayed out there. It was definitely the best thing we did, our crowning achievement.”

As both interviews stress, D&C were years ahead of their time and also strangely timeless. If they were to be released now they'd be megahits especially after the controversy generated by the lyrics. The new song takes a few listens to really makes sense and the promo certainly helps to explain intent. Like those earlier songs it doesn't really sound like anything in release now, not that I'm an expert, but again I don't know what the appetite is for it.  But I do like the cover.

With Charley Pollard: Series Two.

There's no way to really launch into this other than to say, I've seen Paul McGann.  In person.  I noticed his voice first which is why I turned my head and saw him, sitting in a cafe with another person.  I gave him a glance then carried on walking, as is always the case with my idols.  Of course what I really wanted to do was approach him and say,
"HelloImjustinthemiddleoflisteningtoNeverlandandyourmyfavouriteDoctorIthinkingyouramazinganditsStormWarningwhichmademeafanagainandIhopeyougettomakemoretelevisionepisodesoonohsorryshouldnthavedisturbedyousorryhaveagooddaybye"
but it's not really my thing.  They're just people in the end and probably tire of being stopped as they go about their business by some random jerk with a TARDIS complex.  But yes, the first Doctor I've seen in real life is the Eight and this makes me extremely happy.  Plus it was on the eve of nuWho's tenth birthday.  For goodness sake.

It's impossible to really say exactly which parts of the wilderness years directly influenced the revival but this second season must be pretty high in the miasma of material given that three of its authors would then be most of the non-RTD writers on the first series and oddly in the same order as their material appeared here.  I'll touch on some of the more direct echoes below, but it's worth also noticing (because I ran out of space in that paragraph) that the motives of the Daleks are roughly the same here as they are in Journey's End.  But there's also the sense of the various stories tying in with one another in way which don't really pay off until later, with the final two stories almost acting like a two-part season finale, with many of the mysteries of the series tied up in the first installment before heading off into a thematically connected second part.  As with the comics and novels, the Eighth Doctor is serialised.

Invaders from Mars

Of course one of the results of the new series was that when some writers transitioned from the spin-off material into the television series and with the exception of the odd story of an annual didn't return.  Invaders from Mars is an example of the kind of multi-layered, fun material Mark Gatiss couldn't produce later in quite the same way, though it's worth noting that it's a tribute to the audio medium in much the same way that The Unquiet Dead demonstrated a love of fiction and The Idiot's Lantern commemorated television.  Hilariously starry cast, with Simon Pegg and Jessica (Stevenson) Hynes in key roles before they'd also appear on the television series making this one of the audios I'd often point to when selling them to friends, "It's got the actors from Spaced" in it.  Visit here for my anecdote about meeting Simon at the launch of his Orson Welles book at FACT.

The Chimes of Midnight

There's no doubt The Chimes of Midnight remains a stone-cold classic (though oddly only as I write this sentence do I notice the resonance of the title in relation to the story which came before it).  If Doctor Who Magazine's periodic votes were inclusive enough to feature spin-off material, there's no doubt this would be in the top ten.  Apart from the amazing twists and hilarious jokes, it's a muscular, surprisingly avant-guard scripting from Rob Shearman, that glances towards the theatre of the absurd, making it one of the franchises more literary entries.  But on this listen it's also more obvious to see its potential influences on The Doctor's Wife in relation to its antagonist.  Lennox Greaves's performance as the house sounds disconcertingly like Michael Sheen.  That Shearman hasn't returned to the television series since Dalek is a great loss.  Imagine him writing for Capaldi.  Imagine that.

Seasons of Fear

Meanwhile, Seasons of Fear is the entire Moffat era in microcosm even to the point of having the Doctor shout "geronimo" as he leaps from the TARDIS into certain doom.  The storyline prefigures The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang with its destruction of all of time and space by an external force and the Doctor having to bounce around trying to find a way of changing things back by breaking the rules of time.  But there's also the random appearance of a thing which is caused by another thing which happens in a future story that seems like a continuity error or just a red herring and the reveals at the end which again are part of a tapestry of storylines which will come to a head in the series finale.  Paul Cornell and Caroline Symcox's dialogue really crackles, with Paul and India's performances up to the challenge coming as close as the plays have some so far to the kind of romping screwball relationship of 4th and Romana in Season 17.

Embrace the Darkness

Nick Briggs's Embrace the Darkness has had an odd life subsequent to its release.  I remember some of the reviews being a bit sniffy especially because of the conclusion which offers the relatively rare option of there being no real danger and the Doctor actually being the reason everything could potentially go to shit.  But there are some immensely spooky elements of body horror and some reveals which could only work on audio.  Much is always said about how Doctor Who's primarily a television format, but its real genius is that it can bend itself to other media just as successfully.  I remember first listening to this late at night in actual darkness because I sensed the content would lend itself to that and though large speakers so that I really felt like was in the space with the characters almost eaves dropping on what was happening.  If ever theres a story which would lend itself to being presented as an art installation or an "experience" it's this.

Solitaire

Solitaire was, perhaps purposefully given the title, the solitary entry for the Eighth Doctor in Big Finish's Companion Chronicle series and true to form when it comes to these sorts of intrusions breaks their usual semi-audiobook format with a full blooded two handed audio drama pitting Charley against the Celestial Toymaker with India holding her own against the onslaught of David Bailey's full on, classic Doctor Who foe performance, never subtle, always mesmerising (if you see what I mean given that this is audio).  The first script from John "Only Connect" Dorney is suitably creepy and as with many of stories season two utilises the medium to provide a few twists in this case because the characters are ignorant of parts of their surroundings because Charley's the one with amnesia for a change.  Two other points of interest: the puppet on the cover is real, David Bailey hadn't actually seen The Celestial Toymaker at time of recording ....

Living Legend

Originally mounted to the cover of the 40th anniversary issue of Doctor Who Magazine (or there abouts) but now available to download free, Living Legend is their stalwart comics writer Scott Grey's only Eighth Doctor audio and as the cover suggests transposes the manic fun of the strip onto the audio Eighth and Charley.  The TARDIS team stumbles into one of the saddest alien invasions ever recorded and simply seem to have some fun with it, like Mickey Bricks and the team from Hustle when they've spotted a really easy mark.  With just half an hour to play about with there's never really a sense of jeopardy but that really this is about epic bantz and the bantz are indeed epic.  India's on particularly storming mood as Charley pretends to be a Time Lady and the Doctor's superior, her usual haughtiness turned up to infinity when faced with the stupidity of the alien.  Not a bad place to start if you've never heard an Eighth Doctor audio before.  Plus football!

The Time of the Daleks

Of all the audios, I've never been quite able to decide just how much I like The Time of the Daleks perhaps because in having so much to do it does seem to quite be able to focus on one thing.  It's the first time the audio Eighth meets the pepperpots, but it's also the final installment in a cross range narrative begun in the Fifth Doctor story The Mutant Phase and on top of that it's the first time the franchise has really attempted Doctor Who does Shakespeare.  Usually reliable Justin Richards's notion of having the Daleks reading mashed up piece of the canon is a sound one, the creepiness of unusual phrases filtered through a ring modulator ala Evil of the Daleks later reappearing in Victory of the Daleks, but there's almost too much going, the narrative never quite managing to fix on one thing to the point that Charley in particular doesn't have an awful lot do than be dragged along by events.

Neverland

Finally, the Doctor tells a companion he loves them.  People always seem to reference Doomsday in relation to this, even the BBC's own Twitter feed's been at it, but 10th never did say the words to Rose.  Eighth does.  True it'  in a friendship sense, but to hear the Doctor say those words and to have Charley repeat them back to him is magnetic and emotional in one of the most intense scenes ever, the Doctor pointing a gun directly at her (and no let's not).  When I heard this the first time, walking along Great Charlotte Street (no really) in town towards the bus home in 2002, I cried.  Of everything in this series which points to nuWho, Alan Barnes's Neverland predicts the approach to the season finale, the intricate string of events which could lead to the destruction of the universe which is ultimately really about the mortality of the Doctor or his companions.  The cliffhanger still has the power to shock.  Thank god, I don't have to wait eighteen months for the resolution this time...

Tree Tables.

Design A company in Derbyshire is growing furniture, bending and crafting trees so that they become tables and chairs:

“When you look at it from a manufacturing point of view and from a design point of view, it actually makes total sense. Why would you grow trees, chop them down with all the faff? Why don’t you just grow the shape you want and it is eminently scalable? You can make thousands of these in the same way as you can make 10, but each one is unique,” said Munro.

The idea for the method came when he was working as a gardener in California and making furniture from washed-up driftwood on the side. He recalled how a bonsai tree his mother had when he was a child outgrew itself to resemble a throne. “Why do we need to bring all of these things together – chop the trees down, make them small, stick them back together again. We can just start from growing the tree from the beginning.”

Tremendous amount of faff for something which most of us won't be able to afford. But the resulting pieces should be ravishing. Find above the inevitable TEDx talk from the Gavin Munro, the founder.