Thank you all for your kind wishes for my birthday yesterday. One of the great things about the interconnected age is that we can easily reach out and let someone know that we are grateful for their continued existence. It did and does cheer me up, hearing from old and dear friends, and also from people where I was not terribly sure if they liked ( Read more... )

I have been slack about Big Finish recently - over the last few months, I picked up listening to the tremendous backlog of their output that I had not previously got to, but have blogged very little here. (In particular, I recommend Susans War with Carole Ann Ford, and the David Tennant/Tom Baker crossover Out Of Time 1.) Anyway, important to ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third story ("Poison Pen"):The net result was that Jim Barksfield was doing what he had always vowed he would never do. He was now a pen-pusher, a form filler and successor to the man who had so regularly irritated him over the previous years with his seemingly dogged obsession with procedure, PR. and budgets. Now, and for the ( Read more... )

Tomorrow is the 57th anniversary of the first Doctor Who episode. To commemorate the occasion, I've updated my list of all the times Belgium is mentioned on Doctor Who on TV (plus the Sarah Jane Adventures) and compiled them for you, in historical order.

I've also made an even fuller list of all of the references I felt worth including to Belgium ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third story ("Save Yourself", by Terrance Dicks):The Doctor felt tired, as if he'd been waiting here a lifetime.
I loved this. It's a collection of Doctor Who short stories, edited by Steve Cole with contributions from Joy Wilkinson, Simon Guerrier, the much-missed Terrance Dicks, Matthew Sweet, Susie Day, Matthew "Adric" ( Read more... )

Second to fifth paragraphs of third chapter of Eric Saward's novelisation:'You were mistaken,' said Grigory.
Natasha tugged at the body-bag. 'Unwrap him.'
'Are you sure you want to see this?'
'There is no other way of proving he's actually here.'
Second paragraph of third chapter of Jon Preddle's novelisation:Grigory took a hand-scanner from his ( Read more... )

F and I went to London Film and Comic Con yesterday, despite some travel woes - our original accommodation plans for Saturday did not work out, and an appeal on Facebook brought a very welcome offer from A (who used to be on Livejournal) offering the use of her flat near Marylebone in her absence. So we arrived late-ish Saturday, ate, slept, and ( Read more... )

Still a great deal of catching up to do on Big Finish, but here's a release from 2014, four half-hour stories about the Sixth Doctor and Peri by four different authors, two of whom were regular readers of this Livejournal back when Livejournal was still a thing ( Read more... )

These six audios were released in 2012 and 2013, and I actually bought and listened to them then, but did not get around to writing them up in the press of Worldcon and other business. My revisiting The Talons of Weng-Chiang prompted me to go back to these as well. Unusually for the Jago and Litefoot narrative, they all take place outside Victorian ( Read more... )

One of my vague ambitions for the year ahead is to get back into Big Finish again. There are a load of Big Finish audios which I did listen to a few years back, and never got around to writing up here; I haven't gone into it systematically, but I'll listen again to all those I haven't yet posted about.


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