A Journey through Space, Time and TV

It really wasn’t so long ago that I didn’t know anything about Doctor Who. In those dark days I thought that it was about a time-travelling Doctor who was progressively getting younger (like I’m not sure I realised he had to die when a new actor came along? And I definitely thought he was a medical doctor of some kind). I had a niggling feeling for some years that I would probably enjoy it but just didn’t have the willingness to commit to such a well… commitment.

When I was at school, ABC used to play old episodes of Doctor Who at about 5 in the afternoon. They were always in black and white, I think, so they were all First and Second Doctor stories. I don’t remember anything about them except that the music made me scared and my mum would always say “oh I was so terrified of Daleks when I was a little girl”. I was pretty fearful myself to be honest and would usually subtly change the channel in an attempt to not seem like a scaredy-cat. 

In the years leading up to 2011 (when I became a massive fan) I saw parts of The Shakespeare Code in a second year drama class at uni. We discussed the historical accuracies (vulgarity, men dressed as ladies etc.) and inaccuracies (racial diversity, mostly, and also you couldn’t perform at night because there weren’t any lights). I thought to myself, “well that was silly” but also I was annoyed my lecturer skipped through parts because I wanted to know more. I also saw The Waters of Mars on the TV once. I suspect it was when it was actually released for the first time. I had *zero* idea what was going on, but I kept shushing people when they came into the room because it was good (the robot was not good though, the robot was dumb).

So, those of you who are long time readers (first time writers) will remember my first proper foray into Doctor Who. I decided to begin with Season 5 of the modern reboot because it was the start of the current Doctor and I didn’t want to make too big of a commitment. Hahahahaha. Hilarious. I was instantly hooked. And, of course, doing that introduced me to the mysteries of River Song and everyone was like “you have to watch back further to understand her” and I was like “oh no an excuse to watch more of this brilliant show” so instead of continuing on into Season 6 as I had originally planned, I went back to Season 1… and I took my housemates and my boyfriend with me.

We began marathonning the shit out of that show. I used to finish work in the afternoon and would basically run home across New Farm Park so that we could start as soon as possible. Whole weekends were devoted to Who. And we often had to rewatch episodes to catch up Boyfriend or others visitors to the house. We watched all of Eccleston’s run as the leading man in about 2 days, we hated Martha together, we loved Donna together, we watched Season 5 AGAIN (probably about my fourth time at this point) and finally moved on to Season 6.

And then suddenly, we were caught up. AND WE HAD TO WAIT. Just like every other fan, we had to wait for Let’s Kill Hitler. Admittedly, we didn’t have to wait anywhere near as long as others, but still, it was quite a shock to our systems. I’ve just checked the dates, I started watching in early June, 2011, and the second half of Season 6 started up again on August 27^th. So I think that gives you an idea of just how much TV we were watching and just how quickly we became fans.

Yesterday I got up at 5:30 in the morning to watch the live simulcast of The Day of the Doctor 50^th Anniversary Special with Boyfriend. I made TARDIS shaped biscuits for the occasion and almost hyperventilated when it started. I know there are fans who’ve loved this show since 1963, or who have watched every classic episode, or who waited decades for the reboot. I know. But I feel like the episode yesterday was for all of us, new and classic, young and old, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

My Doctor Who journey has been swift but intense. I loved it instantly and completely, and continue to love it every day. I have Doctor Who shirts and an apron and a mug, I have a Sonic Screwdriver and more TARDIS biscuits than I know what to do with right now. In just over a month I am visiting Cardiff, Wales, almost entirely because that's where they film it. 

And on Christmas day this year, I have to deal with my first ever real-time regeneration…

*Ugly sobbing*

Further Reading

If you like blogs and Doctor Who and blogs about Doctor Who I can highly recommend this post by Britt, and this, this and this, by Alex. 

The Fall of the Eleventh

If you’re not a Doctor Who fan, I’m sorry for your life, and also sorry that this post might not be overly relevant to your interests. (This post is not 100% spoiler free, but it’s also not super spoilery, so if you’re not up to date with Doctor Who, make your choice…. Now).

Matt Smith is leaving Doctor Who. Just announced. Hot of the presses. I guess what you need to know before I go any further is that Eleven is *my* Doctor. If you weren’t around when I first discovered Doctor Who, feel free to go back and read this post, which is a literal transcription of my first Who experience. Please enjoy my first reaction to River Song which was "Who's this wench?" - charming, Lizzy, charming. The first episode I watched was The Eleventh Hour, and I was hooked right from the very start. I watched all of Season 5, and then went back and watched everything from the start of Eccleston, working my way back through again until I caught up with everyone else, who were still reeling from A Good Man Goes to War - in which we all learn the big secret about River Song. The first episode I had to wait for was Let’s Kill Hitler in which, unfortunately, no one kills Hitler.

Let me say now that Matt Smith is making the right choice. He is a very good actor, and he should go off and do all sorts of excellent things with his career. Let me also say that I am sure I will love the Twelfth Doctor. It’s just that, with my watching history, this will be the first regeneration I will watch not knowing what’s coming next. When I went back to watch Nine, I knew he only had one season, and I knew that Ten was coming next. I knew everyone loved Tennant, that he was everyone’s favourite, and that he said “Well” a lot. (Actually, I lied earlier; the first episode of Who I ever saw was The Waters of Mars. It was just on one time. I had no idea what was going on, everything was super dramatic and at the end a tentacle-faced dude appeared and sang the song of his people.) When I watched the Tennant seasons through in sequence, I thought he was great, but I was still waiting for Smith. One season of his was enough, he was my Doctor. And now I am staring down the end. We get two more episodes and then… he’s gone.

And I think this is what is freaking me out the most. It’s not that he’s going, because they all have to leave us in the end, it’s not that we’re getting someone else, because that will be brilliant I’m sure, it’s that we have just two episodes left to enjoy him in. The 50^th Anniversary special isn’t really going to be about Eleven. It’ll be about Ten, and Rose, and wtf is happening with John Hurt and celebrating the show’s history. It shouldn’t be all about the current Doctor, of course, but that means we get just one proper Matt episode. And it’ll be his last. And it’ll be on Christmas Day. For crying out loud BBC, I was just starting to get over my hatred of that holiday, are you trying to crush my soul?

One amazing thing about all of this is that Boyfriend and I are actually going to be in the UK on Christmas Day. So instead of watching the regeneration on the ABC on a hot Boxing Day’s night, we’ll be watching it on the Beeb, in England (probably) and on actual Christmas Day. There might even be snow, if we’re lucky, and a fireplace, and I don’t know fucking mead or something. The point is it will be super British, and just a really different experience to what I’m used to. We will meet a new Doctor in the home of Doctor Who. One of my bestest friends, Amy, will be there, and afterwards we can sit around eating pudding and dissecting what we just saw and what kind of Doctor Twelve will be and weeping for the loss of Eleven. It’ll be great.

Right so I want to tell you guys what my plan for the blog is going forward. But I’m still kind of working it out. So far I have confirmed a designer, the wonderful Finbah Neill, to redesign the page. Go and look at his stuff, he’s very good. Like, wow, I just went and looked over some of those posts again and damn boy. I’m thinking I will keep the dodgy, DIY vibe some of you seem to love but I want to revamp it a bit. Fin is good at lots of things and I’m confident he and I can work something out. The other thing I know for sure is that I won’t be starting any new projects til I’ve finished this semester. So that would be late June/early July. At the moment I think what will happen is I will make overanalysing media a bigger part of what I do from now on but it won’t be all I do. I also would like to take suggestions for things to watch, probably via facebook, so if you aren’t a fan there yet, dooooo it. 

33 Week Challenge Week 5: Sunrise over Sea

Challenge no. 15 – Watch a sunrise from Mt. Coot-tha

Well, I’ve seen a few sunrises in my time, but mostly from the wrong end. That is to say, in my youth* (for I am aged and nostalgic now) I stayed up late enough at parties to “shinerun” as some people I knew called it, to celebrate the end of a party with the sunrise. Most of the time, however, we were too drunk or too tired to actually watch the sunrise, and it was more sort of: “ok, the sunlight’s on the street, NOW can I go to bed?” I did once shinerun and watch a sunrise on a New Year’s morning once. That was pretty good.

*actually, I did this last weekend.

Again, in my youth, I worked in a Donut King and later at a coffee shop. Shifts started at 6am so depending on the time of year I may have seen a few sunrises, but a lot of the time I was in the shop before it happened, or on a train, and usually, still asleep anyway.

This Saturday just gone was the first time in my life I got up specifically to watch a sunrise. Now, in my more comfortable years, I have a job that starts at a normal time and a desire to sleep in as much as possible – it really has never occurred to me to *want* to get up for such a thing. I mean, how good can it really be? I’ve seen the sun. It’s all orange and glowy, how good can it really look when it comes up. And that’s the thing, it’s not really an event, we living in these modern times know it isn’t “coming up”, it’s not the gods deciding to let us live for another day by bringing the sun out of the underworld, it’s not a new sun each time. In fact, it’s not even going around us, we’re going around it, and we couldn’t see it earlier because we were facing the other way in our daily rotation. It’s the same sun as yesterday, as every day, it’s the same sun that’s currently weakly shining behind a bunch of clouds and doing nothing to warm my freezing house. Saturday morning wasn’t special, it was just another orbit, another rotation, in a cycle that’s been going on for billions of years. 6:35am was just the time that the sun shone on Brisbane again.

Can you tell I’m an atheist?

Look, the point I think you know I’m trying to make here is that it was still beautiful anyway. That’s what I love about not believing in stuff. I find the very nature of our orbit and our rotation and the sun itself beautiful. I don’t find it beautiful because god made it so; I find it beautiful because it is.

You know what was not beautiful? My face at 5:30am… which is when I woke up. Somehow, even though I knew I was getting up to see a sunrise, my body still couldn’t compute why it was so dark and why I was making it get out of it’s warm blankets, and then, much to it’s horror, outside to get my hoodie off the line. Before 7am my body and brain are two separate entities. This produces what I like to call my ‘zombie face’. It’s a sort of dry, yet drooling face, with whispy hair and a droopy eye. It’s the kind of face that makes my loving and long-term boyfriend say things like “for a pretty girl you really can be really very ugly sometimes”. Boyfriend has seen this face a few times. One time we had a flight to New Zealand that we had to get up at 5:30 for. When he tried to gently wake me, I punched him in the nose. The face had taken over.

This is a photo of me at 5:45 in the morning, I appear to have hidden most of the zombie face by raising my eyebrows and trying really hard, but I can see that it is still there, waiting to scare small children.

So I drank a tea in the dark, donned as much warm clothing as physically possible, and tried to wash the zombie away. Chris, my sunrise companion arrived and drove us to Mt. Coot-tha for my first, deliberate sunrise watching experience.

And yeah, it was beautiful. For those who know the geography, despite Coot-tha being a fairly poor excuse for a ‘Mt.’ we could see all the way out to Moreton Island and the ocean beyond. The sun came up there, and despite (or perhaps due to) the thick cloud cover, we saw massive beams of sunlight hitting the long white dunes out there. It looked a lot, as Connor, another sunrise buddy said, like Jesus was walking on the water out there. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong side of Moreton Island to stage his second coming, so no one will ever know. There was a mist over Ipswich and out to the Dividing Range that slowly lifted as we watched and a reflection of the sun’s light on clouds out to the West. It was genuinely, well worth the effort of getting up and subjecting others to the zomb.

Here are some photos I took on my phone:

And here are some actually good ones Chris took:

 this one is amazing

Connor and I looking at the thing

wow, right?

Good Morning!

An amazing added bonus was that I then had a whole day in front of me. We ate breakfast at the café at 7:30am and I was home by 8. I was so very awake for my karate class at 10 and by midday decided I would use the time to watch the entire Eccleston season of Doctor Who.

Which, I think, leads me into a couple of quick updates about some other challenges I have recently started.

Becoming a Doctor Who fan is coming along nicely. Ok, I’m fanatical to the point of being dangerous to myself. Since my last blog post I have watched the entire 5^th season. Here is my reaction to the final episode:

Episode 13: The Big Bang

Tiny Amy – hello!

If there’s no stars, is there a sun?

Time travel is fun!

Seriously, fuck off Dalek.

Ooooh, Sun explained. Thank you.

“It’s a fez, I wear a fez now.”

Ooooooooooooohhh

*cough* the bride’s gone crazy

Doctor in tails!!

I think that was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

After this, I fought with myself about going on to the 6^th, made the decision to instead go back to the start, watched the whole first and half of the second seasons. At this point, I sort of don’t want to do anything else and am wondering if there is some way to get paid for watching Doctor Who. I had to use significant will power to write this post instead of continue watching. I’m not too worried though, this sort of obsession is normal in me, the need to watch it at all the time will fade, as it did with videos of Neil Patrick Harris, Paul McDermott, The Doug Anthony All Stars and Harry Potter (the books, don’t worry). I’m still a massive fan of all those things, I just need to O.D. for a while and then it will become a part of me, like those things did.

Yes, I know.

Growing and looking after a herb garden nearly fell apart when I discovered that something had eaten all the tops off my seedlings. Seriously, the looking after part is so much more difficult than the planting them part. Like children, really. I put off dealing with this for a few days and then went to the hardware store. I wasn’t sure if it was bugs or possums/rodents but it seemed easier to try killing bugs first, so I got bug spray. Spraying this on my herbs led to the surprising discovery that there were a bunch of, now rather unhappy, bugs hiding in the dirt. The herbs are doing ok, but I keep forgetting to water them so we’ll see how they go.

Writing a blog every Monday for the NYWM is going fine; this is the second of four that I need to do in June, so half way there! I feel sometimes as though I’m cheating, as some people are doing things like writing 1000 words a day or finishing their novels. But at the end of the day, I actually love writing this blog, and this challenge thing has been really excellent for me. Making the commitment to NYWM has helped me stay on track and the Monday deadline makes me feel like I’m a real writer who has to produce material every week…. Even if it is about my zombie face and the earth’s rotation around the sun. I hope you’re enjoying it too.

Stay classy, bloggeroos, stay classy.

33 Week Challenge Week 4: Doctor Who

Challenge no. 20 Become a Doctor Who fan – I was going to edit this post and make it a bit more rounded out, but I’ve decided I love it just the way it is, nawww.

The intrepid journey of a (potential) brand new Doctor Who fan…

I thought that the best way to document my foray into the world of Doctor Who is to keep a word document open as I watch and just jot down anything that comes to mind. So here goes. What follows is the account of a Doctor Who virgin throwing herself into season 5 and all that Matt Smith can offer her.

Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour

Isn’t that a title usually reserved for the end of things? I feel like that’s probably important.

Ok, Doctor falls from sky into child’s yard. This kid is unusually brave – I was convinced there were scary things in my backyard all the time when I was her age. If a man in a police box landed there and started raving about apples and vomiting up magic dust I would be cowering behind my mum, not inviting him inside. Lucky her, I wish I was brave.

Great. She doesn’t have a mum. I’m a terrible human.

Hahahahaha – the Doctor just voiced my concerns.

….

Wow I got enthralled so intensely I forgot to write stuff down for 40 minutes.

Notes: Amy is hot. Also I totally knew she was a fake cop.

Oooo wedding dress – predictable but also dun dun dunnnn

That was amazing.

Episode 2: The Beast Below

This show is the master of catchy opening scenes

*I* want to fly in space with the Doctor holding my ankles…

Surely the monarchy wouldn’t last this long?

The Tower of London? Nice.

I want a starwhale! How can this show make me want so many not real things?

Episode 3: Victory to the Daleks

DALEKS! They’re somehow adorable

Churchill and The Doctor, comrades in bowties

I take it back; Daleks are the most irritating ever.

Amy is left alone with Winston Churchill – now if that isn’t interesting conversation, nothing is.

Doctor threatens daleks with a jamdrop… that is a man I can respect. More problems should be solved with jamdrops.

The Daleks use words like paradigm and continuum – it’s like there are year 12 English teachers trapped inside those metallic bodies somewhere. “Marginalise. Foreground. Discourse. Exterminate.”

Don’t think I haven’t noticed the reoccurring crack in… Space? Time? Spacetime?

Hooked. Should probably eat some dinner, it’s 9pm.

Episode 4: Time of the Angels … I’ve heard about this one, apparently I won’t be able to sleep. Going to risk it.

I’m boiling pasta while watching, who’s this wench? Will she make Amy jealous? Is Amy meant to be jealous? There’s something weird going on there but I’m not sure yet if it’s actual awkward sexual tension.

Everyone speaks English – babel fish?

If I blink it will come out of my mac…

Also, good pasta Lizzy, nice work.

BUT WHAT IF THEY’RE ALL ANGELS?

Guys going off on their own? Yeah… they’re going to die

Yep. Dead.

Fucking picked it! Oh my god I’m never going to sleep.

To be Continued?! But I need to go to bed. Hmmm… maybe one more would be ok… (this is clearly a trap).

Episode 5: Flesh and Stone

Ok, so I went to bed. I rejoin you now, a few days later, to continue my journey in the world of the Doctor…

The crack! The crack is back. Hello there crack!

Seriously, these angels are terrifying. AND they took his jacket. That was a nice jacket.

*I* want a forest in a space ship.

Is the crack following Amy?

Also that was sweet… I hope they love each other some day *squishy face*

Haha the soldier’s name is Marco and they are trying to find things… Polo?

My mum called, I don’t think she understands how important this is.

AHHHHH!!!

Oh, kisses! But weird, not good kisses. Now I feel all sorts of things.