Our (almost) Daily Doctor Who Routine

Posted on 08/04/2018 by dalekboy

I have been watching through original Doctor Who with my kids from the very first William Hartnell episode. We’re enjoying it, so I thought I’d share our DW routine to maybe inspire other parents, fans, or New Who folks to give it a try.

My pair are 7 and 9, and we’ve been watching from the very beginning for a while now. At this point we’re into Patrick Troughton’s last season. In fact, we’re now up to part three of The Space Pirates.

Watching is a part of our morning school routine – get up, eat brekky, get dressed, brush hair, one 25 minute episode, then out to catch the school bus. If they’re going a bit slow I remind them, “If you don’t hurry up, there won’t be time for today’s Doctor Who!”

That gets them moving!

Every month or two they ask for some old Warner Brothers cartoons or My Little Pony for a few mornings, then I find them slightly more reluctant to break that habit and go back to DW. Kids like routine, so if the routine changes they quickly become comfortable with the new one. But after a few mornings I tell them that I’m watching the next episode of Who, if they don’t want to they can do something else. Within minutes of it starting they’re back in the groove and it’s our schoolday routine once more.

In fact, it’s too much a school routine. Come the holidays we’re flat out getting around to a single episode. But that’s okay, the break just makes us more eager for it when school starts again.

Now with showing them stories, I do my best to keep all the surprises. I don’t tell them anything about the episode we’re watching – except for when a companion dies. They like to know in advance on that stuff because they find it really upsetting. So I usually warn them at the start of the story, and again when the actual episode comes around.

With regards to hiding the surprises, I take the hiding info to silly extremes.

I have no idea how it is I got married and had kids either!

So episode 10 of The War Games is S06E44 and… wait… E45?!

I dump my DVDs down to the computer, and then across to a flash drive. On the flash drive the only info they have is what season and what episode number it is – no names. That way they have no idea of story lengths, which works especially well in the early era when episode length varied quite markedly. Not knowing when a story will end adds to the thrill for them.^[1]

When starting a new story I’ve gotten into the habit of skipping the opening titles, too. That way they don’t get told it’s a Dalek story in the title, then have a bunch of characters talking about the evil enemy they’re up against, that they never quite get around to naming, only to have a “shock reveal” at the cliffhanger – Yes, I’m looking at you, Terry Nation!

I also refuse to tell them when a regeneration story is coming. Oh, the number of stories where the Doctor gets hurt and they start to worry that it’s a regeneration story. And of course that meant they were completely blindsided by Hartnell’s regeneration when it came about.

I suspect Troughton’s is going to shock them too, when the time comes. Of course now I’ve taken to pretending to film them towards the end of random episodes. First time I did it, they thought it was a regeneration, which was the point. Doing it a few more times before his last episode.

As an aside, I also managed to keep the Doctor’s regeneration into a woman quiet from my daughter. Son found out three months out, but he did a great job of not telling his sister, so she got the full effect at the end of Capaldi’s run.

For me the lengths are worth it. When I was a kid, the only way to experience the majority of these stories was to read about them in novelisations, articles, or books. So when one finally, and often unexpectedly, got the chance to see them, you already knew that it was the first appearance of whatever, or that such and such left, or that the Doctor regenerated.

I’m trying to give them all the surprises I was denied.

I do it with films, too. Showed them Planet of the Apes as soon as they were old enough to understand the significance of the ending, but before it could be ruined for them because it’s a pop cultural touchstone. Same with the reveal in The Empire Strikes Back. I’ll do the same with Citizen Kane, Psycho, and Fight Club one day.

You might notice I’m avoiding spoilers here for everything I’m talking about. There’s always somebody for whom the thing you’re discussing is new. I feel in a more general discussion it doesn’t hurt to talk around such details because everyone who has seen it knows exactly what you mean, and you’re still saving the surprise for those that haven’t had the chance.

Some folks might think that kids wouldn’t take to the old show. Sorts of things I hear are the effects are too crappy for modern day kids, or the stories are too slow.

First up, my children are sci-fi savvy. They’ve seen a range of stuff including most of the Star Wars films, and when they recently saw this spaceship in Wheel in Space –

I really must build a CG version of this spaceship at some point. Shut up, yes I must!

Yes, this spaceship blew away kids who’ve seen Star Wars – you have to check your preconceptions

Their reaction was a genuine and enthusiastic “Oh wow!”

Children don’t view these things the way we do. We’re denying them a chance to connect with something if we decide for them that they won’t like it. It’s one thing to cater to their tastes and avoid things they find distressing, it’s another to hamstring storytelling variety without giving them the chance to experience it.

They have also seen various Ray Harryhausen films and the first Jurassic Park film. Shortly after Jurassic Park we watched Invasion of the Dinosaurs because I’d mentioned a DW story had dinosaurs. Here’s one of the dinosaurs –

People who complain about the dinosaurs in this story, unless you can do better with the same budget, technical limitations, and in the same time frame - shut up!

This dinosaur is kinda the star, it appears all through the story, often in close up.

My children’s reaction? Well, initially there was a bit of “They look a bit rough,” but in a very short space of time, they were caught up in the story. They were scared for the characters, even though they could easily identify the use of puppets and Chromakey, and they got really upset when one dinosaur was being hurt.

This is the thing many adults forget. Children love stories. Effects and budget are only a delivery system for the storytelling.

Most kids are wonderfully empathic and thoughtful about appreciating a story on its own terms. That’s why even if you’re not good at reading stories aloud, they still love you doing it – they don’t care about the medium, they care about the story and characters. You reading it to them adds an extra layer of special to that.

If the story and characters are good, it doesn’t matter to kids if it’s told with sock puppets, stick figures, or shadows. Yes, they like pretty graphics, but they care about good storytelling a lot more.

This also addresses the storytelling pace of old Doctor Who. Many children I know of like the slower pace. Old DW is told at a pace and in a way where everything is quite clear. The nature of television from that period demanded it because it was only ever made to be seen once and never again. Kids have time to take in the characters and the story and really get a handle on what is happening.

Children want to understand as much of the story as possible and the slower storytelling makes them feel more in control as an audience member.

Don’t get me wrong. My kids love fast paced stuff, but they seem to enjoy slower storytelling a lot more. And I don’t get anywhere near as many questions about what is happening. When I do get questions the answer is almost always, “Watch and listen, and you’ll find out.”

Also, with regards to pacing, even the slowest story is easy to take when only watched at the rate of one 25 minute episode per day. We’ve had a lot of stories that many adult fans consider boring (usually they’ve watched them in one sitting), where my kids have been demanding the next episode immediately, because they didn’t want to wait until the next day. I made them wait, of course!

I suppose the last element to address is watching reconstructions of the missing episodes. I go for telesnap reconstructions because, well, it’s usually photos from the actual story. Combined with the existing soundtracks, and occasionally a bit of existing footage, this is pretty much as close as one can get to watching a missing episode.

Again, this is something that a lot of adults seem to think kids won’t like. But it’s really no different to those Read-Along books that come with a CD (or tape, or record, if you’re an old bugger like me) where the story is told and you turn the page at the sound. They still sell these and it’s because children love them!

The telesnap reconstructions often have text on screen to explain bits of the action that aren’t obvious. When we started going through these stories I had to read out the actions for my daughter, but she’s old enough that she’s reading them all herself now.

The first story we watched that was reconstructed was Marco Polo, of course. Out of the first four stories, Marco Polo was my daughter’s favourite – even over the first Dalek story. The kids quickly got used to telesnap reconstructions to the point where my son would occasionally be halfway through an existing episode of a mostly missing story before he came out with, “Hey, this episode has footage!”

That person over there refuses to watch telesnap reconstructions, the silly thing!

Much as I’m a Doctor Who fanboy, Marco Polo is one of the very few stories I’ve ever rated 10/10

There are of course official animated reconstructions of a few stories and episodes available on DVD. I haven’t shown the kids any of these as I personally find them highly variable. Some are very good, some feel somewhat lacklustre. I think Power of the Daleks is one of the best there is, but I still prefer the recon.

That said, I will let them watch the animated ones on later viewings, if that’s their preference. For now, I want them to get the as close as possible to the original experience. Many of the telesnap reconstructions can be found on DailyMotion or Youtube now!

There are also numerous fan animations on Youtube. I steer clear of most of these as I just found too many that decided to make things cooler by adding in elements that wouldn’t have been doable in the original show, such as flying Daleks in the jungles of Kembel, or sweeping impractical camera moves.

And as I said, my kids have been completely fine with the telesnap recons. They react to revelations and excitement at about the same level as they do with existing stories.

So that’s it. That how we’ve been approaching watching from the beginning. It’s also been good because there were a handful of Troughton stories I’d never gotten around to seeing, and I got to watch a couple of them for the first time ever with my kids. Have seen two of them, now just have Space Pirates and War Games^[2] to go!

If you’re someone with children who has been thinking about watching the classic series, I’d recommend it. Experiencing these stories with my children has allowed me to view the show through fresh eyes, which has been something of a gift in itself. Seeing their excitement, the way they connect and get scared or elated – it’s really a lovely thing to share.

Cheers,
Danny

1. In fact, as we near the end of season 6, I’ve actually labelled the first few episodes of of the seventh season as S06E45, E46, E47 just to further muddy the waters. Kids are smart, they soon learn to pick up on little clues. BACK TO POST

2. Yes, I haven’t seen War Games. Some years ago I decided I wanted to see it in the context of the other stories. But every time I was working through all the Troughtons, I’d get most of the way through season 5 and something would happen to stop me watching for months and months.

So, when I was finally ready to go again, it’d been that long I either started again at the start of the Troughtons, or in one case, back at the Hartnells. And then life would blow up again at some point in season 5! BACK TO POST

The Moffat Master Plan – Series 6 (part 2)

Posted on 04/03/2014 by dalekboy

Warning – Some very minor spoilers for The Hand of Fear, and The Androids of Tara. Major spoilers for important bits of series five, six, and seven.
Also major spoilers for The Tomorrow People episode, Hitler’s Last Secret.

Well, after a big gap, here is part three of my investigation of Steven Moffat’s story arcs. Part two dealt with the first story of Series Six, and originally this part was to deal with the rest of that series, until I realised how overwhelmingly convoluted and inconsistent it was. So now this bit will take us up to the penultimate story, and part three will be all about The Wedding of River Song.

(Late edit – Grant commented that I was applying a level of scrutiny that most stories wouldn’t hold up to – and he’s right. So in order to be sightly fairer, I have coloured the bits that don’t really relate directly to the story or character arcs but are in fact individual episodic or story flaws. So if you’re just interested in the arc bits, ignore the rest.)

Rory looks on in horror as the Doctor cold-bloodedly kills an innocent being for no very good reason.

So, after events in Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon we get various cameos with Madam Kovarian, and then we get The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People. It’s a story about how Gangers are really, really honestly living sentient beings after all, and killing them is wrong, wrong, so terribly wrong.

That ends with the Doctor choosing to kill the Ganger of Amy.

Just because.

He say he needed enough information to block the signal to the Flesh. The Doctor has already waited through a few stories previously, so it’s a bit off that once he has confirmed the Ganger origins and that Amy is a Ganger, he pretty much immediately chooses to kill her, rather than keep her alive and try to track the signal animating her.

But it was a nice, cool, shock ending. One that helped make the Doctor look, at best, like a massive, unfeeling hypocrite. At worst he’s a murderer. Would the Doctor have dispatched an actual living being like that? Oh wait, he spent the last two episodes arguing that the Gangers were real, living, feeling beings, so the answer must be yes.

I think it would have been more shocking if they way came up with to deal with Ganger Jennifer, that also took out the Gangers of the Doctor, Cleaves, and Amy. There’s a lot of drama to be had from that, especially if it turns out the Doctor didn’t know for sure, so he’s almost as stunned and shocked as Rory. And it avoids turning the Doctor into a cold-blooded killer.

But that’s not as cool or surprising, and one should always jettison good character stuff for cool.

So then we come to… Continue reading →

I’m back and angry…

Posted on 17/01/2014 by dalekboy

Hello gentle reader. Sorry to have been away so long. December was busy, a virus ran through our house, and then I had to go interstate to visit sick relatives and bereaved friends, and post-trip I was pretty bloody tired.

So what brought me back out again? What was it that got me all fired up and angry? What got me so very annoyed that I could not avoid hitting the keyboard?

Steven Bloody Moffat!

So that’s why I love myself. But enough about me. Why do YOU love me?

I read this today – “Steven Moffat has defended criticisms that his stories contain plot holes.

In an interview with BBC Radio 2, Moffat addressed the issue for both Sherlock and Doctor Who and explained that he thinks clever viewers are able to join the dots themselves and don’t always need an on screen explanation.

He said: “I think people have come to think a plot hole is something which isn’t explained on screen. A plot hole is actually something that can’t be explained.

“Sometimes you expect the audience to put two and two together for themselves. For Sherlock, and indeed Doctor Who, I’ve always made the assumption that the audience is clever.”

That’s the whole of it, but here’s a link to the site.

What I dislike about this is the cynical, utterly transparent, manipulative intent of his comments. What he’s essentially saying is, “No, it’s not that I’m leaving plot holes, it’s that people who criticise my writing aren’t very clever, unlike people who like what I do.”

It’s Moffat attempting his own version of The Emperor’s New Clothes.^[1]

He’s broadly attempting to do two things. One is to make people think twice before criticising him, lest they be perceived as being a bit dim. The other is to bolster the support of those who enjoy his writing in an uncritical way, by telling them that by enjoying what he does, they must be more clever than those who are critical.

Well, I’m bloody calling him on it. Continue reading →

The Moffat Master Plan – Series 6 (part 1)

Posted on 07/12/2013 by dalekboy

Warning – Some spoilers for Pyramids of Mars, Father’s Day, and Waters of Mars. Major spoilers for important bits of series five, six, and seven.

Okay, welcome to part two of my investigation of Steven Moffat’s story arcs and writing, and how it holds together.

Hint = it doesn’t.

This article will only be about the first story of series six because there’s a lot to say. But the series certainly started strong…

Boy, I hope we don’t completely screw up this iconic scene later in the season…

Impossible Astronaut While at Lake Silencio, Amy spots a figure on a hill. It’s a Silent. But even though it’s incredibly likely that she’s seen the footage of the moon landing at some point in her life, she doesn’t immediately try to kill it on sight. Continue reading →

Adventure in Space and Time, and Day of the Doctor

Posted on 25/11/2013 by dalekboy

After dreading The Day of the Doctor because of Steven Moffat’s highly variable writing, I have to say I was very happy with it. It’s a solid 8 out of 10 from me, which means it’s good. It was fun, and humourous, and not overwrought or full of false drama.

An Adventure In Space and Time is harder for me to rate. I know the history of that period fairly well. And I really know about how the role of the Doctor changed Hartnell, brought so much joy to him, and also how he struggled. And all that is captured so beautifully by the writing of Mark Gatiss and the acting of David Bradley.

So it’s hard for me to rate because I had to, literally, stop the vid at least seven times as I bawled uncontrollably. Seriously, I was a giant mess. Most of that crying was at the sweetness and kindness shown to Hartnell, and a bit was at those heartbreaking moments when you knew an ill and insecure man was about to be hurt.

In all honesty, I have never had any film affect me as deeply as this one. I typed the last paragraph and this one with tears in my eyes at the memory of it.

So, I think it may be a 9 or a 10 out of 10, but I’ll need to rewatch it first and I’m not sure I’m quite up to it again yet.

But I will rewatch both, because it’s become obvious I need to run through references and Easter Eggs for people. Not sure when I’ll get them done, though I’ll try to get to them as soon as I can.

Here’s just a couple…

In The Day of the Doctor, when the character of the Doctor is getting described, there is at least one quote from the 1972 book, “The Making of Doctor Who” by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke – “He is never cruel or cowardly.”

Glass Daleks, everlasting matches, and a car crash on a dark night – this book has it all.

Also, the very start of An Adventure In Space and Time has Hartnell pulling up on Barnes Common on a dark and foggy night, and pausing to look at a real police box. In the very first Doctor Who book, “Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks,” David Whitaker tells a different version of how Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright meet the Doctor and Susan. And it all happens on Barnes Common, on a dark and foggy night.

The opening location from Adventure in Space and Time is also replicated for The Day of the Doctor. It’s not the same location (I thought it was but closer inspection showed houses in the background of the Hartnell scene), but they’ve gone for as close a match as possible. It’s way too close to be a coincidence.

There were many other references, of course, so I’ll get on it. But until I do, I’ll try to finish my edit of the Series Six Moffat’s Master Plan article within the next few days to hold you over.

Mickey and Martha – a new angle that makes my skin crawl…

Posted on 22/11/2013 by dalekboy

Talking with my lovely wife about some of the issues with New Who and the unlikely destinies of its companions, and Martha got brought up, along with the fact that she married Mickey.

Now it’s been well documented by many folks that it was an annoying thing to happen, partially because she already had the lovely Tom Milligan as her fiancé, but mostly because the only two black members of the cast got married off to one another.

However, talking about it just now Sharon mentioned an angle I hadn’t thought of and I haven’t seen mentioned before – Martha couldn’t get to be with the Doctor because, in her mind, he was still in love with Rose.

So then Martha went off and eventually got married to Rose’s cast-off.

You got rejected by Rose, I got rejected by the Doctor – Of Course we got married!

There is no way the internet can contain the level of ick I am currently feeling.

The Moffat Master Plan – Series 5

Posted on 21/11/2013 by dalekboy

Warning – Some spoilers for Pyramids of Mars, Image of the Fendahl, Mawdryn Undead and Father’s Day. Major spoilers for City of Death, all of series five, and bits of series six and seven.

Steven Moffat’s first season, series 5, blew me away. I still think it’s his strongest by far and it seemed a very canny and clever beginning to his run. It was enough like Russell Davies’ era Doctor Who not to alienate the fans who had come on board in the last few years, while at the same time gradually shifting the mythos.

The theory I quickly developed, as I watched that season for the first time, was that Moffat was going to slowly remove the seeming godhood that had been bestowed on the Doctor. To take him back to being a simple wanderer who wasn’t known to absolutely everybody. I suspect he’s still heading in that direction, but it’s become more distorted with time, and Moffat’s admitted fear of the audience becoming bored, so he seems to keep straying back and forth. I may well be wrong. I hope I’m not.

After becoming disenchanted during series six, to the point where for the first time in my entire life I didn’t care about the show by the end of the season, I went back to look through series five again to get the taste out of my mouth.

While I knew it was not a perfect run, it was solid, held together, and made sense.

Or did it? Continue reading →

The Moffat Master Plan – Prelude…

Posted on 19/11/2013 by dalekboy

Since coming back in 2005, Doctor Who has become a show based firmly on the Buffy model. An over arcing story for the season, with episodes that build the arc peppered throughout the run, usually building up to a major conflict and/or big bad.

The original series had done arc story-lines before, but generally handled them differently. The very first Hartnell season when viewed as a whole is about the first Doctor learning to be a hero from his human companions. Other seasons had ongoing stories or themes. Season sixteen was all about the Key to Time. Season eighteen had the constant theme of decay and stagnation, and also incorporated two trilogies of stories before it put the universe itself in direct peril for only the third time in the show’s history.

For instance, the arc for season 8 was about how the Master loves being a complete dick to the Doctor.
I didn’t say it was a complex or clever arc.

Since coming back, the enforced arcs building to big end of season showdowns have given us the potential end of the universe five times in seven years. Where the original series was contented to simply try to end the series with a solid story, admittedly not always successfully, the new series by its nature has to try to give us a massive, ‘important’ story to finish the season with.

One of the problems with this is the perceived need to build-up to that finale. Russell Davies’ way of handling this was to have a word or phrase pop up throughout the season, keeping the audience guessing until the end where we would then find out what it referred to.

It wasn’t always successful, and as story or arc building goes, it really is a bit light on. It makes a show of knowing where it’s headed, while really not doing much in the way of work toward actually layering hints or clues. Indeed, the very first year Bad Wolf wasn’t originally intended to be anything special. Before the series aired, the fans went nuts over leaked pictures trying to figure out what the graffiti on the TARDIS meant, figuring it had a deeper meaning. Davies decided to start layering it in to bait them, without any real idea where it was headed. The truth is, Bad Wolf originally had no more importance to the show than than being a one-off piece of random graffiti on the TARDIS.

I am Bad Wolf. I reached this conclusion in a completely illogical way, but I’m allowed to do that because I’m Bad Wolf. So Blah!

The problem with constructing an arc is, you have to be on your game. If you’re really going to build up an over-arcing mystery to a satisfying conclusion, one that will hold up to basic scrutiny, you need to think about where you’re headed and plan carefully for that future destination.

Instead of being a show about the adventures and the people the Doctor and his friends meet, it has become a series about the Doctor and his companions. Hence the continual need to have companions who idolise, fancy, or romantically love the Doctor, and the end of season stories often involving things that directly affect members of the TARDIS crew on a personal level, usually leading to unlikely destinies for those characters.

The destinies of the companions these days make some of the surprise sudden departures due to unforeseen romances and the like from the old series look brilliantly restrained.

K9 and Leela elope together leaving the Doctor alone once more.

Doctor Who as a series now isn’t about the stories, it’s about the season’s clues. Fans obsess over any little detail that might have something to do with that season’s arc. All too often stories are treated by fans a means to get the hints to the finale, rather than having a point in and of themselves. The fact that the story may be an excellent stand-alone is considered less important than the arc. Indeed, some stories are badly hurt by having aspects of the arc poorly grafted in.

Once Steven Moffat took over, he made a show of having a better idea of how to layer in hints and clues that would pay off. Certainly his first season had some very clever story-telling scattered and hinted at throughout. But for every bit that pays off and works, there are several other bits that don’t hold together.

Now, in fairness, virtually no series can hold up to close inspection. There will always be bits where things are a bit hand-wavey, or simply don’t add up or hold together. However, in turning Doctor Who into a show where the clues scattered throughout are meant to be of crucial importance, in actively inviting the audience to pay close attention and to treat all manner of things and moments as potentially being vital story elements, it also invites us to be more critical of when these things don’t add up.

Moffat’s storylines are full of glaring inconsistencies. While it’s painted as an incredible layered puzzle, in fact it’s even less well constructed than Davies’ run.

I’m usually the guy who is surprised by all the plot holes and such I haven’t spotted that my friends have. Minutes after watching something, when others are saying, “But what about the such-and-such?” I’m sitting there amazed that I missed the errors that seemed so obvious to others. In fact, it’s become one of my judging criteria – if I don’t spot an issue until after the film or episode is over, I figure they’ve done a good job. But if I spot it while watching it for the first time, if it’s something so glaring that it spoils my suspension of disbelief, then they must have been pretty bloody slack for someone as clueless as me to spot the issue.

I’ve spotted a lot of issues with Moffat’s seasons on a first viewing.

And in going through them to research for this little run of posts, I’ve found even more inconsistencies. So over the next few articles I’m going to run through the season arcs in detail, since the new series wants us paying such close attention.

I’ve suffered for my obsession, and now it’s your turn.

Here are a few of questions that have yet to be answered.

When will we see the fall of the Eleventh on the Fields of Trenzalore? Because surely the events in The Name of the Doctor don’t count as the fall…
The Silence wanted to stop the Doctor from answering “the question that must never be asked.” His name. But he didn’t answer that question at Trenzalore when asked it, so is that arc now over?
Why does the “Most Important Leaf in the Universe” change to a radically differently shaped leaf? (Actually I know the answer to this one, and it’s both really annoying and quite telling)
So who was it wanted to blow up the TARDIS in the first place in Pandorica Opens?
Who was saying, “Silence will fall,” in the TARDIS?

Except for the leaf, I can actually see a couple of ways to tie these questions together and give some satisfactory answers. And I really hope Moffat does just that. I’d love to have all those elements that have annoyed me be explained or retconned in a way that works.

It’d be nice to have faith in the writing again.

50th Anniversary Trailer Breakdown

Posted on 22/10/2013 by dalekboy

Okay, seen a couple of lists about the trailer, some have drawn some pretty long bows, some have missed elements that I spotted. So here’s my list. I’ve put up framegrabs, then highlighted and numbered most of the relevant bits. If you click on an image it will jump to a full sized version.

I haven’t always gone for the clearest shot of an object, but this already runs to 19 images and 90 entries total, so I was trying to get the most bang for my buck. With the way I’ve presented it, you should be able to figure out where it is on screen and check for yourself.

But mostly I only cover the elements that I’m fairly certain of, there’s very little supposition in my list, and I debunk (possibly incorrectly) one or two other theories. I did skip one or two shots of Daleks where I found it impossible to narrow down the type or story. I have no doubt I’ve missed a few things, but I think I’ve covered most of them fairly well.

1. The policeman seen in the very first episode, An Unearthly Child. Fred Rawlings was the first actor seen in the show.

2. This bike is potentially one of the most anal retentive bits of continuity. It appears clearly in some of the set photos for An Unearthly Child, but you can’t see it in the episode. Or maybe it’s a nod to the bike Tom Baker rides in Shada. What? You want a bike seen on screen in an episode that was broadcast? Okay, it belongs to Pigbin Josh from Claws of Axos. Happy?

Continue reading →

Dalekboy’s Linky Goodness

Posted on 12/06/2013 by dalekboy

So, haven’t been posting here a lot because that thing called life keeps getting in the way. You remember life. Look away from the screen. There it is. Now quick, hide back here with me again.

I’ve got several pieces started here that I need to finish, but some were begun last year and I’m just not quite getting time to work on them. Or when I have time, I’m a bit too tired. But anyway, I have been doing some writing here and there, and I thought I might link to that, and to one or two other bits and pieces I like.

Get Off My Lawn, you damned nuWho kids!