Almost Closing Time

I'm not exactly in a happy mood right now. As I write this, Closing Time is airing on BBC1, the latest episode of this show I watch, I might have mentioned it at some point, Doctor Who. I am, shockingly, not watching it. This is because my TV decided that ninety seconds into the new episode would be the perfect place to, of its own accord, switch to Channel 4 and stay there. Without changing back. At all.

So, rather than throw things at other things and cry tears of rage, I've decided to use the 45 minutes I've got until the episode is up on Iplayer to write something interesting and entertaining. Or maybe just ramble for three quarters of an hour. And because I can't get it off of my mind right now, I might as well talk about Doctor Who. After all, it's not like I usually talk about that or anything.

Why am I so obsessed with Doctor Who, anyway? I suppose the obvious answer is the escapism. Escapism is, in my opinion, quite simply the best thing that humanity has ever created. People read books or watch TV for different reasons; to be entertained, to be informed, to make themselves laugh or cry. I read books and watch TV because I want to escape. There's a reason I read science fiction and fantasy almost exclusively, and there's a reason I dislike stories set entirely within the real world. Fiction is, for me, a chance to go somewhere else, to live a life that's completely different from my own. Why would you want to read a story about real things that could really happen? That's no fun. You could just go out and live that story, rather than sitting at home reading it. But sci-fi, and fantasy, these are the stories that we can only ever experience through fiction, and that is why I think they're the most important genre of storytelling. This escape from real life in favour of a tailor-made reality, this escapism, is the draw for pretty much every form of media I enjoy. Books? Neil Gaiman novels and Harry Potter, or Skulduggery Pleasant. TV? Being Human, Misfits, and of course Doctor Who. None of these stories could ever happen, not in a million years. But through the minds of their creators, on screen or in print, they do. That's the appeal, you see?

So, I think that's part of my obsession with Doctor Who explained. It's journeys through time and space, constant danger and laughter and adventure, are utterly absurd, and of course that's why I love it. But I don't think that's all there is to it. Why is Doctor Who special in my heart, above all of those other stories I mentioned? Is it the endless multiera, multigenre, multimedia format that allows it to do anything and everything? Well, perhaps that has something to do with it, but that's not the real reason. Nope, the real reason is the Doctor himself.

He's a character etched into my mind, a fictional being more important to me than any real world celebrity. The core concepts of the character absolutely match with my idealised image of who I want to be as a person. He's the most intelligent person in any room at any given moment, and he uses his intelligence both to baffle people and to help them. He's confident and easy-going, always fighting for equality and justice and all things right. He's the person I want to be like, more than anyone else in existence.

aaaaaaaaaaand on that note, having gone from 'enthusiastic fanboy' to 'creepy obsessive', Closing Time has finally showed up on Iplayer and I'm off to watch it. So I guess this brings this ramble to a 'close', eh? In conclusion, I watch Doctor Who and I love Doctor Who not only because it's brilliant in every aspect EVER, but also because the Doctor is as perfect a character as has ever been created. Not in the flawless, Mary-Sue kind of way (though in my mind, he often is like that), but in a brilliantly crafted, work-of-art kind of way.

You will see that the title of this blog is 'Not Entirely Incoherent'. This is because parts of the blog make perfect sense. Unfortunately, this post has not been one of those parts. Thanks for reading!

He Sees

It's been a long while since my last blog post, going on two weeks now, and even then the last post I made was a Friday Night Who UK update. I mentioned back when I first started the blog that, if I couldn't get round to writing new and regular posts, I would fall back on some old material that I produced before I had this blog. This is a good thing both for me, the writer, and you, the reader. I don't have to struggle to create new content quickly if I don't have the time or willpower, but you're still able to read something you've never seen before and (hopefully) enjoy it just like you would a brand new blog post.

The first thing I came across while I was looking for something new to post was this poem I wrote a while back. It's very short and very rushed and a bit rubbish. On the plus side, though, it's all about the Slender Man! I wrote it one dull weekend day while me and a friend were running through old Marble Hornets episodes.

In the deep and the dark and the cold
He walks
It’s the young and the scared and the weak
He stalks
Through the holes in his head, without eyes
He sees
He’s a man in the forest, or a thing
In the trees.

His body is slender and his fingers
Thin
His mouth stretched wide like a ghostly
Grin
He hides in the midnight light,
Pitch black
Where he waits, ever patient, then he makes
His attack.

Don’t even try to run, because the
Slender Man’s back.

...Yeah, I told you it was a bit awful. I never was very good with poetry. Oh well.

Thanks for reading this short, poemtacular blog post. Hopefully I'll have a more content filled, interesting post up in the near future.

Friday Night Who UK: 9th and 16th September 2011

(If you don't know what Friday Night Who UK is, click here.)

So here's another Friday Night Who UK update that's coming a little later than it should have done. As I'm writing this, I've got about an hour until tonight's viewing starts, so I'll have to type pretty quickly. Basically, I went back to school on Monday, so I haven't had as much time as I would have liked, and this update was unfortunately quite low on my list of priorities. To make up for it, this is a two-in-one blog post, because it includes the update for next week's viewing as well.

First off, our viewing of the Daemons went well, with no hiccups - well, apart from the fun facts fiasco, wherein me and Mark attempting to out-trivia each other using the Daemons' wikipedia page. So if I ever use the words 'fun fact' in a tweet again, it's almost definitely a lie. Just so you know.

More importantly, what are we watching this week? Why, it's City of Death of course, featuring one Tom Baker. It's commonly regarded as one of the greatest stories of Baker's seven year run, so we should be in for a good evening. If you want to join me and Mark in our viewing of City of Death, you need to follow us on twitter (@KingOrokos and @Marcus_Joan respectively) at around 7pm UK time, which is in less than an hour as I'm writing this! You also need to use the #FridayNightWhoUK hashtag, and also the #CityOfDeath hashtag this week.

As I said, this post is also an update for next week - so, if you want to join us on the 16th of September, for our next Friday Night Who UK, we'll be watching Resurrection of the Daleks with Peter Davison. I don't know much about this story, which I suppose will make watching the episode all the more interesting. Obviously most of the information in the previous paragraph still stands, but you'll need to use the #ResurrectionOfTheDaleks hashtag this time round.

So, that's all for this relatively short double-post. 50 minutes left until City of Death as I type this! Oh well, I'm sure one person will read this before then... Maybe...

Next time on Not Entirely Incoherent: Words, arranged in patterns to form sentences! Thanks for reading.

Fish And Chips For All

As the more perceptive among you might have guessed, I like Doctor Who. I like watching episodes of Doctor Who. I like reading Doctor Who novels. I like writing my own Doctor Who stories. I like talking about Doctor Who in general. One thing I did not like - until recently - was listening to Doctor Who.

Audiobooks and audio dramas have never been my cup of tea really. I've always preferred the visual medium of TV, which is more immersive, or the medium of literature, which is more flexible (because you use your imagination to bring the story to life). I also dislike audiobooks and similar things because listening to them is an 'all-or-nothing' sort of activity; you either pay full attention to them, which means sitting still with your earphones in, or you multitask and focus on doing something else - which, of course, means you don't have your full attention on the story. As a result, though I was aware of Big Finish Productions, and the many many many stories they had produced, I didn't really feel a need to listen to any of them.

Mark, my friend and fellow Whovian, has been trying to get me into the Big Finish stories for a while. Several weeks ago I tried listening to the Mists of Time, a companion chronicle featuring Jo Grant, and I really couldn't get into it. It was confusing, and a bit dull to be honest. So I decided that Big Finish wasn't for me, and left it at that. Mark, though, was extremely persistent, and eventually he convinced me to try again. So I decided to have another go, and start off with the 'New Eighth Doctor Adventures', and series of stories about Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor and his new companion Lucie Miller. It was a case of second time lucky - I absolutely loved it this time round. Partly because of the much more engaging plot, and partly I think because it was an audio drama, instead of an audiobook - the fact that the story could only be told through this medium makes it much more appealing to me.

Anyway, I just yesterday finished the first series of the New Eighth Doctor Adventures, so I decided that for this blog post I would review the first story in the series, Blood of the Daleks. Quick plot summary: when the Doctor - along with mysterious TARDIS intruder Lucie Miller - lands on the ruined colony of Red Rocket Rising, he soon finds his oldest enemy at work.

Blood of the Daleks was an excellent start to the series, the audio equivalent to a page-turner novel that keeps you up until two in the morning. That, incidentally, is exactly what happened with this story for me. I started listening at around midnight, intending to just start the story off to see if it was worth continuing with. I ended up covering the entire story - which is a good 90 minutes long in total, spread over two parts - that same night. There's something about this episode that compels you to carry on listening, even when you know it's too late and you need to get some sleep (by the way, if you ever want to get into Big Finish stories, listening to them late at night when you should be sleeping is the best way to do it).

The portrayal of the titular Daleks is at least partially responsible for the success of this episode. The dilemma of Dalek stories is that pretty much everything that could be done with the Daleks has been done already. It's difficult to take them in a new direction; but instead of struggling against that, Blood of the Daleks revels in it. This story is drenched in archetypal Dalek tropes, from their facade of benevolence (as seen in Power of the Daleks and, more recently, Victory of the Daleks) to the utter hatred of impurity that defines them as villains. Recent Dalek stories in the TV series have touched upon the latter trope - for example, the lone solider in Dalek sacrificing himself because of his impurities, or the mutiny of the Cult of Skaro in Evolution of the Daleks - but none of them have really embraced the concept in the way that this story does. By using the tried and tested techniques previously established by forty-odd years of stories, Blood of the Daleks manages to return the Daleks to a glorious status that they haven't seen in a long time.

Another element of the story that works really well is the human-Daleks. While the mad scientist behind their creation, Professor Martez, falls a little flat, the creatures themselves are excellent counters to the main villains, the 'pure Daleks'. Because they are so similar to the pure Daleks, when the human-Daleks are destroyed because they are 'different' it really displays just how ignorant and small-minded the Daleks truly are. The idea that, if there were only two Daleks left in the entire universe, they would still fight amongst themselves because each one thought the other 'impure' is a fascinating concept, and one that this story goes quite a way into exploring. The Doctor's line about how the Daleks might be at war with themselves furthers this idea - the Daleks really are so obsessed with purity that, if they ever did take over the universe, they would probably just start fighting each other. And of course, I have to mention Dalek Fred (surely the forgotten fifth member of the Cult of Skaro), who is left to die on the Dalek battleship as it hurtles towards the laboratory, and willingly accepts his own death as it is in the name of Dalek victory. This lack of individuality within the Daleks is another facet of their species that has been lost a little in recent years.

But, as much as I've talked about the Daleks, they really are only one half of the story. The other half of the story is Lucie Miller, as this is her introduction both for the Eighth Doctor and for us, the listener. Lucie is a large part of why I enjoyed this story so much, as she really is a fantastic companion and a very suitable counterpart to the Eighth Doctor. One of the problems, I imagine, with audio dramas is making sure none of the actors have similar voices, as having two characters within a story who sound similar could lead to confusion. For example, in this story, I had a bit of difficulty in the early scenes distinguishing Asha and Klint, who both have fairly similar voices, albeit with different accents. By making Lucie a northerner, however, I think that Big Finish have cleverly killed two birds with one stone. Not only does it make Lucie easy to identify, even in very hectic scenes, with lots of characters and dialogue rushing around, but it also turns her into a perfect foil for Paul McGann's Doctor. Eight is a very sophisticated character, and Lucie's practicality and Northern bluntness means the chemistry between the two is nothing short of genius. Congratulations are in order for McGann and Sheridan Smith, who make an excellent team.

Another part of this episode that works well is the character of Tom Cardwell, another example of the 'distinctive voice = memorable character' thing I mentioned earlier. I always love a crazy conspiracy theorist who is proved right, and Cardwell slots right into that category - and, just like with the Doctor, he gets plenty of great banter with Lucie, which helps define both of their characters. It's a pity that some of the other characters aren't quite so interesting; Asha/Martez are both sadly very one-dimensional, falling right into the roll of a stereotypical mad scientist, and not really going anywhere from there. In any other story, there would probably have been a morality play, with characters siding either with Klint (These experiments are wrong) or Martez (These experiments are for the greater good). Unfortunately, as Martez was breeding Daleks, there's pretty much no ground for him to stand on, so the morality play is ignored, and the character is resultingly given very little to do.

Bits and Bobs

• At first I was thrown by the unusual planet name of Red Rocket Rising, but it very quickly grew on me. Why, in science fiction, are so few planets given names like this? I understand it when the planet is inhabited by aliens, but on a human colony planet, Red Rocket Rising actually makes much more sense as a name than, say, Susamachamoria, or some scifi technobabble like that.

• If you listen carefully to Klint's transmission at the end, when she is lauding the arrival of their saviours, you can just make out the name 'Telos' when she mentions the planet name. I don't know if it's just my love of black humour, but I found it hilarious that Red Rocket Rising had been through all that trouble only to be invaded by the Cybermen after the Doctor leaves.

In conclusion, Blood of the Daleks is a gem of a story with some strong main characters, and the best portrayal of the Daleks I've seen in years. Next time on Not Entirely Incoherent: lots of complaining!

Thanks for reading.