Who Is This Blog For? (redux)

Reading my last review, an unknown physician on Gallifrey Base pointed out that I hadn't explained what the audio was about!

Actually, it went further than that, since I'd also forgotten to say what the audio was called. The latter was a simple oversight, but the former was the result of a stylistic decision that has, perhaps, gone too far. Regardless, the question prompted me to think hard about the purpose of the blog, not for the first time.

Let's make one thing clear: this blog is mainly for my own benefit. That's true of all blogs, really, though the authors' benefit can be measured in different ways - money, egoboo, personal satisfaction, a sense of giving something to the community. In my case, it's primarily a writing prompt. It used to have a significant secondary purpose, which was to help me keep going with my marathon through the tricky bits; but that has stumbled anyway.

Still, having said that the blog is targeted at myself, it's a bonus if I can inform, educate, and entertain other people along the way. And I've probably paid too little attention to this lately. I think the solution is to make that part of the writing prompt from now on (and making it slightly more specific than "just write something" is no bad thing).

That doesn't mean it's going to be a review blog like, say, Doc Oho's or Styre's, which people might turn to when deciding which audio/dvd/book they are going to spend their hard-earned money on next. As I said in reply to the question, mine are more like "water cooler" discussions: more "hey, did you notice this interesting thing about last night's episode" than "I have analysed this release carefully and here's why I think you should/shouldn't buy it." It will also continue to avoid giving away much of the plot where possible, and post spoiler warnings where not (except in the case of the TV series, which I tend to assume people dedicated enough to read something like this have seen). And it will continue to include snippets of production info and items of personal importance where relevant.

I hope that this will continue to be of interest to some of you. If there are any suggestions for further refinements, please feel free to comment!

Next Time:
Founding Father

Turbulence, indeed!

Well, I felt like doing some writing for only the second time in ages but wasn't up to tackling anything important, so I thought I'd have a go at reviving this blog. Which, of necessity, involves saying a little bit about why it's been so long.

Almost two years, in fact - and a pretty grim two years, both personally and politically, despite a few bright spots here and there. We all know about the politics, so I'll concentrate on the personal (which - according to a theory I have a lot of time for - is political, but hey).

Health has been a major issue, both mine and my daughter's (as has the underfunding of the NHS which has put a great deal of pressure on my midwife wife Alison). Following a long decline we decided at the beginning of 2017 to make dealing with health issues our absolute top priority, to the extent of raiding savings earmarked for the kids' university education. This has actually marked a turnaround, and we feel there is now a distinct upward trend. We've been on a strict elimination diet to try and identify foods that provoke an autoimmune response, with some success - we would never have realised how badly May reacts to potatoes without it, and we both have some trouble with the entire nightshade family. It's far from a miracle cure, but cutting out stuff has meant we both have somewhat better endurance, and I have managed to reduce my typical daily pain medication by 25%. As a happy side effect, we've both lost quite a bit of weight. May's BMI has just got back into the normal range after years of being overweight or obese, and I've lost over 10kg in four months (though I'm still towards the top end of overweight). This has helped my mood and concentration too, though my memory is still pretty appalling (I used to do most of the cooking, but after a number of accidents with pans boiling dry I am reduced to a primarily supervisory capacity).

Anyway, thanks to all this, we were able to go to the Eboracum Roman Festival as a family last weekend (I simply wasn't well enough to get there last year). Living History is a bit of a thing for us, and it was great - even if I did end up spending Sunday morning at the hospital. May managed to make us all tunics, and she and Isaac put together authentic shoes for the two of them (though mine and Alison's are still anachronistic).

One thing that hasn't improved my mood is the state of my family tree. My last two aunts died in 2016, so there are now no family members of any higher generation. A few weeks ago one of my cousins died of cancer; her sister has dementia and is now blind. I haven't been able to visit either of them because I can't manage the travel.

But enough of that - this is supposed to be a Doctor Who blog, right? So since I last spoke, my son Isaac and I went to meet Matthew Waterhouse when he was visiting Galaxy Four here in Sheffield. That means I've now met every surviving male companion actor from the classic series except for Mark Strickson though none of the female ones (just coincidence, I assure you)! Matthew was very friendly; he was touched that Adric is Isaac's favourite companion and seemed very happy to be working with Big Finish (he responded enthusiastically when I raised the subject of his work on Dark Shadows). The only other bit of writing I've done is a first Doctor original team story submitted to The Doctor Who Project - it was massively over word count, so I may need to do some rewrites. We'll see.

So is this post just a one-off? To be honest I don't know. In case it isn't I've come up with a two-pronged plan. The first thing is that I'm not going to post any more until I have a batch ready. One review (The Amaryll Challenge) is in the bag, and has been sitting there almost complete since just after I last stopped posting, but I won't put that up until I have maybe four more in hand. That way I'll hopefully avoid "false dawn syndrome", which can be extremely offputting to me as a writer. The second is that - since Big Finish haven't taken a two-year hiatus, and I've still been buying some - I'll incorporate timeslipped reviews of audios that should have occurred earlier in my marathon too, to break up the run of comics.

Right, I'm off to vote. Fingers crossed it won't be another two years before you hear from me again...

Christmas Hiatus, and the arrival of the Norwood Institute

I had hoped to avoid this - particularly since I'd already written more than half of my next review before I posted the last one - but there's been no opportunity to watch the animated version of The Amaryll Challenge (partly due to family health problems) and we're now heading into the holidays, when I know I'm not going to have much time for blog writing, because I never do. I'll pick up again here in the new year.

You don't have to go completely without the whitterings of me and my family, though! My children and I (all of whose writing you have already seen here) have just recorded the first two instalments of a new podcast - the Norwood Institute. It's a bit of an experiment, and our web presentation is a little unfinished, but do check us out over at https://norwoodinstitute.wordpress.com/ or on http://norwood-institute.tumblr.com/. You can download the MP3 or play it on a certain tube, and I promise that there is some Hartnell discussion coming up soon.

Next Time:
The Amaryll Challenge (after a couple more announcements).

The Wotcha!

Well, that was unfortunate. I was all prepared to start this new thread of the marathon, and then stuff happened. Or rather, it didn't. I don't know why I stalled so badly, but I seem to be getting back up to speed so I'm going to have another try. I've now got all the reviews for The Time Meddler written, so that's five entries ready to go; and that should give me enough time to write some more, especially since the next couple will be the season 2 overview and a comic, which I should be able to get through quickly, before my first audio in this phase.

For the time being I'm going to be aiming for a post roughly twice weekly, but not tying myself down to fixed days. We'll see how that goes. This one doesn't count, really; I am away from the Internet for a couple of weeks over Easter, so I'll start posting as soon as I get back. And who knows, I might have another review or two ready by then, putting me even further ahead; though the priority is to spend time with my family.

So, what's worth saying about the time since I last posted? Since you are probably not so interested in my cosplay at the Jorvik Viking Festival, the main news probably is that I went to a Doctor Who event in Sheffield - my first - and chatted to William Russell, Peter Purves, Frazer Hines, and Lisa Bowerman. I was very nervous and a bit tongue-tied, but Hines - who I met first - was very good at putting me at my ease, so hopefully I didn't come across too badly. Sadly I had dropped my phone down the toilet the night before, and had borrowed my daughter's video camera, which I didn't really know how to use - but fortune was smiling and I ended up with some appropriately black-and-white shots of myself with some of the stars (I forgot to ask Bowerman):

I bought a professional shot of myself with Purves, too:

The other relevant news is that I wrote a Christmas tale starring the sixth Doctor, Peri, and Frobisher, which was a lot of fun (and my first effort at a full story for a Doctor later than William Hartnell's). I'll put that up for you to read too at some point.

Next Time:
In two and a bit weeks: The Watcher.

Procrastination

From the Latin pro cras: literally leaving stuff "to tomorrow". In case you didn't know.

My school was a comprehensive, but when I first went it had only just changed: all the exercise books still said "Toynbee Secondary Modern" on them. Which, again for those of you who don't know, meant that it had been a working class school occupied by the children who failed their Eleven Plus exam upon leaving primary. This system was basically a social tool for making sure everyone got the right education for their expected role in society, although set up with a slight chance for people to move in order to defuse enough of the resentment. Keeping the masses in their place, in other words.

Anyway, we had a very good headmaster who was looking to cast off the "school for drongos" reputation. (Yeah, class oppression really does promote such thinking, at least here in England.) He was skilled at motivating the existing teachers and at hiring decent new ones, and also came up with some wacky ideas. One of which was to encourage pupils who showed an interest in something.

I'm not just talking about praise and gold stars. No, there were four of us who were interested in learning Latin - not enough to make it worthwhile including in the curriculum - so what he did was to hire a part-time Latin teacher to come in before school started and teach us then. I got my 'O' level Latin, and as a result can spot where quite a few words come from and figure out more spelling than I would have been able to otherwise.

Which reminds me of my daughter, currently at Comicon in London, dressed as Neil Gaiman's Death (one of the Endless). So far she's met William Russell, Bernard Cribbins and Paul McGann, plus Summer Glau (briefly). I'm jealous, but the reason I'm reminded is that tomorrow she will hopefully be meeting that wonderful logophile, Colin Baker.

So. Procrastination, then.

Um.

Back in February, before I went on holiday, the Final Iananbarbara Post (FIP) was half-complete. I've written a lot since then - mostly not for this blog, but even here the published wordcount is over 6,500, none of it intended for publication before the FIP. I came to a firm decision a month or so ago to stop and draw a line under this era.

Since then, the FIP has crept up to maybe three-quarters written. It's pathetic, and I know that this is happening (or rather, not happening) because I am so desperately resisting moving on.

I will be 50 on Thursday, and I have decided to make a public statement. If I have not finished the FIP by then, I will post it as-is. Even if there are still sentences that finish in the middle.

There, Maybe my pride will push me to actually complete it. See you Thursday!

Welcome!

Welcome to Elv Who?, my first blog. As you can probably guess, it's going to be about Doctor Who; and for the foreseeable future it will be home to my thoughts on my first Who marathon.

Introduction

I have never taken part in a marathon before, and there are a number of reasons why I shouldn't do so now. The main one is that I am still missing some of the Hartnell stories, including early ones. Not the usual suspects - I have audios of all the missing episodes (except Tenth Planet 4, and there's plenty of time before I get to that one) - but rather the stories that are still due to come out on DVD. This means there will have to be a hiatus when I get to The Sensorites, unless I skip on to The Dalek Invasion of Earth or watch some dodgy internet versions.

On the other hand, there's one overriding reason why I should go ahead: I want to.

A few things have come together to push me towards doing it. First is simply the fact that I've been in a Hartnell/McCoy mood for a while now, so it's a good time. I've also been reading two relevant blogs: El Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum, which offers interesting thoughts on how the stories might have been viewed in the context of the 1960s; and Neil and Sue's Adventures with the Wife in Space, which is just pure entertainment. Finally, my son has been doing his own marathon - a Davros marathon, starting with I, Davros: Innocence and continuing with all the relevant TV and audio stories up to Journey's End. He's just finished The Juggernauts, and is still enjoying himself.

Rules

If I am going to do it, I need to set myself some rules. First off, prompted by the Eruditorum, I'm going to do this episode by episode rather than story by story, until at least The Gunfighters. I'm also restricting myself to no more than one episode a day, to stop myself rushing through stories. Whenever possible I'll do at least one episode a week, but I won't start a new story until I've typed up all my notes from the current story, and things like family take priority. I may put extra posts in on stories overall or other relevant subjects, but only if I've got something to say that won't fit neatly into the regular episode posts.

Oh, and no spoilers for episodes that are less than a year old.

Why Would Anyone Read This?

I don't know, really - I'm doing it mostly for my own benefit. You won't get the type of critical analysis you get from Philip, or the fresh eyes of Sue. I will be wearing several hats at once: watching it as a modern viewer, recapturing my childhood spent with Troughton and Pertwee, being an armchair critic. Tell you what, just try it and see if you like the style.

On with the show!