Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 69

The Shape of 2013 (how it was)

I wasn’t going to do one of these this year. 2013 has been a bit of a crazy, scattered blur in many ways. But then I read my 2012 post and was so pleased I had noted things down for future reference. And then I remembered that I won a Hugo which is, you know, quite extraordinary and belies my general impression that I spent most of this year chasing a 4 year old and recording podcasts.

I did totally spend most of this year chasing a 4 year old and recording podcasts. It was a family and friends sort of year, occasionally punctuated by books, short stories and a whole lot of Doctor Who. There were hospitalisations and dramas, all of which are (KNOCK FREAKING WOOD) behind us now. ( I still don’t feel I’ve properly caught up after my pneumonia bout back in September! If I owe you an email, please remind me) It was a tough year in many ways, and a stupidly slack year in others.

Mostly, we came through it intact.

Here are some good things that happened to me:

1. I joined an awesome all-female Doctor Who podcasting team, Verity! Managing to find time to record with various combinations of 1 Canadian, 1 Scotswoman and 3 Americans was super tricky at times, but so worth it. I’m really proud of what we’ve built, staggered with the listening numbers, and very much enjoy a chance to spout off about all the Doctor Whoness in my brain, even if the downside is having to come up with an opinion about each episode super fast. Looking forward to another year of this.

2. I made it to Melbourne twice to record live show podcast Splendid Chaps, which was not only very exciting and cool but gave me the opportunity to hang out with John Richards, Ben McKenzie and Petra Elliot (all awesome, inspiring creative people with so much energy I can’t believe it) and to catch up with some of my inner city Melbourne friends.

3. Galactic Suburbia was nominated for a Hugo for the second time this year! It’s so exciting to feel part of this tradition and the Hugo ceremony itself, even from so far away. My Hugo pin collection is growing…

4. Speaking of which, I won a Hugo for Best Fan Writer. It was… and still is, a bizarre and wondrous thing. It lives on my kitchen dresser. Paul Cornell read my name out on the UStream! The trophy was lost in the post for nearly a week! It is very shiny and I am ridiculously honoured to have it.

5. I was just thinking that I didn’t do nearly as much fan writing this year to justify said award retrospectively, and then I remembered that I wrote a 50 week blog series devoted to every year of Doctor Who.

6. BOOK OUT! A Trifle Dead, the end result of a very rocky road to publication (none of the rocky parts in any way being connected to my current wonderful publisher, Twelfth Planet Press) was released early in the year, under the new crime-writing byline Livia Day. I’m very pleased with the response to this book and looking forward to having more Livia titles out there in the world.

7. Backlisty goodness – thanks to the forceful pressure and guiding hand of Tehani from Fablecroft, I managed to get e-book versions of my first two novels, Splashdance Silver and Liquid Gold, out into the universe. Which leads to…

8. TRILOGY COMPLETED! Ink Black Magic, the third Mocklore Chronicle, has finally seen print fifteen years after the original Mocklore series was launched. Thanks again to Fablecroft, and to Tania Walker for the extraordinary piece of cover art that I love.

9. Short stories published in 2013:

“Cold White Daughter,” One Small Step (Fablecroft)

“The Raven and her Victory,” Where Thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Edgar Allen Poe (Lethe Press)

“The Minotaur Girls,” Glitter and Mayhem (Apex Publications)

10. Short stories written in 2013:

“The Minotaur Girls”

“Letters to Cleopatra”

“Jam and Strychnine”

“Cookie Cutter Superhero”

“Flight of Angels”

11. I made two baby quilts with a couple more on the way, relearned to knit, and managed to fully access The Gingerbread Zone at Christmas time.

12. I earned some (SOME!) money from professional freelance non fiction writing, and a couple of public speaking events.

13. I became the overseas regional director of the SFWA.

14. Arsenal didn’t fall over and break in November and, more to the point, have been top of the table for MONTHS.

15. I acquired an old fashioned kitchen dresser this year, something I had only just started to crave once I realised I had the perfect space for it – one of my best friends lost her grandmother and despite there being a million relatives to help with the sad task of dividing her many worldly possessions, no one wanted to give a home to this particular elderly beast of a piece of furniture. So it is mine and I love it and sometimes I put things in it, and it has never yet failed to yield another bit of space. Possibly it is bigger on the inside. I choose to believe this.

16. My honey and I are at seventeen years and counting. We’ve had to be especially supportive of each other this year, and we both came through. I love that he’s getting back into fencing, which was a big part of his identity when we first met – and that he’s teaching Raeli, which she loves. For his birthday, I put up a family photo wall in the dining room and now we can’t imagine what on earth we thought we were doing with our blank walls before that. So much love.

17. Some Raeli things that I want to always remember: This is the year she was eight. She grew tall and strong, improved her swimming stroke, and embraced being a goalkeeper in her soccer team. On our family trip to Melbourne she wrote a diary and I often spot her scribbling secret things. We read Half Magic and Charmed Life together and are very close to the end of the Pinhoe Egg. The griffin Klartch is possibly her spirit animal. She learned to sew and knit a little. She fell in love with origami and Star Wars via the Origami Yoda series of novels, and leaves folded paper characters all over the house. She got a new bike and sometimes rides it. Her room was excruciatingly messy from Easter to just-before-Christmas, because once she had her new bike she didn’t feel the need to earn further pocket money. I bribed her with digital comics to get over her hump about reading actual prose novels and she took off beautifully. I am NOT doing this method in 2014… She wears long sleeved flannel pyjamas even if it’s a crazy hot evening and is always sad when I make her get dressed on the weekend. Her favourite Doctor was David Tennant until the Anniversary Special; now it is John Hurt. She is very good at Minecraft and has made a world full of creative and innovative buildings devoted to the Greek gods. She catches the bus home most days and is particularly proud of being able to walk home from the bus without me waiting out the front for her as she comes down the hill. I get so impatient with her at times about some of her fuss about the small things she remains afraid of, and yet… she is so much more brave than ever before. She got the whole family addicted to Horrible Histories, cheers whenever the Groovy Greeks come on, howls with delight at ‘Stupid Deaths’ and wails in despair every time an episode ends. She loved the third (prequel) Star Wars movie best, because of all the horrid things that happen in it. She is the best and most patient big sister in the world.

18. Some things about Jemima that I always want to remember: This is the year she turned four. She had a Tinker Bell and Peter Pan party purely as an excuse to wear her Tinker Bell dress and then on the morning decided she didn’t want to wear it after all. Her clothes preferences are 99% ‘pink’ and ‘girlie’ and she insists on being called ‘beautiful’ instead of ‘cute’ (the 1% non girlie fashion choices mostly applies to her pirate hat, though she wears it backwards because she feels the skull and crossbones is too boyish). This is quite difficult for everyone to remember because while she is of course beautiful, she is insanely cute. If she is ever challenged on any information she will explain that she knows this ‘because I am a clever clogs.’ She got this from Peppa Pig but it has now become part of our family glossary. She has a slightly obsessive relationship with the family iPad which we have been known to enable far too often. She started gymnastics this year and is excellent at following dance choreography. Since we got the DVD box set of Monkey! at Christmas, she has been doing martial arts kicks around the house almost constantly – when not water bending as she learned from Avatar. If she could paint every day, she would. Painting is her reason for living. This includes painting her belly button. She has planned out her future as an adult – she will be a cake artist who lives with her Glammer (grandmother). Her favourite Doctor is Patrick Troughton but she also has a soft spot for Peter Capaldi (she made up a song about him) and she still knows that Amy Pond is the best character in the show. We are never allowed to acknowledge her smallness, because she is a big girl. She has reclaimed the ‘J’ in her name, refusing to let us use the baby name of ‘Mima’ most of the time – part of this may be that she only recognises her name written down by the J at the front. This is a slight problem when she comes across other people’s names which also start with J and this has led to her opening mail and indeed presents that are not hers. Because all the J’s are hers. Don’t ever sit in her chair. Her favourite meal is ‘that one where we sit around on the floor and have mayonnaise and lemonade and paper’ because she can never remember just to say ‘fish and chips.’ A tutu is always appropriate day, night and indeed sleepwear.

I’ve probably forgotten some important details but this will do. I’m very grateful to my friends, family and community this year, for all their support and kindness. I won’t be writing one of my usual ‘looking forward to X year’ posts because I honestly don’t know what 2014 will bring except kindergarten and a few travel invitations that I don’t 100% believe in yet, and I hope something finished that is written by me. Watch this space.

2013: A Year in Reading

A strange reading year for me – after reaching new heights of reading the previous year, getting the closest to my pre-motherhood numbers of books read than ever before, I put my feet up and took it all VERY casually this year. Not as much actual reading as I would like – as has been the case a lot lately, my reading desires have been rather stomped on by my love of listening to audio books and plays – but the books I have read have been decadently unstructured. Once I made my way through Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford and the entire Song of Ice and Fire thus far, I kind of felt like I didn’t owe the household library gods ANYTHING ELSE for the year.

It’s been mostly classic literature, re-reading and Doctor Who tie-ins. Which also, actually, means a much more gender-balanced year instead of my usual 80% female authors. I’ve read whatever the hell I felt like this year, and mostly it has not been science fiction and fantasy at all – or published this year.

I even stopped keeping track of titles read in my log. Sooooo slack.

Here’s an equally slack and slapdash rundown of it all:

FAVOURITE COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS:

Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, Saga, Supurbia, All-New X-Men

FAVOURITE WEBCOMICS:

Dumbing of Age, Shortpacked, Questionable Content, Teahouse, Kate or Die, Nimona

AWARDWORTHY SF in 2013

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie; Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan

DOCTOR WHO GEMS:

The Wife in Space by Neil Perryman, Filthy Lucre (Bernice Summerfield), Elizabeth Sladen the Audiobiography, Shada by Gareth Roberts, Queers Dig Time Lords, The Life and Scandalous Times of JN-T

REREADS I ENJOYED:

Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones; Half Magic by Edward Eager; Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

WONDERFUL WILD CARDS:

Flying Higher (superhero poetry), Ovid’s Heroines translated by Clare Pollard, The Other Side of the Sky,

GLORIOUS AUDIOBOOKS:

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, Is It Just Me by Miranda Hart, The Darling Buds of May read by Bruce Montague, Shada read by Lalla Ward & John Leeson

AUDIO DRAMA IS NOT READING BUT JUST AS AWESOME SOMETIMES:

Neverwhere (BBC Radio), Cabin Pressure (BBC Radio), Miranda Hart’s Joke Shop (BBC Radio), Trial of the Valeyard (Big Finish); Doctor Who: Afterlife (Big Finish); Doctor Who: The Light at the End (Big Finish); Gallifrey Series 5 & 6 (Big Finish); Jago and Litefoot Series 6 (Big Finish); Doctor Who: 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men (Big Finish); The Picture of Dorian Gray (Big Finish); Mervyn Stone – the Axeman Cometh (Big Finish); Doctor Who: The Lady of Mercia (Big Finish); Bernice Summerfield: New Frontiers (Big Finish); Doctor Who: Eldrad Must Die (Big Finish); Blake’s 7: Warship (Big Finish); Doctor Who: The Auntie Matter (Big Finish); Doctor Who: The Wrong Doctor (Big Finish); Doctor Who: Son of the Dragon (Big Finish); Doctor Who: The Kingmaker (Big Finish)

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER:

A Song of Ice and Fire, Cranford, Parade’s End, The Evil Eye & Other Stories by Mary Shelley

Post-Christmas Links

The turkey has been dinnered, the Doctor Who Christmas Special and the Call the Midwife Special have competed for the title of Most Depressing Christmas Special that Isn’t Set in Albert Square, and the leftovers picnic managed somehow to create an unholy alliance of leftovers which meant we all left with more food than we arrived with.

I guess that means Christmas is over! That would explain why I was yesterday woken up (at 6am!) by a four year old wailing “I miss Christmas!”

Here are some of my favourite holiday-related snippets of web content from the last week.

The latest holiday-themed installment of the occasionally serialised adventures of Supergirl and Batgirl by Mike Maihack.

A wonderful post at Tor.com about scary lady writers from the Victorian era who penned Christmas horror tales.

I was looking forward to “Saving Mr Banks,” a biopic about PL Travers, Walt Disney, and the making of the Mary Poppins movie, starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks. This post suggests, however, that the movie is not only very wrong in some key points, but deliberately misrepresenting PL Travers in the worst way possible.

This lovely piece at No Award touches on how Christmas works in Australia, and yes I do join the ranks of those who perversely roasted vegetables on Christmas Day despite the heat of summer!

The Reality Bomb podcast, an excellent new addition to the many Doctor Who themed podcasts, presented a brilliant Christmas special, recorded live at Chicago TARDIS. It’s their usual mix of stylish magazine show with rocking radio voices, but I particularly loved the short story which looks at how destructive the ‘not a real fan’ myth can be. Very good fun all around!

Watching New Who: A Christmas Carol

DAVID:

A very interesting Christmas special, as Doctor Who riffs on Dickens. I actually think this is one of the best Christmas specials so far, and certainly the one that takes itself the most seriously (I say this because “End of Time” doesn’t really feel like a Christmas special to me, aside from the original broadcast date which I of course missed). Yes, there are lots of a nice little moments of humour, but this has far more meat to it than the others. It’s very self contained, too, and you can imagine watching this with family members who had never seen Doctor Who, and not having to explain very much – the only vital starting point being that he is a time traveller, which is rather self evident. Because of that It reminded me a little of “The Girl in the Fireplace”, a story that shares some of the same themes – the idea of the Doctor ducking in and out of someone’s life and the way time passes differently from different perspectives.

TANSY:

It’s a great Christmas special – RTD launched the crazy fake snow tradition for the show and I do enjoy his various slightly cynical takes on what constitutes Christmas telly (a grand British tradition that we don’t have here in Australia where the idea of a flagship drama premiering a new episode on Christmas Day is basically unheard of) but I like the Moffat specials more. They feel a lot more genuinely Christmassy and less self conscious. And I do have a soft spot for Victoriana.

More importantly, this is a gorgeously designed alien planet! One of my favourites, in fact. I like all the little worldbuilding details like the flying fish and the way it all feels a bit like it’s an underwater kingdom, with all the tech and architecture resembling old world diving helmets and portholes.

TEHANI:

Very steampunkish! A lot to love, and following a theme of bloody fantastic set pieces for the season!

TANSY:

I even like the flying sharks. Because, how can you not?

TEHANI:

I love flying sharks. Really really want to get me one of these… [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIJINiK9azc]

DAVID:

We’re helped by a great cast here. For a start, the three incarnations of Kazran are perfectly cast, and each actor puts in a wonderfully convincing performance. It was a bit distracting for the first ten minutes as I tried to work out where I had seen Michael Gambon before, and I may have yelled “Dumbledore!” at the television. I’m curious as to what the reaction to the casting of Katherine Jenkins was, whether to was similar to Kylie Minogue or James Cordern, as I am not sure what her level of fame is. However, whatever preconceptions there might been I thought she was wonderful in this, and she managed to invest Abigail’s character with not only a real sense of joy, but a sense of impending tragedy. It did leave me one question though; given their travels with the Doctor should we classify Abigail and Kazran as companions?

TANSY:

Depends on how you classify companions! There’s a new semi-companion status that really only exists in New Who, which is when characters are guest stars and take the companion role for a single Special – if Christina De Souza is a companion then Abigail and Kazran certainly are! But yes, they are quite solidly part of his life for a long time, they take multiple jaunts in the TARDIS, and it’s interesting how much he basically treats them as Amy and Rory.

(Katherine Jenkins apparently = terribly famous opera singer. I do like the way that they folded her musical talents into the story though I am left with a sense that no one was really expecting her to act in this episode and her part was written accordingly).

TEHANI:

Apparently they didn’t expect her to say yes to the role! And one of the songs is an original for the show…

TANSY:

Yes, the ‘silence will fall’ Christmas carol. As if we didn’t already know those words were quite important for the show’s future…

DAVID:

This episode does raise an interesting ethical question, though. As much as it was a lot of fun, and it’s impossible to doubt the genuine affection they held for each other, the Doctor essentially manipulates Kazran into caring for him. He doesn’t just change a pivotal event in Kazran’s life, or remove a tragedy that changed who he should have been, he systematically rewrites Kazran’s memories to make the Doctor a central part of his life and it did make a me little uneasy. There is no doubt this is a redemption story, just like Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and Kazran needs to arrive at a point where he makes the right moral choices to fulfill the narrative. But, the difference between Scrooge and Kazran is that Scrooge is shown the error of his ways, realises how nasty he has been and resolves to change, but is still the same person, while Kazran is actually a different person than the original. I don’t know, perhaps I am overthinking it. Or, should we read it that all the Doctor does is reveal memories that Kazran has repressed but were there all along? This time travel stuff is confusing!

TEHANI:

I think it’s pretty clear the Doctor is rewriting Kazran’s past, and while I don’t disagree with your reading of it as a bit uncomfortable, I want to prefer the more positive reading (giving Kazran a chance to be a better man – which is why the Doctor did it, after seeing Kazran not hit the boy).

TANSY:

I agree Tehani that the Doctor only bothered at all because he saw a hint that Kazran was not irredeemable.

This use of time travel as a clever, “benign” weapon (with problematic consent/free will implications) is something that the Doctor has largely not used throughout his history, and that many fans (including a younger Steven Moffat) have evidently craved. This era has given us many examples and will give us many more! The classic example is Moffat’s first piece of Doctor Who television, the Comic Relief skit “The Curse of Fatal Death” in which the Doctor and the Master keep going back in time and bribing the architect to put more and more specific traps into the building to attack each other.

TEHANI:

I wonder what this says about us as a society these days, if it’s a trope only really used in the modern era?

TANSY:

Also, just as “Blink” was based on one of Moffat’s rare Doctor Who short stories, “What I did on my holidays by Sally Sparrow,” I believe this “A Christmas Carol”, as well as quite obviously riffing on the actual A Christmas Carol story, borrows quite heavily from another of his Moffat’s short stories, “Continuity Errors”, in which the Seventh Doctor faces off against a particularly stubborn librarian, and keeps ducking back in time to change aspects of her life in order to make her more amenable to lending him the vitally important book he needs. It’s told from the point of view of the librarian, and shows her memory of reality actually changing as he disappears and re-enters her life.

It’s creepy and manipulative but it’s important to note that the Doctor IS often creepy and manipulative. Sure, he does it in a ‘good’ cause, but his ethics are quite changeable depending on circumstance. The playing with time thing feels like a specifically Moffat thing, but it’s not out of character for the Doctor.

TEHANI:

And it’s only because the character is played by such damnably charismatic actors that we fail to call out that creepy manipulativeness more often!

TANSY:

Yeah, baby. I call this the Tennant Clause. It is kind of funny though that while the Doctor goes to all this trouble to build himself up as someone for Kazran to trust and believe in (which is actually as much the point of the exercise as making him a better person) it’s the wild card of bringing Abigail along that has the most dramatic effect. As usual the Doctor is pretty dense when it comes to the courting habits of Ladieez and Gentlemen.

Abigail’s role is somewhat passive – she’s often treated like a prop rather than a person, and Kazran’s romance with her feels like it’s 90% about him. I would have liked to see more of her input in those annual Christmas dates rather than the idea that she’s being unwrapped from the ice like a parcel every year. And of course the idea of a fatal illness that’s predictable to the point of a death date is a bit on the laughable side. But considering that this is largely based on a Charles Dickens story, we’re lucky to get any speaking roles for women at all, and Abigail is a million times more interesting than Scrooge’s lost love in the original, so I’m not going to complain too loudly.

TEHANI:

Hmmm, though that was a product of its time which means New Who should not have the same problems – Kazran could potentially have been a girl…

DAVID:

Like all Moffat’s episodes, the dialogue is wonderful throughout. When you give actors of this calibre something to work with the result is wonderful, hilarious when it is meant to be funny and moving when it is meant to be serious. There are some great throw away lines, too, that manage to stick with you for ages – I have no doubt there were plenty of people checking their cupboards for face spiders long after Christmas had been replaced by Easter eggs in the stores!

But, there is one line in particular that managed to stand out above the others.

“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”

To me, that sums up the heart of Doctor Who in a few simple words.

TANSY:

Plus SINGING TO SAVE THE DAY. Why doesn’t this happen in Doctor Who more often? If I don’t get a Peter Capaldi Christmas musical episode at some point in the next four years I’m going to be very upset.

TEHANI:

PETER CAPALDI SINGS?! Has there ever BEEN a full musical Doctor Who episode?! If Buffy and Grey’s Anatomy can do it…

PREVIOUS “New Who In Conversations”



“Rose”, S01E01

“Dalek”, S01E06

“Father’s Day, S01E08

“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10

“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13

Series One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special

“New Earth”, S02E01

“School Reunion,” S02E03

“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04

“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, S02E12/13

Series Two Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

“The Runaway Bride”, 2006 Christmas Special

“Smith and Jones”, S03E01

The Shakespeare Code & Gridlock, S0302-03

Human Nature/The Family of Blood S0308-09

Blink S0310

Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Timelords S0311-13

“Voyage of the Damned,” 2007 Christmas Special

Series 3 Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

Partners in Crime, S0401

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S0405 S0406

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S0408 S0409

Turn Left, S0411

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, SO412-13

Series 4 Report Cards: Tansy, Tehani, David

The Specials

The End of Time

The Eleventh Hour, S0501

The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks, S0502-3

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice, S0504-5

The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood

Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

Watching New Who: The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

THE PANDORICA OPENS

TANSY:

I always forget quite how much I love “The Pandorica Opens” until I’m watching it. The ‘cold open’ piece before the credits is especially wonderful. It’s fascinating how quickly this new mode and tone of Doctor Who has established itself in only a few months, so that the season finale is able to rely on nostalgia about the Eleventh Doctor and the friends he has made along the way.

TEHANI:

It’s quite amazing how much is packed into that beginning, and how lovely it is to revisit old friends in such a way. And they feel like old friends, even though we’ve really only just met them!

DAVID:

The whole setup of this episode is wonderfully done, not only do we get a refresher on some of the key players of the season, we barely have time to draw breath. River is wonderful, and we see her as this real James Bond type figure, absolutely dashing and fearless. And the reveal of the cliff face and the message was hilarious – It is certainly one way to get someone to return your calls!

TANSY:

The River Song of these episodes is my favourite. This is the point at which we start seeing the Doctor respond to her overtures (if not entirely crossing over into romance on his side) by being genuinely intrigued (rather than just annoyed) by this woman who knows him so well that she will deface one of the wonders of the universe just to get his attention – and of course set up a colossal scam which establishes her as Cleopatra, and him as Caesar. My favourite River quote of this episode (and there are many): “I hate wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him.”

TEHANI:

I love that line. And River too. I also love in these episodes that the Doctor by now just completely expects River to be able to do the things she can, and believes her and works with her, without a blink.

TANSY:

Romans, romans romans! Is it any wonder that it’s this episode specifically that I feel so attached to?

TEHANI:

It’s terribly surprising, given your background…

TANSY:

The use of the Roman army in this story just makes my heart sing, and I appreciate especially that as the trap closes in around them, and the Doctor is overwhelmed by the sheer number of aliens fleets in the sky who are personal enemies of his, it’s the Roman army he sings the praises of. This of course leads to a fabulous reveal in the build up to the cliffhanger (people talk a LOT about the cliffhanger from “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” but I think this one is the best use of the form in New Who because of the way it’s set up all through the first episode) that the Romans are Autons – and specifically that Rory, our Rory, who has mysteriously returned as a Roman centurion, is made of plastic.

DAVID:

I loved the way that so many of of the historical foes of the Doctor were name checked in the fleet, but I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see more of them. I would love a modern episode featuring the Draconians, they are one of the more intriguing species we’ve come across.

TEHANI:

Picture me looking blankly at you…

DAVID:

As much as I enjoyed the Doctor’s speech as he stood on the altar, I think that they need to be a bit careful that the whole “Remember who I am?” type thing doesn’t just become a get- out-of-jail-free card. Yes the Doctor is pretty awesome, but he is not omnipotent or invulnerable and some of the best stories have been about how he has triumphed against much more powerful foes who have no reason be scared of him. The whole scaring his enemies works as a great scene here, and worked even more with the Atraxi, but I think it could soon get old.

TEHANI:

Oh David, I’m so very sorry. Perhaps maybe you might not want to watch Season 7…

DAVID:

I guess it shows one of the big shifts in the portrayal of the Doctor from Classic to New Who, where he was once relatively insignificant to now being perhaps the most important being in the Universe. There is probably an essay (or a few) in examining how that might be connected to the changed status of the show – from niche to one of the hottest spec fic properties on the planet.

TEHANI:

Go forth and WRITE this thing!

This is the beauty of rewatching – I really didn’t understand the first time what was going on. Didn’t catch the Nestene references (and would have gone over my head anyway, I think). This time, though, it made a lot more sense, which was a nice surprise! I think sometimes you need to listen really really carefully to put some things together (and having someone give you the historical references is useful too!). Didn’t stop me loving the episodes first time though – I just like them even more now they make a bit more sense.

DAVID:

I’ve been really surprised about how heavily the Nestenes have featured in New Who. I certainly wouldn’t have picked them to be the first cab off the rank when it came to picking a monster for “Rose”. Saying that, they have generally worked well, and they were particularly effective in this story. Rory’s struggles to overcome his “programming” and his devastation at killing Amy are very poignant.

TANSY:

I think the Nestene/Autons work well as a monster reflecting contemporary issues/iconography – and until plastic becomes irrelevant, they will always represent modernity! The real surprise is how little we saw of them in the old days, as their original appearances in the two Pertwee stories were fabulous, and then never again. They would have been really cool in the Peter Davison era – imagine Tegan facing down killer mannequins. Or Ace blowing them up during the McCoy years!

TEHANI:

I love Tegan…

TANSY:

I love that you love Tegan.

The scene in which Rory and the Doctor meet again and the Doctor just carries on, not realising the significance of Rory’s presence, is one of my favourite Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill scenes of all time. I liked early Rory a lot, especially in “Vampires of Venice”, but this is the point at which the actor and the character levels up, and he has developed his dry, sarcastic responses to the Doctor so nicely while still being utterly vulnerable and earnest.

TEHANI:

Yay for more Rory, and more River!

DAVID:

I’m generally not a huge fan of moral relativism, but it was a great concept to see the Doctor’s enemies banding together not through some evil plan, but to try and save the Universe from him. You could understand why for them he might actually be the Bad Guy, and a threat to their existence. After all, he does have a spotty track record!

I have to admit, I did pick the Doctor as the likely contents of the Pandorica from the very start, it wasn’t that subtle. It reminded me of one of the Eighth Doctor Adventures called ”Alien Bodies”…though I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it.

THE BIG BANG

TANSY:

This two-parter has an amazing cliffhanger, all the more amazing because the peril at the end of “The Pandorica Opens” isn’t resolved in a single line or moment, but takes a large part of the second episode to resolve. It’s wonderful to see Caitlin Blackwood back as little Amelia in this alternate version of reality where the stars don’t exist, and the museum scenes leading up to the scene of Amy in the Pandorica (including freeze dried Daleks) are full of tension.

TEHANI:

Yet another fantastic set for the show. Actually, some great sets for both episodes, what with the Romans and Stonehenge and all!

TANSY:

I like that the ‘damselling’ of Amy from the end of the last episode only takes up about five minutes or less of the narrative, and that she’s central to the action in this story for most of the episode. I don’t mind a bit of equal opportunity damselling, and given how much Rory has been damselled in this season, five minutes of Amy here and there is okay by me. For balance, you understand.

The image of her sitting in that Pandorica is so powerful.

DAVID:

I loved the scenes in the museum. The Dalek statues looked great, and really conveyed the idea that all the things we were familiar with had passed into myth or been lost in the fog of antiquity. Combined with the idea that stars had become the domain of dreamers (though I was confused whether it was accepted that there had been stars at one point), all these things pointed to a universe that had suddenly become far smaller, and was merely a remnant of what once was.

TANSY:

My favourite quote from this episode (and there are lots of good ones, many of which have been immortalised in song) is the Doctor’s ‘Come along Ponds’ when he sees big and little Amy together. It’s interesting how epic this story feels considering it has such a small cast for most of the action scenes, just our core four characters running around an empty museum with one Dalek. But the tension is constant, and no sooner are Amy and Rory back together again than everything else is on the line. River is again wonderfully strong in this story, with the hints of that dark edge to her as the Dalek looks her up and starts begging mercy. Wonderful stuff!

DAVID:

For me, the most powerful part of this episode is where Amy is watching the museum video about the mysterious centurion. The idea that Rory has spent almost 2000 thousand years guarding her is simply beautiful, and these two have to be one of the greatest romances in sci fi. There are obviously some dysfunctional elements to their relationship, but overall I find it much more healthy and meaningful than the vast majority if portrayals of love that we see in the media. It actually quite reminds me of Zoe and Wash from Firefly – even down to the faux triangle.

TANSY:

I agree! Amy’s come a long way in this season, from not wanting to admit she has a boyfriend and running away on the eve of her wedding, to embracing Rory as a fellow crew member in the TARDIS, and losing him, and now him coming back to her in such a spectacular way. The wedding at the end is most definitely earned.

TEHANI:

And meeting her family, which of course we only had the aunt of before – while we don’t see them in the same way we see Rose, Martha and Donna’s families of the previous seasons, I love that we do get them established as characters in this episode, not just background set pieces.

TANSY:

I will admit I was pretty over the whole weddings-in-Doctor-Who motif after the RTD era, but I really enjoy this scene in “The Big Bang”. Finally, after seeing Amy isolated and hurting and abandoned for most of the season (and so prickly/defensive before that), we find her happy and surrounded by a real family and friends. Her relationship with Rory, and their happiness, is such a world away from the crackly, hesitant pre-wedding Amy we originally got to know. Though it should be noted, Rory hasn’t changed at all! His effusive call to Amy and their relationship there is very reminiscent of how he called her on his stag night, unaware that she was a lot less sure of their impending marriage than he was.

TEHANI:

Wait, doesn’t she call HIM this time? Which I thought was sweet. Also, when he says “Yes” because he’s scared of her? V. cute.

TANSY:

Yeah, Rory knows his place when it comes to Amy, and while this is played for laughs and quite an old fashioned trope, it suits them both very well.

You’re right that she calls him! And that goes to show that she is an entirely different Amy. How can she not be different, with memories of being raised in a loving family overwriting the Amy who didn’t trust anyone not to abandon her? She is still very much herself in personality, but when it comes to her relationship – yes, this is a different woman. That she is confident and clever enough to stand up in front of everyone she knows and summon her imaginary friend back into existence is one of the character’s most powerful moments and I love everything about it – her performance, her demanding tone, and her reaction to the Doctor turning up in his beautiful suit to dance at her wedding. Like a giraffe.

DAVID:

I did feel a bit bad for Rory, though. Yet again he is upstaged and pushed to one side!

While Rory could easily be perceived as a “weak” character, I think that this is completely off the mark. One of the things that I admire so much about him is the fact that he is confident enough in who he is and in his love for Amy that he can continue to display such equanamity through everything. Some men would be threatened by having such a strong partner, and wouldn’t be able to handle it, but Rory really does possess such a quiet strength that is reflected in his lack of ego (though, of course, we do see some moments where even he struggles). I think it is a great inversion of the tired trope of the colourful, larger than life male and the supportive, in the background female that we see so often in fictional relationships.

Saying all that, the wedding is lovely and it is the perfect emotional payoff for the wonderful love story we have seen over the course of not just the doubleheader, but the whole season. There are two little throwaway lines that sum up the rightness of this wedding perfectly. One is that the Doctor calls Rory the “boy who waited”, and it is only right the he and the “girl who waited” are now together.

The other is this great exchange:

DOCTOR: Amelia, from now on I shall be leaving the kissing duties to the brand new Mister Pond.

RORY: No, I’m not Mister Pond. That’s not how it works.

DOCTOR: Yeah, it is.

RORY: Yeah, it is.

Yes, that is how it works here!

TANSY:

I like Rory’s general lack of jealousy (except under extreme provocation) because he does trust Amy and he’s confident in their relationship. Also he seems quite pleased to see the Doctor – I like the line “How did we forget the Doctor?” and the way that the Doctor is now no longer presented as a threat to their relationship, but a genuine friend to them both. Love triangle = resolved. Friendship continues. Nice.

TEHANI:

I need to mention the music – I really liked the music in this season, and in these two episodes it’s particularly striking. There have been times I’ve felt it gets in the way of the story, but not here.

TANSY:

I think it’s worth noting that we’ve had the same composer for the entire run of New Who, but he keeps bringing new styles in. It’s particularly striking how distinct the musical style is between the RTD & Moffat era, though it’s the same guy doing it. It feels like he threw everything out at The Eleventh Doctor and started from scratch.

David, I have to ask. The bit with Matt Smith’s jacket, when he goes back through his own timeline. Did you see it coming? Had you spotted the ‘continuity error’? Because there was a major fan discussion that year about whether the jacket was just a jacket, and only a few die-hard paranoiacs actually pushed the theory that it meant something. After this story, of course, EVERY tiny detail of the show, especially anything that looks like a continuity error or a dialogue screw up, has been scrutinised to a ridiculous degree.

TEHANI:

Wait, do *I* know about the jacket??

TANSY:

Well, in “Flesh and Stone” when Amy’s abandoned in the forest and can’t open her eyes, the Doctor after being quite careless with her feelings comes back to her suddenly & is really loving and sympathetic and happens to be wearing his jacket again when he had taken it off in that story. He comforts her and tells her to remember what he told her when she was a child. And in “The Big Bang”, we discover it’s because that was him having gone back in time, intersecting with that story from a different direction.

But when we were first watching “Flesh and Stone”, it was a slightly odd moment and a possible continuity error! Because of the jacket.

TEHANI:

Ohhhhh… Nope, didn’t get it at the time at all!

DAVID:

Haha I feel very unperceptive now. I didn’t notice the jacket until it was pointed out. And, it is not like continuity errors are unknown in TV shows! I guess it goes to show that just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that there is never going to be some hidden conspiracy – after all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day (I thought I’d sneak in a Tegan reference of my own…).

TANSY:

Ha, it’s true! I’m pretty sure I didn’t notice it either first time around, it’s one of those things that being surrounded by fan discussion & podcasts will do for you, though when you watch it again you will certainly notice the shift in tone and the way that the Doctor is so much more kind and nurturing towards Amy.

TEHANI:

“The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang” double was the Hugo winner for the 2010 Awards, beating out “Vincent and the Doctor” and “A Christmas Carol” (as well as the fan-vid “F*ck me, Ray Bradbury” and our own Shaun Tan’s short film The Lost Thing, which won an OSCAR instead!). Do we think the win was deserved?

TANSY:

I definitely think that it deserved the win from a Doctor Who point of view – the only episodes I would put in contention with it are not on that list, as I’d suggest “The Eleventh Hour” as well, and maybe “The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone” or “The Lodger”. I like that the Hugo results reflected the delight of Who fans about finally getting such a good two part series finale – I think only “Army of Ghosts/Doomsday” can match it as far as quality goes, and that one did far less to pull together the plot of an entire series. I like to think that voting for the series finale is kind of like voting for the whole spectacular season, because this season is the most cohesive of all New Who (and it could certainly be argued, all Doctor Who ever).

DAVID:

Given the other episodes that were nominated I have to agree with Tansy and say that it probably deserved to win from a Doctor Who POV, though I wouldn’t have howled with outrage if “A Christmas Carol” had won either. I am not sure that “Vincent and the Doctor” deserved to be on there as opposed to ones Tansy mentions – I loved “the Lodger”, and thought the Angels ones were excellent.

“F*ck me, Ray Bradbury” was one of those things that was cleverly done and went viral at the time, but I don’t think it is the sort of thing that you’d look back on five years later and say it deserved a Hugo (of course, you could say that about a few things). As for The Lost Thing, I am going to hang my head in shame as I admit I haven’t seen it! So, I can’t comment on whether it deserved to win over the Who double.

TANSY:

You live in Melbourne! You could go to the exhibition at ACMI and watch it there! (sorry, digression. Carry on.)

DAVID:

I think that New Who has actually been very good at creating cohesive story arcs across whole seasons. The Bad Wolf stuff was peppered right throughout that season, and was obviously thoroughly planned. The only arcs that spring to mind in Classic Who, at least off the top of my head, are the “Key to Time” and the “Trial of a Time Lord” episodes. There is no doubt that New Who is more sophisticated in this regard.

TANSY:

Yes, and maybe the first Tom Baker season with the ‘we are wandering without the TARDIS’ theme, and the ‘Seventh Doctor is being mysterious about Ace’ material, but they simply were not usually organised enough to do such a thing. It’s something that I think is more likely to happen when the producer is also the head writer on the show, a feature of New and definitely not Classic Who, though there were some notable partnerships between producer and script editor. Story arcs were less necessary because it was an episodic show and also because the format already had self-contained stories made up of several episodes. I’d argue that we need story arc more now, not just because audiences expect a higher emotional connection to their SF drama, but also because the seasons are mostly standalone single episodes, and need something to pull them together in lieu of the old ‘story’ format.

TEHANI:

I think it’s a good point you made, about voting for the season as a whole. And everything you said there. It’s a fabulous season!

TANSY:

I do think that Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing was also pretty damn worthy of a Hugo that year. I suspect he wouldn’t swap his Oscar with Steven Moffat’s Hugo, though…

PREVIOUS “New Who In Conversations”



“Rose”, S01E01

“Dalek”, S01E06

“Father’s Day, S01E08

“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10

“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13

Series One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special

“New Earth”, S02E01

“School Reunion,” S02E03

“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04

“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, S02E12/13

Series Two Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

“The Runaway Bride”, 2006 Christmas Special

“Smith and Jones”, S03E01

The Shakespeare Code & Gridlock, S0302-03

Human Nature/The Family of Blood S0308-09

Blink S0310

Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Timelords S0311-13

“Voyage of the Damned,” 2007 Christmas Special

Series 3 Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

Partners in Crime, S0401

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S0405 S0406

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S0408 S0409

Turn Left, S0411

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, SO412-13

Series 4 Report Cards: Tansy, Tehani, David

The Specials

The End of Time

The Eleventh Hour, S0501

The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks, S0502-3

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice, S0504-5

The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood

Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger

Gingerbread Dalek Season

Gingerbread daleks are not just biscuits (or cookies if you are American). “Gingerbread daleks” has become a shorthand for me that conveys a) how ridiculously domestic I get in December, with the crafting and the cookie baking and the menu planning and the (gasp) cleaning; and b) the way that Doctor Who and Christmas have become interwoven over the last few years – in our house in particular.

If Daleks exterminate a forest of Christmas trees, does anyone hear them?

It all started with a cookie cutter that my honey made for me by bending a teddy bear out of shape until it resembled a dalek. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving! I can of course make dalek cookies at any time of year, but once you get a chance to make gingerbread daleks at Christmas, believe me, you never go back.

It was shortbread daleks for a few years, thanks to my daughters’ avowed hatred of gingerbread (sob!) but this year I put my foot down and made both – and having forced them both at Dalek sucker point to try it for the first time in years, they both conceded that actually, gingerbread tastes good. DAMN STRAIGHT IT DOES.

My friend Isabel and her boys are just as Christmas-is-Doctor-Who obsessed as we are, perhaps more. They always decorate their radio-controlled K9 with tinsel. For years she has been making holiday t-shirts for all the kids, using homemade t-shirt printing techniques and Doctor Who fan art. Then, I found an official Dalek cookie mould second hand and gave it to her as a Christmas present – GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING! A couple of years ago she made a double batch of dried bread dough Daleks for the Christmas tree and gave us half.

We have five kids between us and none of them remember a time when there wasn’t a Doctor Who Christmas special to look forward to.

Two years ago was perhaps the pinnacle of a Doctor Who Christmas, largely because of the handmade toys that my Mum made for the girls. This year might top it, though.

The image of the shortbread is the shortbread.

Along with my dalek cookie cutter, thanks to a combination of Etsy and genuine BBC products (finally, bakeware!) I now have a sifting set with a bunch of different monsters & Doctor Who icons, a TARDIS cookie stamp, and a large K9 cookie cutter. I am completely in love with cookie stamps, as they are a zillion times easier & faster to make themed cookies than the constant round of rolling & cutting that is usual with cutters. I’m especially fond of the Weeping Angel shortbreads (made by pressing the sifting silhouette against the dough). The K9 cutter isn’t great for biscuits but provided a great template for a new felt decoration for the tree.

It’s not just Doctor Who, of course. Our tree is a testament to many of our pop culture obsessions, and our interests that wouldn’t necessarily be considered “Christmassy” – we have soccer balls, robots, patchwork, Australian native animals, crystal dragonflies, and a fabric reproduction of Livia Drusilla’s ‘Salus Augusta’ coin which I added to the mix in the year I finally finished my PhD thesis. The girls make new decorations every year, usually at school or daycare, and add to the mix. I also have decorations saved from when I was little and my mother took me to the Christmas hall at Harrods in London – including a little green felt Harrods delivery man.

This year, Raeli turned a tiny kitten cookie cutter upside down and made Yodas.

Holiday traditions are what you make of them, and my favourite thing about our family Christmas is that we let new things in every year, while repeating old favourites.

The gingerbread daleks, though, are here to stay. And I really hope they are one of the fond things that my daughters remember of their childhood.

Gingerbread daleks: a holiday philosophy

Christmas Vids: Happy Holidays Too by the Doubleclicks

The Doubleclicks have multiple Christmas songs out this year but the one about how elder siblings get ignored in favour of their baby sisters is a bit too uncomfortable for me!

I do however love this charming little piece about spending Christmas in transit.

Christmas Vids: A Regeneration Carol by Not Literally

Daughter of Friday Links

My annual appearance at Tor.com. I write about how diversity of characters in YA can improve the genre – which frankly I thought was a bit of a cheat, preaching-to-the-converted sort of topic. Heh. Guess how far down the comments someone uses the term ‘politically correct’ as a perjorative. There are also some lovely in-depth comments that support the argument for diversity being a step towards rather than away from equality, and talk about the ethics of book publishing.

I also appear at Aqueduct Press, summing up my favourite things viewed, read and listened to in 2013 (another, only partly overlapping round up can be found in the latest Galactic Suburbia episode), and I appear at The Book Smugglers talking about my favourite Christmas books.

A great article in Lynne M Thomas’s last issue of Apex Magazine: Another World Waits – Towards an Anti-Oppressive SF

This post looks at feminist fantasy (YA and otherwise) read by the author as a teenager with happy brownie points to the parents who made such purchases possible.

A fascinating lecture delivered by Charlotte Church, about the sexual objectification of very young women in the music industry, and the knock on effects of such objectification throughout those women’s careers.

Tsana wrote a lovely review of my new release, Ink Black Magic.

A few slightly older but still interesting links I’ve been gathering during my ‘friday links on hiatus’ period:

Nicola Griffith on whether her novel Hild is fantasy or history.

Fablecroft has put a call out for pitches for an anthology on the theme ‘Cranky Ladies of History’ – and I’m co-editing!

Liz Bourke of Sleeps With Monsters follows up her post about Reading and Radicalisation.

Doctor Who and the Golden Fiftieth: A Master List of Essays [WHO-50]

Happy Doctor Who Weekend!

To celebrate, and to distract myself as we wait another WHOLE DAY for the actual anniversary shenanigans to begin properly with real TV shows and everything, I’m putting up a masterlist of the 53 (yes, really) blog posts I made weekly over the last 12 months to mark each year since Doctor Who began in 1963. With extras for 1965 and 1996 because reasons. These essays were made with love, and while the weekly commitment was tough at times I am really glad I did it – it was an opportunity to think about and look at the show across its entire history and to get a lot of my stray thoughts down as well as celebrating so many of my favourite bits along the way.

This year has also marked some changes in our family’s relationship with Doctor Who – 12 months ago I had a 7 year old and a 3 year old who both categorically refused to watch black and white Doctor Who, and now I have an 8 year old who will happily put on The Mind Robber to show her friends (while still preferring Tennant and Pertwee), and a 4 year old who claims Patrick Troughton as her favourite Doctor and once made up a song about Peter Capaldi. Also they both like Zygons! My work here is done.

Oh and also since I started all this, I joined a certain ridiculously popular podcast, Verity! (I can’t believe how many people download our episodes!) which has allowed me to blather on about Doctor Who with some amazing women on a near-weekly basis. So that’s pretty awesome.

[Meanwhile, check out my mate Scottish Liz who managed to do about three years worth of anniversary blogging in a single post, responding to the flagrantly wrong i09 'ranking' of 200+ Doctor Who stories from best to worst with commentary. I admire the audacity of Charlie Jane from going *there* in a fandom bound to explode all over her, but I like Liz's list better because it has way more 60's Who in its top 25 and has lines like "The story’s a delight and a fine condemnation of consumerism laced with jokes and a robot parrot."]



WHO-50: The Master List

The Mystery of the Unearthly Teenager [1963]

Barbara Wright at the Brink [1964]

Daleks V. Daughters: Chasing the Next Generation [1965

Missing: Presumed Trojan [1965]

Down with this Ship: Loving Ben and Polly [1966]

The Polly Wright Appreciation Society [1967]

Scream, Victoria, Scream! [1968]

Jem and the Space Pirates [1969]

Scary Astronauts are Go! [1970]

What Katy Said [1971]

The Third Doctor’s Day [1972]

Delgado, Diplomacy & Draconians [1973]

In Defence of Dinosaurs [1974]

Teeth and Curls [1975]

Eldrad Must Live! [1976]

Why Leela is for the Women Too [1977]

Time Lady in the TARDIS [1978]

Romana’s Regeneration Fashion Parade [1979]

Shada Lost and Found [1980]

Tegan’s First Flight [1981]

Playing Dress Ups in Black Orchid [1982]

The Big Two-Oh [1983]

The Trials of Turlough [1984]

Enter the Rani [1985]

Scandals and Trials [1986]

Here’s To the Future, Love is the Answer [1987]

Going Back to Totter’s Lane[1988]

The Only Mystery Worth Solving [1989]

DWM Keeps the Faith in the Wilderness Year [1990]

Genesis of the Timewyrm [1991]

Love, War and Bernice Summerfield [1992]

Dimensions in Time [1993]

Thirtysomething Years in the TARDIS [1994]

Chris, Roz and Original Sin [1995]

These Shoes Fit Me Perfectly [1996]

Happy Endings All Around [1996]

The Eight Doctors (or: Uncle Terrance Cleans House) [1997]

Benny at Big Finish [1998]

The Curse of Fatal Death [1999]

All About Evelyn [2000]

Paul McGann is the Doctor… Again [2001]

Perspectives of Art & War: History 101 [2002]

The Four Villains [2003]

Checking in with DWM 339 [2004]

Dating the Doctor [2005]

Fear Them [2006]

13 Marvellous Martha Moments

That Have Nothing To Do With Unrequited Love [2007]

Spartacus and Spartacus Forever [2008]

A (Great) Year in the Life of Big Finish [2009]

Policing Amy Pond [2010]

If You Go Down In The Woods Today [2011]

The Power of Threes [2012]

Solving Clara [2013]