monkeys and ponies

Bizarrely, I just discovered today that my list of 30 Days prompts was missing day 19, which is the scene that made you cry the most. So, jumping back briefly: there are scenes in DW that upset me, but they rarely make me cry. The closest I've come is the conversation in JE Ten and Wilf have in the rain after Ten has left poor mindwiped Donna behind – Ten getting all soggy and sad in the rain, Wilf unhappy about both Ten and Donna – it upset me a lot at the time. (Now that I've had plenty of time for my disappointment with Donna's ending to turn into annoyance, the scene doesn't have that effect on me anymore.)

Anyway, Day 30! Another one of those dreaded choose-anything days, so I went poking through my hard drive and found a copy of this PVP strip. ( after the cut, since it's wide and flist-breaking )

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Er ... I haven't, really? Episode ideas require plot, and coming up with good, sustainable plots is one of my great failings as a writer.

There's only one thing I've written that comes close to something that could work as a real episode, and that would be Leap in the Dark. Looking back at it, there's one key plot point I'd rewrite (discussed briefly in the commentary), but otherwise, it holds together pretty well as a gen S4 episode. (Come to think of it, I'd also have to change the few references to Donna's clothing, since the story was written before any of S4 had aired and my clothing choices didn't match what she ended up wearing. But that's an easy adjustment.)

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I very nearly went with Alex Kingston here, and considered Lalla Ward and Mary Tamm as well, but honestly, I think Catherine Tate is the winner.



I'm American, so had no idea who Catherine Tate was when she turned up at the end of "Doomsday"; it wasn't until fandom exploded with ZOMG NOT THE COMEDIAN that I realized she was a big deal. But I loved her in TRB and was excited to see her in S4 – in addition to her terrific comedy sensibilities, she brought a lot of subtlety and emotion to a character who could have just been comic relief in the hands of someone less skilled. And while Donna may have gotten a shitty ending, Tate's performance that series ensured I'll give anything she's in a try.

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I've been having a hard time coming up with random things to post for these "whatever" days of the meme, but eventually figured I could post a nice photo of a knitted Dalek, since that's going to be my next knitting project. As it turned out, a Google Images search for "knitted Dalek" tickled my fancy indeed. Look at all these adorable knitted Daleks! I want to make one in every color. (Mine will probably end up being iDalek blue, though, because I have a skein of that color lying around.)



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An easy one today: A Teaspoon and an Open Mind, the fanfic archive for Who-related stories. I am totally biased due to being on the mod team, but I also thought it was an incredible resource before I joined the team. So there.

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This is not my favorite topic, since I don't feel like I'm terribly similar to any of the companions (except, perhaps, to Donna, at least in certain physical respects); and there are way too many other characters for me to sift through every one's personality traits to see if they match mine.

But it did occur to me that my longtime science geekery might make me closer to Liz Shaw than any of the other companions, so just for the hell of it, I took this quiz, which covers the companions for Three, Four, Five, Six, and Seven. And who did it give me? Liz.

So there you have it.

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By now most of you have probably seen this already, but the one or two of you who haven't must look at it immediately:

A Partial Map of Your TARDIS (Subject to Change)

Gorgeously executed, and the kind of thing that makes a graphic design geek like me want to stand up and applaud. The typography alone is a thing of beauty, and even if that weren't the case, there's still the overall vision, the sense of humor and whimsy, the surrealism, the attention to detail, the floor shaped like a doughnut ... I could keep going, but really, you should just go look at this and admire it for yourself.

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I'd heard of Tumblr when it launched a few years ago, but never paid much attention to it; without commenting features, it never seemed terribly useful to me. But I've been hearing for a while now that Tumblr was the place to go for pure fannish squee, so I finally got off my butt and set up an account a couple of weeks ago.

Since I'm still a Tumblr n00b, it's not really worth picking a favorite site, because things are new enough to me that I may yet change my mind. Instead, here's a list of a few sites I'm really enjoying:

mofftiemnao – crude, yet hilarious.
stupidfacesofdoctorwho – does exactly what it says on the tin.
whoviansexualfrustrationblog – also crude, and also hilarious.

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It's not even close, really: it's the Master, in almost every incarnation. (I know Eric Roberts is occasionally capable of good acting when he tries ... just apparently not in the TV movie.) Even without the blatantly slashy overtones, he's the perfect foil for the Doctor: the person the Doctor could become himself if he let his power go to his head.

(I'm also very partial to the Zygons and the Kandyman, but the Master is just such an epic villain no one else can compare.)

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If you'd asked me a couple of years ago whether I'd ever pick another Doctor's run over one of Tennant's series, I'm sure I'd have said no. S2-S4 have their bumpy spots (one of which will definitely be covered on Day 27 of this meme), and I love Eccleston's run, too, but the series that I've loved the most so far is S5.

I'm not going to praise Moffat by calling Rusty a no-talent hack. He wrote some terrific episodes, and most important of all, he brought the show back in the first place. I didn't like everything he wrote, and he made what I consider to be some seriously questionable characterization and plot decisions, but we wouldn't have the show we have today without him.

But after four years, I was ready for something new. I'd always loved Moffat's episodes, and while I was initially dubious about casting an Eleven who was, as my sister put it, "an embryo," both Smith and Moffat exceeded every expectation I had for them -- as did Karen Gillan, though I realize not everyone agrees with me on her acting skills or the likeability of her character. People talk about how Rusty's years were exactly the sort of storytelling they wanted; Moffat is providing exactly the sort of storytelling I want and didn't even realize I was missing until he handed it to me on a plate. I love his plotting, I love his characters, and I love every episode of this series. (The Dalek episode somewhat less so, but one meh episode out of 13 is still a better track record for me than the previous four series.)

It's going to be a long wait 'til Christmas.

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