Late night time travel



Still on a total high from last night's new Doctor Who and thought I'd post this late-night snap of the proper TARDIS-style police box in Buchanan St in Glasgow I took on the way to the station to head back to Edinburgh after Eastercon. My mate's wee boys have been know to go up and hug it - to them it is a TARDIS, just as it was to us when we were kids. We knew it wasn't really a TARDIS, but there was that little bit of you that wanted to believe that it was and that through those doors was a huge inner space of a ship which would take you across time and space. Its the same part of me that wanted to leave my window open for Peter Pan to fly in, explore wardrobes in case they had a portal to magical lands or listen for a clock striking odd hours so I could sneak out of bed and explore a secret garden at midnight. I suspect it is one of the reasons I read so much today and the best novels and poetry give me that feeling of magical possibilities again, adding another facet to the lens you view the world through.

Last night's episode was a cracker; it appealed to me as I am now, but it spoke even mroe directly to the child in me as we saw the return of one of the most loved companions in the series' long history, Sarah Jame Smith and the 70s robotic hound, K9. For those of us who grew up with Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker's Doctors, both of whom the actress who played Sarah, Liz Sladen, worked with this was a special present from the makers of the new show (mostly fans themselves). It was fun to see the Doctor Who Confidential afterwards on BBC 3 and see the behind the scenes for that episode and just how in awe of Liz the new production team and cast were. As new Doc David Tennant said, he had grown up watching her with Tom Baker and remembered K9; now here he is all grown up, acting with them and he is the Doctor.

One workmate said he wasn't looking forward to this episode because it smacked of 'pointless nostalgia'. Well, he was too young for this to be nostalgiac for him, as it was for me (and a lot of you I suspect) and he was totally wrong - the new DW team don't throw these things in just for the hell of it, they put it in if they think they have a good story which requires it. In this case they continued the delightfully silly but great adventure (Buffy's Anthony Head as a wonderful leering villain! Every schoolkid's secret belief that teachers are actually monsters confirmed! Blowing up the school! Great!) but also the trend they have started with the new show which looks at what the Doctor does, how he lives his life and how it really affects the people he deals with in a way the old show rarely did.

This started right with the first episode of the Eccleston series, where the conspiracy theory guy is putting together fragments of the various Doctor's appearances throughout history, always at a time of strife and noting that wherever he goes death abounds. Of course we know it isn't usually his fault and he is trying to save people, but it is true that wherever he goes these things happen. It is a sentiment borrowed from some of the more mature comics and graphic novels from the 80 onwards where, for example, some have looked at the relationship of bizarre villains like the Joker to Batman, asking if the Dark Knight's very existence helps to create these menaces which he then has to defend people from.

Last night's episode was especially touching because it looked at how time spent travelling with the Doctor across history and space affected the companions. How do you go back to a normal life after that sort of experience? Its not even like you can talk to people about it as no-one will believe you. Nice touch where she mentions the spaceship over London seen the the Xmas special and how she imagined the Doctor would be near by ' oh standing on top of it, he replies airily. It is especially poignant for Sarah of course, because she had to leave and the Doctor always promised to come back but never did 9and there he was in London at Xmas and didn't even think to call her!) - now we see Sarah having lived a life waiting for a man to come back to her and when he does it is by accident. We see Rose looking at the Doctor in a different light now and wondering if she is seeing her future. And we see it from his point of view because no matter how human he looks he isn't; he is a Time Lord, a being who will walk through centuries. As he explains to Rose, if she wants she can spend the rest of her life with him, but he can't spend the rest of his life with her; she will age, decay and die as humans do while he will go on, regenerating when one body is tired out, for centuries as the people around him age and die.

It was a lovely bit of balancing in a single episode, throwing in sheer fun, nasty villains and some serious emotional baggage and it made for a cracking story. 30-something me loved it; 10-year old me adored it. And I know a police box is still a police box, but there will always be a part of me that knows deep down that really it is a TARDIS...

We are 3



I almost let April pass without realising this month marks the third anniversary of the blog version of the Woolamaloo Gazette, which took to the air in April 2003, as people were getting very worried about what would happenin Iraq now the war was 'over', bird flu was on the spread and MP George Galloway was having his name smeared by linking it with cash for oil allegations curiously at the same time he was attacking the UK and US adminstrations and their roles in deceiving us into war. Wow, what a difference three years makes!!!! The world is so very different now... Oh, wait...

Scarier is the fact that the genesis of the Woolamaloo was way back in 1991, 1992 at college, where I emailed out spoof newspaper articles on the net (no web back then, just the largely text-based net). I was still doing this years later until my mate Ariel, editor of the Alien Online, persuaded me (and helped me) to set it up as a blog. Since several friends who got the email then forwarded them to other folks I figured it was a good idea, plus the blog format meant I could write on anything and everything as the fancy took me, although I still enjoy posting the occasional spoof article. And still the irony that such a little thing would get me into so much trouble - and make even more trouble for a certain company - cost me a job and land me a better one where I run a blog as part of it still surprise to me when I think about it. Life in the real world and online is a funny old thing. Still, happy birthday to this incarnation of the Woolamaloo Gazette, the blog they couldn't hang.

New look blog

As part of the new website development at FPI my colleague and I spend a chunk of today reworking the original FPI blog which I maintain. We moved it and switched to Word Press, which I know a lot of friends have been using, with a nice, seamless redirect from the old address straight to the new version. We even managed to get the old posts imported, links and all, which was pretty nifty. I must admit to rather liking it although I will need to play around with it a bit to get used to it, maybe think about switching the Woolamaloo to Word Press sometime, then again maybe not.

We also closed down the graphic novel standalone site today and put in a redirect to the new site. Since I finished copying every single graphic novel onto the new site too (and since I was constantly adding lots of new stuff to both sites while I did this it was a BIG job!) it was time to ring down the curtain on that version. I much prefer the new, more flexible and dynamic site - better images on the new titles and we have added features like preview pages, made it easier for folks to add their own reviews, put in pages with awards lists, the What the Author Says feature and more that the old site just couldn't support. It is also a lot easier to use, although I will miss the old site a little since it was the first site I built at FPI.

Chimps attack American tourists

And another weird news story has some chimpanzees escaping a reserve and attacking some American tourists. George Bush called for immeadite action on all higher simians, stating that today they were terrorising innocent Americans, tomorrow the chimps could be building uranium enrichment plants and planning to take over the world, turning it into a planet of the apes. Tony Blair instantly agreed with everything the president said and promised full British support. Osama Bin Liner issued a statement calling on all monkeys and apes to rise up against their human oppressors who were clearly conducting a war against simians but was silenced by a barrage of hurled monkey poo.

The Hole

This is one Weird story with a capital 'WEEEEE': a man in California was swallowed by a hole which suddenly opened in the floor beneath him in his home where he was trapped and killed in rubble beneath the home.

Museum of Scotland



From the outside it isn't a building I find very inspirational, although it isn't especially bad either. Inside is another matter - it has great space for the exhibits, which take you through Scottish history in a roughly chronological order through many floors. There is a lot of natural light even on overcast Scottish days, as you can see here and one of the things I especially like is the irregular shape within - there are little passageways and sudden openings onto short bridges spanning drops like these in the pics here, little balconies in funny corners there for no other reason than to let folk stick their head out and get unusual views. I also like the interface between the old building, the Royal Museum and the new.

The Armadillo