Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 83

The New Blake’s 7?

I refused at first to consider this news, because you know we’ve been here before. Blake’s 7 has been teetering on the edge of a remake for the last fifteen years. It’s always come to nothing.

The biggest problem for fans to overcome is the casting issues. Because this isn’t like Battlestar Galactica, not at all. The cast and characters of Blake’s 7 are ingrained deeply into people’s memory of the show. The question of ‘but what about Avon’ is actually kind of confronting to many, because the idea of seeing anyone other than Paul Darrow circa 1978-1981 is hard to wrap your head around.

Luckily for me, I listened to the rebooted version of B7 done for radio back in 2006, and thanks to Daniela Nardini, Colin Salmon and the rest of the excellent cast, I am on board with the fact that these characters can be recast into a new ensemble and everything that was great about them will still be there. (though I wasn’t a fan of their Vila, turns out Michael Keating is the hardest one to replace)

I struggled with the fact that Jenna in the radio version had an American accent, but I think that was largely because everyone around her was British so it felt jarring. The very Scottish Servalan, on the other hand, was surprising and lovely. While I’d love to see an all Brit version of Blake’s 7 for this reboot, it’s pretty unlikely.

However, I’ve figured out how Syfy could turn the new Blake’s 7 into something spectacular that fans would get behind, AND follow the spirit of the original by having an older, more grizzled and battlescarred cast – all they have to do is cast the entire ensemble from the beloved former examples of them getting science fiction very right: that is, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica and Eureka.

Such as for example…

BLAKE – Joe Morton

Blake is a hard character to get right. He’s not the straight out hero that he is mostly inside his own head. He should certainly not be a shiny young pin-up boy. He’s getting to that age (not quite middle age) when it’s a bit harder to get up once you’ve been knocked down. He’s also obsessive, selfish, a born politician prone to making long virtuous speeches, and he settles into an authority role a little too comfortably, where-ever he goes. Joe Morton’s portrayal of Henry Deacon had a lot of these elements, and he also showed a far more complex range whenever the character went off the rails, or edged towards villainy. He’d be a surprising casting choice for Blake but would carry it off magnificently, ensuring that the character doesn’t slip into the one-note Good Hero Man that there is a danger the narrative might expect of him.

[FIRST ALTERNATE: Jamie Bamber]

JENNA – Katee Sackhoff

Jenna was one of my favourites, a character with great potential who unfortunately all but disappeared in her second year of the show, suffering from the “let’s keep the ladies safe on the ship” syndrome. But she was tough, snarky and highly capable, a smuggler and expert pilot whom the crew relied on very deeply. I’d like the new show to make sure she is seen as the headline act that the character always should have been, and casting is the best way to do that. Who better than Sackhoff?

FIRST ALTERNATE: Gina Torres, who is not in any of these shows but can play anyone she likes in the cast at any time, including Avon

VILA – Wil Wheaton

As with Blake he shouldn’t be a young kid, but someone with a few years under his belt. Comic timing is essential. Sadly some of the best comic actors from the shows I mention are just too damn tall. As a coward and a drunk, Vila needs to be played by someone who can balance humour and misery in entertaining ways, and steal everyone else’s thunder with his lines.

FIRST ALTERNATE: Neil Grayston

SORRY EVERYONE FORGET WHAT I JUST SAID! Obviously Mark Sheppard must be Vila.

GAN

Ugh, this is a hard one. The character arguably contributes the least to the original team, and would be the easiest to edit out of the story. On the other hand with a bit more development and good casting he could be pretty awesome – and this is the point at which I realise that D’Argo from Farscape was basically Gan. Same premise and set up. If you put a great comic actor like Colin Ferguson in the role, Gan would be awesome but probably at the expense of Vila. Instead you need a pure straight man, someone to be the humorless muscle and be sacrificed when it’s most convenient. Which… yeah. Better to leave the character out, I feel.

AVON – James Callis

I know, I know. We don’t want a repetition of Gaius Baltar stuck awkwardly in the middle of Blake’s 7 But as Dr Grant in Eureka he showed that the slimy nature of Baltar was entirely acting – he’s brilliant at playing stone-faced characters who are entirely selfish but may or may not be your friend. He’d be brilliant.

FIRST ALTERNATE: Talmoh Penikett

CALLY – Erica Cerra

The danger with Cally is that being the telepath, she be cast and written as the ‘soft,’ nurturing or spiritual female character to balance out the ‘tough’ female character – Deanna Troi to Tasha Yar, or Zan to Aeryn Sun. Cally is certainly spiritual but she’s also tough as nails (there are no soft characters in Blake’s 7) and in the early days her ability to shoot people and glare at them is far more essential than any magical mind-sharing business. Sure she has that too, but she mostly uses it to unsettle people WHILE SHE SHOOTS THEM.

FIRST ALTERNATE: Gigi Edgely

SERVALAN – Claudia Black

My first choice for this essential role was actually Ming-Na but she is on the SHIELD cast so probably won’t be available. And as soon as I opened this up to Farscape alumni as well as the other shows, it became obvious. For this role you need hard as nails, sense of humour, extreme lack of a sense of humour, glamour, deathstares and withering banter. She could totally pull it off.

FIRST ALTERNATE: Tricia Helfer

SECOND ALTERNATE: Virginia Hey



TRAVIS – Ben Browder

Because evil, why not?

FIRST ALTERNATE – Jamie Bamber, Talmoh Penikett or any of the flinty-eyed blokes who didn’t get into the first ensemble and are willing to sport an eyepatch.

OTHER CAST WHO WOULD BE HANDY TO HAVE AROUND ON OCCASION:

DEL GRANT – Colin Ferguson

ANNA GRANT – Sally Richardson-Whitfield

AVALON – Felicia Day

AND SOMEDAY, ONCE THE CAST START JUMPING SHIP FOR OTHER SHOWS:

TARRANT – Niall Matter

DAYNA & SOOLIN – actresses we haven’t heard of yet because these two characters actually can be cast pretty young

In conclusion, I miss Eureka a lot.

EDIT: Obviously the whole point of this post is for you to all post your casting suggestions too! Use whatever metric or acting pool you like. Entirely peopled with Doctor Who actors? British accents only? Go for it!

The Trials of Turlough [WHO-50—1984]

Turlough was one of my favourites. I’m not sure why especially, except that he brought the snark better than anyone. Tegan would complain and shout a lot, but Turlough got to be witty and elegant in his resistance to the Doctor’s particular brand of virtue and heroism.

“What is it about Earth people that makes them think a futile gesture is a noble one?”

There’s a popular idea that classic Doctor Who companions always start out with pots of characterisation and then gradually descend into bland screaming girls until they are finally written out at the request of the actor. I’m not sure that’s entirely true for any companion at all – it is true that many get stronger scripts to start with than later, but it’s rarely such a linear progression as fans (and perhaps the actors) tend to believe. Sarah Jane’s feminism waxes and wanes rather than sliding in a downward spiral, and the same is true for Nyssa’s scientific know-how, Jo’s spy skills, and so on.

It is rare for extra backstory to develop after a companion’s first appearance – though it did happen to some extent with Ace, and with Tegan. Many companions started out with almost no backstory and… never got any more.

Turlough was an outlier. He began as a mystery, and continued to be so right up until his final story where absolutely everything was revealed. Luckily for the producers, Mark Strickson had put a lot of thought into making it look like his character had broody secrets all the time, and so it all fit together surprisingly well, as if it had always been planned.

When we first met Turlough back in Mawdryn Undead, all we knew were a few intriguing details dripped into the script: he was an exiled alien living at a boy’s school: easily swayed by the melodic seduction of the Black Guardian, who promised Turlough his freedom (and not a lot more) in exchange for murdering the Doctor.

“The worst place in the universe – English public school on Earth.”

The trouble is that the Doctor in his fifth incarnation is sweet and adorable, like a kitten in pyjamas, and every time Turlough picks up a rock with any degree of enthusiasm, the Doctor’s general affability works its magic on him and he can’t bring himself to do it.

Once they get all that out of their system, he and the Doctor get along quite well – Turlough’s cynicism balancing out the Doctor’s generally positive view of life. He and Tegan fought a lot, but occasionally managed to stop bickering long enough to save a planet or two. In Frontios, Turlough reveals that the scary burrowing snail monsters, Tractators, have a long history on his own home world, and manages to sell how terrifying they are despite the evidence of our eyes. Apart from that, the character continues with something of a blank slate, with snark and secretive twitches.

Still, the Doctor never holds his secrecy against him, much as he never shows a glimpse of reproach for that whole attempted murder thing. In Planet of Fire, with Tegan gone, they appear to be two mates on holiday rather than the usual Doctor/companion dynamic.

Turlough is not the only companion in this story. Kamelion, the shape changing robot who had joined the crew in The King’s Demons only to be ignored until now, is sent off marvellously. Kamelion ties in with two plotlines: that of the Master (who has managed to shrink himself by accident and is mind-controlling the robot Kamelion remotely to take on his own appearance) and the new companion Peri (repeatedly taking the shape of her stepfather Howard, in order to manipulate her).

Turlough himself has almost nothing to do with the Master-Kamelion-Peri plot, though I enjoyed his interactions with Peri very much – and not just because it’s a bit dreamy the way he rescues her from drowning and gives her a bedroom in the TARDIS before she’s even had a chance to dry off. I always felt a bit sad that this companion combination didn’t have longer together. In any case, Turlough’s own subplot is simmering beneath the surface including a tattoo we have never seen before, and the discovery of his long-lost brother on a distant planet.

In one fell swoop we get the lot: Turlough’s planet is named, we learn that he and his brother were kicked offworld as children because of their parents’ political “crimes” and also that the political situation has changed and he can now go home.

He even gets a first name: Vislor, of all things! There we are, everything explained, and he leaves the Doctor in Peri’s hands with what have to be my favourite companion leaving lines of all time:

“Take care of him, won’t you? He gets into the most terrible trouble.”

Considering that the very next story would see the Fifth Doctor executed, poisoned and finally regenerate into his Sixth Incarnation, Turlough’s line turned out to be horrible prophetic…

ALSO ON 1984:

The Beginning of the End, Resurrection of the Daleks [NeoWhovian]

Planet of Fire [Wife in Space]

The Caves of Androzani

A Regeneration for the Ages, Caves of Androzani [NeoWhovian]

The Modern Woman’s Guide to Classic Who: The Sixth Doctor [TansyRR.com]

The Joy of Six [Tor.com]

Companions in Comics: Can Frobisher Lay an Egg? [Doctor Her]

The Twin Dilemma [Wife in Space]

PREVIOUSLY:

Austen Economics and the Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

So, a pretty big thing happened in the last fortnight – the Lizzie Bennet Diaries came to an end. This popular web serial ran for 100 episodes, plus several extra Q&A vids, and a bunch of short spin-offs which explored self-contained, highly relevant side stories.

The premise was a modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, told via the web diary of media student Lizzie Bennet. And it was simply wonderful. The performances were great, the writing was exceptionally clever, and the lampshading of the format only strained in very few places – whenever the audience started to question whether the characters would realistically share so much on camera to an internet audience, the script was usually there in time to provide extra motivation or exceptional circumstance.

Character arcs were often deeply affected by whether or not a given character had seen the videos in question, for example – so as well as looking at many of the themes of the original story, the LBD also looked at issues to do with internet safety, the ethics of talking about or even filming people behind their backs, and WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THAT PERSON FINDS YOUR BLOG AND CATCHES UP ON ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS YOU’VE EVER SAID ABOUT THEM OMG.

The fandom surrounding LBD was pretty rabid, and it was fascinating at times to follow the tags on Tumblr which revealed how many fans of the show had not in fact read the original book, or come across a previous film/TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Many were coming to the story cold, and a whole bunch of teenage girls read P&P for the first time during the last year, entirely because of LBD.

While I enjoyed the meta within the story’s framing narrative, such as the Q&A vids where Lizzie would frown and wonder why so many people were asking if she could play piano, for example – which relied on the joke that much of the audience had read the original by Austen, I mostly avoided as much of the ‘outside meta’ of the show as I could, only catching up on interviews and behind the scenes stuff after the fact, though I did catch the occasional article here and there. I find it interesting that much of what the creators said about LBD revolved around what they were doing “differently” to Austen – more focus on Lizzie’s friendships and family relationships rather than just romance – when in fact, I was most impressed by what they were doing that was exactly the same as Austen. Ahem. Such as the focus on family and friendships.

Anyone who thinks Jane Austen just wrote romances has not in fact got Jane Austen. I try to be outspoken about this topic thanks to Joanna Russ, who was the first scholar to clarify for me how much women’s writing, especially women’s writing with any kind of romantic storyline, is often categorised firmly as ROMANCE rather than FICTION. This is not a slight against romance or indeed Romance, but such a categorisation can seriously impact the reading and reception of the story, as well as how it is remembered.

This is particularly important with the Brontes – Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are simply awful if you try to read them as Great Romances, and often discussions about Charlotte and Emily Bronte descend into readers trying to justify their emotional love or hatred for those stories in terms of how the ‘romance’ worked for them. (It also explains why people making movies of Wuthering Heights often cut out out the most interesting and redemptive half of the story, dealing with the generation that came after Heathcliff and Catherine)

I have nothing against romance as a theme or a genre, but I think it’s important to note how badly a reading of a novel can be skewed if it was not formally written as a Great Romance but is being read as if that’s what it should be – it’s a bit like trying to judge Bleak House on how it works as a murder mystery. (hint: it is actually the worst murder mystery of all time)

It’s also I think worth pointing out that even category Romance novels, the most romancey books of them all, are rarely 100% about a love story. The really good ones are usually as much about community, friendship, travel, time travel or the workplace as they are about the romantic connection between two people.

Jane Austen’s novels have even more trappings of Romance than those of the Brontes – her stories start with single people and end in marriages, they feature love narratives, and they have at times a pretty high Swoon Factor. Especially if you’re comparing the lads in them to Heathcliff or Rochester.

But where the Lizzie Bennet Diaries got it absolutely right, perhaps more right than any other adaptation ever, is in recognising that Pride and Prejudice, like many of Austen’s novels, has as much to say about economics as it does about romance.

Elizabeth Bennet’s story is not just about looking beyond first impressions to discover that the conveniently wealthy man she has been swapping snark with is a bit dishy, really. It’s also about the precarious legal and financial situation of women of her era – and how easily the privilege that her quite well off family is clinging to might be lost because her father had no son.

Sense and Sensibility explores the potential fate of a widow with daughters, offering an alternate history timeline for the Bennets. Mansfield Park takes it to the next generation, showing the contrast in fortunes of sisters who marry for financial security vs. love. Pride and Prejudice may allow us through Elizabeth and Jane to have our cake and eat it too, combining financial security with love as its narrative climax, but it is also swift to point out that not all women are that lucky.

Elizabeth never considers taking the ‘secure’ option of marrying Mr Collins to protect her family, rightly surmising that it would make her miserable. After justifying her position to her mother and being supported (despite all financial sense) by her father, she then struggles with her friend Charlotte’s choice to “sell out” and accept that same loveless marriage as a better option than spinsterhood. Losing and then regaining her respect for Charlotte’s choice despite disagreeing with it is a vital part of Elizabeth’s journey. Likewise, the effect that Lydia’s scandalous behaviour has upon the whole Bennet family, not just socially but for their future economic security, is an important story note because of the complex ways in which social reputation, marriage, and prosperity were all linked together in this era.

[If you want to experience the creative choices of LBD without being spoiled, go watch it now & come back after that!]

The aspect I most enjoyed about the Lizzie Bennet Diaries is that while it has an emotional centre and conveys its love stories very effectively, most of the high stakes situations for the women in the story revolve around work as much as (if not more than) romance. Mr Collins offers Lizzie a chance to work for his corporate video company, which would involve ditching her education and the work she is doing with her own videos, but give her a financial security her family could definitely use. She turns him down, and is devastated when Charlotte takes the job instead, rightly pointing out that she is sacrificing less than Lizzie because she wasn’t working on her own original projects anyway. She wants to work in the industry, and the Collins offer has more appeal to her.

As with the Charlotte in the novel, she takes control of the situation and makes the best of the “marriage” to Collins and Collins – by the end of LBD, Charlotte Lu has achieved personal success and is on track for a great career, due to her skills in compromise and negotiation. Lizzie meanwhile has also ascended due to her rather more slapdash and creative (if precarious) methods, but a lot of that has to do with luck and being the main protagonist of the story. Charlotte got there by a tougher but more realistic route. They’re both doing great. Hooray!

Likewise, the awful Lydia scandal is no longer about a young woman damaging her family’s reputation by eloping with a man who does not intend to marry her, but becomes a story of emotional abuse, culminating in Wickham’s attempts to profit financially off their relationship (and avenge himself on Lizzie/Darcy at the same time) by setting up a paid subscription sex tape with a countdown ticking away…

Lydia is one of the best characters in this series, a bright and frivolous girl with bags of personality, and the more I fell in love with her, the more I worried about how the Wickham storyline would be handled. It was genuinely distressing, particularly the way that we saw her become more muted and devoted to Wickham in their separate vid stream, and the obvious (to us) methods he was using to manipulate her in front of an audience.

This was especially hard to watch because Lydia’s descent had been so gradual and was so personal – we had followed her through so many ups and downs with her family, her growing friendship with her dour cousin Mary, and she had largely (cleverly) been used as a charming comic relief character for much of the LBD narrative. It’s much harder to cope with Pride and Prejudice’s storyline if you genuinely like Lydia as a character, and LBD pulled no punches here. The use of George Wickham and the progression of his character from likeable hot boy and Lizzie’s sort of someone special to his darker side was also very well conveyed, as was (however painful) putting Lydia and Lizzie in a bad enough place that Lydia would indeed go after the boy her sister had liked. Austen’s Lydia would not have thought twice about it, but the LBD Lydia needed to be emotionally wounded already to do that – and this made for painful, confronting watching!

The only thing that makes no sense about the narrative of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is that there would have been plenty of viewers watching both sets of videos who would have emailed Lizzie LONG BEFORE the reveal to tell her she desperately needed to see what was going on with Lydia and George once it all turned super creepy. Her dodgy phone and the distractions at Pemberley Digital honestly was not enough to explain this disconnect, as the real time nature of the story meant that the bad stuff went on for WEEKS.

It was also really upsetting for me to see how badly Lydia was damaged and quietened by her experience with Wickham, even once the day had officially been saved. Part of me did feel that she was being punished for her exuberance and her flirty nature – all those things that had led to Lizzie’s misreading of and misunderstanding of who she was as a person. But on the other hand, it was a devastating betrayal and there wasn’t really time to see her bounce back from that credibly.

LBD trod a really thin line with Lydia between commentary about slut-shaming and the assumptions people make about young women who get drunk, like to party and flirt and so on, and actually shaming Lydia for her behaviour. I think they just came away from it on the right side of the line, but only because of the deep focus on the three sisters supporting each other at the end. Unfortunately this is one case when the actual plot and structure of LBD got in the way of things, however, as it feels like the point was hammered home a little too forcefully after being made.

On the other hand, Lydia wasn’t stuck with the evil bastard for all eternity like her Austen counterpart, so thank goodness for progress.

Back to happier storylines!

Jane and Bing’s relationship is rife with class issues that have to do with his status as a son of a moneyed family in America as well as his impending status as a “DOCT-AH” (the latter of course being what Mrs Bennet is most interested in). Some things, sadly, never change. Much of the early LBD vids revolve around Lizzie’s frustrations with her mother’s old fashioned attitude to marrying off her daughters, but I did like that the underlying money issues their family was having (while putting three 20 something daughters through college) and the threat of losing their house were played with such sneaky subtlety.

Like Austen’s Elizabeth, we get to see that Lizzie is often judgemental and not always right – Jane and Charlotte in particular point out that her characterisation of her mother is often unfair or one-sided, and this is to become very Plot Relevant with her equally narrow characterisations of Lydia and Darcy. On the other hand, the anachronistic attitude of Mrs Bennet is an important narrative thread – and I am VERY glad that they never actually showed us a real Mrs Bennet in the videos, as well as that in character she never discovered those videos. Probably.

Jane’s characterisation and narrative remains very similar to Austen’s Jane. But she benefits greatly from the different opportunities allowed to women now – and her story is as much about her career as her romance. I liked how Jane’s character was expressed through her attitude to her work – when we first get to know her she is struggling in a minimum wage fashion industry job which requires a long commute (which Bing eases through use of his car, just as he uses his wealth to make her life easier in other ways, contributing to Caroline’s concerns that Jane is using him) and we get the impression that Jane is taken advantage of at work because of her nice, helpful nature. In the wake of the Bing breakup, she takes a much better job in LA, which at first looks like it might be her following him to get some answers about their relationship. But when that comes to nothing, she focuses on her career and becomes happier and more self-contained despite her romantic sadness.

Jane then sacrifices that job she loves to help her family during the time that Lydia’s drama comes to a head, which is akin to the loss of marriageability that Jane, Elizabeth and her sisters are threatened with upon the elopement. Ultimately she is rewarded not only with an abashed Bing (whose discovery of Lizzie’s vids allows him to see how he was manipulated and misled about Jane) but with a further job opportunity taking her to New York, and building that career of hers again. Bing, meanwhile, has been dealing with his own issues after giving up his medical degree, and wants to follow Jane as they repair their relationship, rather than having her follow him as might originally have been expected. He’s rich and privileged still – he plans to work for charities – but he is not the DOCT-AH his and her family thought he would be, and there is a kind of equality between them now. The episode in which she uses her new confidence to lay out the boundaries and conditions upon him joining her in New York was pretty spectacular. (thinking about this it has almost a Jane and Rochester vibe to it, or Claudio and Hero, whereby the privileged man has to be humbled in order to earn back the woman he has wronged)

The importance of Lizzie’s changing attitude towards Darcy based on her visit to Pemberley was gorgeously realised through the ‘shadowing Pemberley Digital’ storyline, and I love that she learns new sides to his character based on how he is as a boss, and the excellent work that his company produces, as well as the quite dreamy funland that is the workplace itself. This leads a lovely play on the not-quite-joke of ‘I began to love him when I saw his fine house at Pemberley’ from the original novel.

I was very relieved that once Darcy and Lizzie got together (OMG OMG shut up it was awesome) she did not choose the ‘easy’ route of accepting a job at the dreamy funland, rightfully pointing out that while it was obviously the best place to work ever, being the girlfriend of the boss was an uncomfortable place to be. Instead, she’s going to use the resources and offers that tend to come your way when you have a massively successful web series (META! The story would have had to go differently if only 12 people had watched these vids) to become one of his competitors. Happy ending!

So yes, love, but also work and family and friendship. The portrayal of the Bennet sisters and Charlotte in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries was splendid, and I especially like the way that modern technology and its effect on our social lives/interactions was explored. This was particularly the case with the character of Gigi Darcy who gets to be more than just the sister who was formerly abused by Wickham (her role is pretty minor in the book) – here she is also an avatar of Darcy’s fabulous web company, and a Lizzie Bennet’s Diary fangirl who totally ships Lizzie and Darcy.

I am not surprised at all that Gigi is going to figure greatly in the new series by the same team, Welcome to Sanditon, which looks to be taking Jane Austen’s unfinished novel and turning it into a story of society and technology colliding – the little Domino mini-series of vids which showed Gigi, Darcy and Fitz working to bring down Wickham was the closest that this show got to science fiction, even if it was a science fiction of the William Gibson “ten minutes from now” variety, and they were obviously having a lot of fun with that. I look forward to seeing what this team does with a story with more freedom to its structure.

I love Pride and Prejudice in all its forms. I love it with Greer Garson and with Jennifer Ehle, with Laurence Olivier and Colin Firth. I love it on stage, on the page, in comic book form and on screen. If I could bring myself to watch the Keira Knightley version I’d probably love that too. I’m a lot less keen on the spin offs and rip offs of the story, especially those involving sequels or zombies, though anything that gives Mary Bennet her own storyline is okay by me.

(the fact that Kitty Bennet in LBD is an actual kitty fills me with such glee whenever I remember it)

After I watched Bride and Prejudice (which is pretty awesome, especially with the relationships of the sisters) I assumed that it was the only way that you could tell a straight modern adaptation of P&P – setting it in a cultural background with more old-fashioned attitudes towards marriage and women’s roles. I don’t count Bridget Jones as it takes so little from the original story, basically excising the romance and discarding all the important bits.

But I was wrong, and I was glad to be wrong, because the Lizzie Bennet Diaries gave me a different way to look at storytelling, and it never lost sight of all the many different facets of this iconic 200 year old novel. There may have been a narrative cheat or two along the way, but I never felt that the characters were behaving anachronistically in any way to help the story shadow the original.

Quotable Old Ladies: Elizabeth Jane Howard (90)

Is there anything more marvellous than a woman who has reached a very great age, and is thoroughly outspoken about what she thinks, feels and has achieved?

I knew nothing about Elizabeth Jane Howard before reading this wonderful interview in the Guardian and now I think she is one of my favourite people. I’ve been meaning to read the Cazalet books this year, and it just became a moral imperative.

Quotable Quotes:

On not being considered as ‘serious’ a writer as many of her male contemporaries:

“I mean, the literary world is dominated by men, isn’t it? They all scratch each other’s backs and understandably they like each other’s books and write about them and they’ve got an inbuilt feeling that none of us can really be very much good.”

On introducing her stepson Martin Amis to the love of reading by giving him a copy of Pride and Prejudice:

“Turned out bloody well really! What I was so pleased about was that he really appreciated her like a grown-up person.”

On being married to Kingsley Amis:

“I really couldn’t write very much when I was married to him because I had a very large household to keep up and Kingsley wasn’t one to boil an egg, if you know what I mean.”

On herself:

“Hell to work for, I should think.”

Go read the whole article! It’s splendid.

Friday Links is Fully Dressed II: The Pants Have It

The fact that this isn’t the first time I have given this title to a Friday links post goes to show that it’s not too hard to make sure your superheroines are fully dressed, people! Not if an artist actually cares about the integrity of the character as well as the curve of their panty line.

As far as publishing goes, the big Nightshade Deal and the authors caught in the crossfire is everywhere today. Kudos to Tobias Buckell for summing up the situation and most of the current posts, so I don’t have to do it. Suffice to say, it’s a pretty crappy situation for most people involved.

Connected to this, I was quite sad to see today that Jonathan Strahan’s excellent magazine Eclipse Online (published on the Nightshade website) is closing for pretty obvious reasons. It was a great project which highlighted some very interesting stories and gave a great showcase to the artwork of Australian Kathleen Jennings, who illustrated every piece.

Then, um yes. Also this week in publishing, an April Fools Joke turned into a PR disaster for Locus by being both offensive and not funny. The “joke” was pulled down almost immediately (basically once the editorial staff of the magazine saw it) but it was preserved of course, this being the internet. Liza and the Locus team did exactly the right thing in taking the piece down and apologising (in many cases personally which took a lot of individual tweets) to those who were upset by it. Most importantly, they didn’t do this in response to complaints, they did it on the grounds of good taste. The actual writer of the piece did not see it that way, taking to the internet to complain about “Wiscon’s Feminist Failfandom,” apparently not realising that the internet and the SF community has moved on and you don’t have to be of the Wiscon inner circle to spot a racist, misogynist failure of humour when you see one.

Sean the Blogonaut (who is also, confusingly, Sean the Bookonaut) has a grand plan to provide something to replace the old ASIF – and so is launching Australian Spec Fic Review Weekly, a Paper.li publication which will collate reviews of Australian SF from various sources. So if you have reviews, interviews or podcasts looking at Australian SF, just tweet about it using the hashtag #ausfrev and Sean will do the rest.

Oh, technology. You make us all feel old.

Liz Bourke outlines her plans for the Sleeps With Monsters column at Tor.com this year, including focus on a handful of female epic fantasy writers who deserve far more attention than they get from the geek media in general, and an Australian/NZ special month later in the year. This column has rapidly become my favourite thing about Tor.com, though I also have a soft spot for Alyx Dellamonica’s Buffy reviews.

There’s a new Verity podcast up this week, reviewing the new new Doctor Who episode The Bells of St John – we’re recording weekly during the New Episodes part of the year which is a bit scary. I’m not in this one but it’s very good, especially the exciting revelation from Kat which made me squee. I also did a ridiculously long My Two Cents post to make up for my non-appearance.

The Clarke Award shortlist was revealed – this is SF novels that British people care about – and everyone was a bit alarmed about there being no women on it, despite the fact that most British publishers have been pretty neglectful of offering actual contracts to their local female SF writers for some time now. Liz Williams, a self-declared feminist and one of the judges of the award, took to the Guardian to talk about “the regrettable fact that the best books were by men.” She also took the opportunity to put the boot into the British publishers of SF for not, you know, PUBLISHING MORE WOMEN WRITING SF THERE ARE QUITE A LOT OF THEM THIS IS EMBARRASSING YOU GUYS.

Angry Robot countered by offering a special deal to readers so they could check out some of the awesome Science Fiction by women that they publish – which is pretty awesome and I can recommend many of those titles, especially the Warren, Beukes & Anderton (none of whom are, um, British authors but there you go).

Over on Clarkesworld, Daniel Abraham talks about “Literatures of Despair” which ties in with the grimdark fantasy conversation that has been doing the rounds lately. Meanwhile, Sophie McDougall’s excellent post The Rape of James Bond looked at the double standard when it comes to depicting rape in fiction – even in situations where real life m/m rape statistics are incredibly high, ie. in war zones, prison and when being tortured. Jenny’s Library produced a most excellent linkspam post collating much of the Grimdark conversation.

Justine Larbalestier talks about what she has learned about publishing and herself over the last decade of being A Published Author.

Ben Payne’s post on the pressure to consume hit home for me.

The New York Times was called out for writing an obituary for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill which emphasised her homemaking skills and motherhood in the lead of the article, with an awkward segue from there into the fact that, hey, she was also a rocket scientist. While many did point out that this may well be what the scientist in question and her family wanted, it led to an important discussion about how male and female work is discussed differently, even after death.

Oh, and after several days of people noticing for the first time (apparently) that Doctor Who is pretty bad as far as gender parity of authors goes (not only in its scripts but in tie in materials too says the person who would be EXCELLENT at writing spin off novels, just saying) the BBC also realised that they were sucking a bit at including female experts in their news reports. Deciding to do something constructive about this problem instead of pretending it wasn’t there (I KNOW, RIGHT?) they have set up a database of women experts on stuff.

To end on another happy publishing note (there still are some in this scary world of ours), Fablecroft have reprinted for the Kindle Canterbury 2100, a rather marvellous and ambitious anthology edited by my good friend Dirk Flinthart. The premise was to recreate the effect of The Canterbury Tales by creating a social history document based on the stories told to each other by a group of fictional travellers – only of course in this instance the social history document chronicles a time period that hasn’t happened yet! It’s a bit of a who’s who of Australian short story writers, and is a splendid read. Heartily recommended.

The Big Two-Oh [WHO-50—1983]

So, it’s the anniversary year, and after months of Doctor Who fans eying November with extreme skepticism, and burgeoning alarm that maybe, just maybe, Moffat and co are planning a fizzler rather than a blow out, the new series has just been launched along with the epic news that David Tennant and Billie Piper will be back for the 50th Anniversary special in November.

Yes, I did say epic. Because, however we might complain at there not being all the Doctors in there (which we don’t actually know for sure yet) or the lack of Eccleston (again, you never know), the thought of Ten and Eleven capering around each other and finishing each other’s sentences is, um. Pretty awesome. (and if nothing else, maybe a send-off for Ten which is a bit more popular than his last one was?)

But that’s not all we’re getting, of course. Doctor Who has been on front pages for some years now, but this year has brought all manner of news and announcement, from the behind the scenes shots from the docudrama about Year One of the show (Verity! Sydney Newman! William Hartnell!) to the delight at the Big Finish announcement of a multi Classic Doctors audio drama, comics honouring all the Doctors, book releases, toys, costumes, conventions, podcasts… once you actually stop and list all the new Doctor Who STUFF we are getting this year, it’s actually pretty overwhelming.

It’s pretty rare to have a TV show reach a 50th anniversary and let’s face it, we’re getting a hell of a lot more than all the James Bond fans are this year. Plus they don’t have Matt Smith OR David Tennant (yet). But what about previous anniversaries?

Doctor Who started off well with its Tenth Anniversary show, The Three Doctors, with a grand story about villainous renegade Time Lord Omega (omg John Hurt could totally play him!) and an unprecedented meeting between Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor and his previous selves played by Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell. Due to Hartnell’s illness, he only played a minor role in the proceedings, but the combination of Pertwee and Troughton was irresistably entertaining – a double act they would later refine and perfect over years of convention attendance together.

The fifteenth was definitely all fizz and no bang. The story released on the anniversary, The Stones of Blood, wasn’t especially anniversaryish, but plots were made to bring out a random birthday cake for the Doctor at one point in the story. Considering this was the height of the era known to fans as ‘indulgent Tom’ it’s hard to imagine that the cake would have been remembered kindly had it gone ahead.

The twenty-fifth anniversary was marked by a story called Silver Nemesis (silver anniversary, geddit, does that mean our 50th anniversary special should be Doctor Who meets Goldfinger?) and had Cybermen in it. Everyone wondered why the awesome Dalek story that ran earlier in the season, and involved the Doctor actually going back to Totters Lane in 1963, was not in fact the anniversary story. And now many of us just pretend that it was.

The anniversaries continued during the era when the show was off the air: the 30th almost brought us The Dark Dimension, a TV Special directed by Graeme Harper and featuring all the Doctors, but instead was only able to muster Dimensions in Time, a Children in Need special which still featured all the (living) Doctors in a crossover with EastEnders. Um. I’ve never watched it all the way through but I will when we get to 1993 in this blog series. Hold me.

The 40th anniversary in 2003 brought a shocking, exciting and utterly terrifying announcement that the show was coming back, to be relaunched by Russell T Davies. But it wasn’t back yet, so we had to make do with the Big Finish audio drama Zagreus, which I love to bits and no one else seems to. Like many anniversaries of the past, it used all living Doctors and a bunch of old companions. AND IT WAS AWESOME SHUT UP.

Ahem. None of these, however, quite reached the heights of 1983. This year, the 20th anniversary of Doctor Who, is the one that 2013 has to topple if it wants to take winnah and champion.

JN-T, the longest serving producer of Doctor Who, has been in the press again over the last few weeks due to the new biography by Richard Marson which revealed a great deal of information about his personal life, sexual antics and in some cases flagrant abuse of power and privilege. What it also revealed was the struggle that JN-T went through in order to keep Doctor Who on the air and in the public eye, and the awful conditions under which he had to produce a program.

It’s pretty clear that the negative and more sordid details of the book are the ones that are going to be chewed over and repeated by people with little interest in the show itself. But something that really stood out for me was that 1983, the anniversary year of Doctor Who, was a great triumph for JN-T and his team, and represented the last really successful era of the show in the eyes of many. So what did they actually achieve in this year?

What better way to do this than to dip into Doctor Who: The Key To Time by Peter Haining, a year-by-year record of the production of the show, which was published in 1984 and thus documents the official version of how the anniversary year was handled.

DECEMBER 30 1982

According to Haining, Nick Ferrari of the Sun broke an exclusive story on 30 December that the 20th anniversary of Doctor Who would be marked by a special programme on 23 November the following year, including all of the previous actors to have played the Doctor, except of course for the late William Hartnell who would be played by a “similar-style” actor. Jon Pertwee was quoted as saying: “I know the BBC have approached all the Doctors and I was delighted to say ‘yes’. My days as Doctor Who were great fun.”

JANUARY, 1983

The 20th season of the show began screening with “Arc of Infinity,” by Johnny Byrne. It featured Omega, the renegade Time Lord from the anti-matter universe who had also featured in the 10th anniversary story The Three Doctors. Yes, only three days into the year and we’ve already reached that level of meta. The story also took the Doctor back to Gallifrey (though did not reunite him with Leela, the companion he left there last time), and returned companion Tegan to the show despite her leaving in the previous story Time-Flight. As an added bonus, Arc of Infinity also features Colin Baker as Commander Maxil, which meant very little to fans at the time but was to become rather more significant later in the year.

Also in this month, “Snakedance” aired, featuring the return of the Mara. One of the selling/newsworthy points pitched to the media was that every story in this season would feature a classic villain/monster from the Doctor’s past – which is true, although stretches the point a bit with the ‘Black Guardian Trilogy’ considering that the Black Guardian is mostly twiddling his thumbs in the middle story Terminus. The line-up was also disappointingly short on the two actually famous Doctor monsters, the Cybermen (who would find it hard to top the devastating effect of their return in Earthshock the previous year) and the Daleks (who were originally intended for this season but the story in question had to be pushed forward to 1984). Never mind, those two would still make an appearance this year. But not yet…

FEBRUARY, 1983

Mysterious new companion Turlough joined the TARDIS crew in “Mawdryn Undead” despite having been contracted to kill the Doctor. The story also included the return of Valentine Dyall as The Black Guardian, and our beloved Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in a rare plot that was truly timey-wimey, featuring a double time line and two versions of the Brig. Having thus appeared on Doctor Who with all Five Doctors, Nicholas Courtney provided his verdict on the actors who played them: “Hartnell I think you would describe as tetchy, while Pat Troughton was whimsical. Jon Pertwee had great panache and Tom Baker eccentricity. Peter Davison is vibrant and very talented.”

Also in February, Nyssa bowed out in “Terminus,” leaving Turlough and Tegan as the TARDIS team. Yes, Turlough was still trying to kill the Doctor at that point but some of us are willing to forgive him for that because, angsty and adorable.

MARCH 1983

“Enlightenment,” the first Doctor Who story ever to be both written and directed by women (Barbara Clegg and Fiona Cumming), was transmitted this month, completing the Black Guardian trilogy. Spoiler: Turlough didn’t kill the Doctor after all. They became pals after that.

Also in March was “The King’s Demons,” a medieval two parter which sprung the Master as the surprise villain in Part 2 (yes, anagrams were involved) and introduced new robot companion, Kamelion. The fact that Kamelion was never seen again until its leaving story “Planet of Fire” a year later missed me entirely when I was a kid. The intervening stories become far more entertaining if you try to spot which character or inanimate object is actually Kamelion in disguise. I vote for the pineapple in “The Five Doctors.”

“The King’s Demons” was the last story of the season – if it feels like that went super quickly, it’s because at this point Doctor Who was screening two weeknights a week which meant a 22 episode series would be over in two and a half months.

On March 17 the full details of the anniversary special were finally announced, including the title (THE FIVE DOCTORS), the casting of Richard Hurndall as the First Doctor, and the absence of Tom Baker who had declined to take part.

APRIL 1983

The announcement in Doctor Who Monthly that lost footage of William Hartnell’s First Doctor would be used with clever film tricks to create an original drama teaming him up with Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor included a doctored (heh) photograph of the two actors talking together. Sadly, this was an April Fool’s joke. Many people failed to realise this and an official retraction had to be sent out (by post which to me is the funniest bit of this story).

More importantly, April was the month of the massive Longleat celebration in which the organisers badly under-estimated the number of people that would like to attend such an event.

There was a massive line up of guests from the show (including all living Doctors and many companions), exhibition tents, and a general sense of adoration for the show. Yes, it was Doctor Who’s Woodstock. You had to be there. Sadly I wasn’t there because it was in England and I was five.

For the actors of Doctor Who, though, both past and present, it was a rare chance to be treated like rock stars and it paved the way for many overseas convention appearances.

JULY 1983

A new Doctor Who companion announced! Miss Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown, played by Nicola Bryant, made news as the first American companion on the show, though she would not appear on screen until the following year.

The fact that Peri would be wearing a bikini when she met the Doctor was a significant point made in the press conference. The fact that Nicola Bryant was actually an English actress was underplayed in much of the media, and she was asked to put on an American accent for interviews. This has long been part of the mythology of the show but in the recent JN-T biography she made it clear that it in fact wasn’t the producer who asked her to do it at all, it was her agent – and yes, it was extremely awkward, as she even had to keep up the American accent between takes with her co-stars. She was also told to keep it quiet that she was married, which is pretty icky.

Before the end of the month there was a second big Doctor Who news story with the announcement that Peter Davison would be stepping down from the role in March 1984, at the end of his third season. Gasp!



AUGUST 1983

The press ran wild with speculation about the new Doctor, and invited their readership to do the same. A rumour about Brian Blessed gained a great deal of traction in the early part of this month, which kept everyone entertained before it proved to be complete rubbish.

The Daily Star’s readers were keen to make suggestions including Patrick Moore and Beryl Reid. The Daily Express were likewise charmed by the idea of a female Doctor and made many suggestions including Maria Aitken, Pamela Stephenson, Diana Dors, Esther Rantzen and Angela Rippon.

Finally on the 19th the rumours were all set to rest with the announcement that Colin Baker (40), well known for his villainous roles on screen, was to play the ultimate good guy.

Colin was quoted as saying his Doctor would be played as “quirky, witty and unexpected.”

Producer John Nathan Turner, said “We want to make him a little more eccentric than Peter’s been. A bit more crotchety, too, with perhaps a kind of acid wit.”

Oh dear, if only they’d had the scriptwriters to back that up.

SEPTEMBER 1983

Location filming for “Resurrection of the Daleks” meant lots of lovely press photos of the Daleks trundling around, you guessed it, Tower Bridge! At the time this was cited as being the thirteenth appearance of the Daleks, though this did not of course take “The Five Doctors” into account, which had not yet screened and would indeed have a Dalek contained within.

OCTOBER 1983

A special event at the National Film Theatre in London paid tribute to Doctor Who by screening of over 70 episodes under the title “Doctor Who – the Developing Art.”

NOVEMBER 1983

For the first time since 1974, Doctor Who had a Radio Times cover! This involved specially commissioned painting featured all five Doctors (Richard Hurndall, not William Hartnell as the first Doctor) as well as Anthony Ainley’s Master and two separate punnish uses of the phrase ‘Who’s Who’.

The press was full of Doctor Who goodness this month, from a lengthy profile on the actors in the show’s history by Ian Levine, through to bitchy comments about wobbly scenery in The Times. “Twenty years is no age at all,” John Nathan-Turner told the Sunday Express, suggesting that Doctor Who was like The Mousetrap and need never end.

Then there was the infamous photo shoot (not mentioned in the Haining book!) which utilised the Madame Tussauds waxwork version of Tom Baker alongside the real actors playing the other four. The shoot descended into hilarity and anarchy as some of the Doctors (especially it has to be said Mr Pertwee) started to horse around with the waxwork, using it as a battering ram and generally doing undignified things to it. Elisabeth Sladen, who had played the companion Sarah Jane Smith opposite Tom as well as Jon, was quite offended by the scene, later confessing that she felt her loyalties had been severely divided.

On November 23rd, the proper 20th anniversary of the show, “The Five Doctors” screened across America. In Chicago, the four surviving Doctors and many companions gathered for Doctor Who: The Ultimate Celebration at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. This included Nicola Bryant, whose episodes as the new companion had not yet screened.

“We were treated just like royalty,” said Mary Tamm, “and everywhere we went we had up to six bodyguards looking after us. On one occasion I went to the loo escorted by two huge guys with walkie-talkies!”

Finally, a whole two days later, “The Five Doctors” screened in the UK. Good thing there wasn’t an Internet then, or it would have burst into flames of outrage and spoilers.

Sadly, due to printer strikes, there were no Saturday or Sunday papers which meant that the story went largely unreviewed in the mainstream press. Luckily fandom has made up for that since, eh?

Peter Moffatt, director of the special, was quoted in his attempt to explain what it was that stood out about Doctor Who compared to other shows: “All the young people in it are polite and sweet. There are no bad language and the morals are impeccable.”

This made me think he had not watched Mawdryn Undead, but then I checked and found out that he was in fact also the director of that one. But then, according to a certain recent biography of JN-T, he wasn’t especially regarded as a good director by many of his peers. Which explains a lot about “The Five Doctors” – an episode with heart and goodwill, which is simultaneously flawed and adored.

If Steven Moffat wants to eclipse the achievements of his predecessor for the 50th anniversary then, considering that we’ve already got the checkboxes for ‘media frenzy’ and ‘pots of content’ ticked, all he needs to give us is an anniversary story which is awash with feelgood nostalgia AND is a genuinely well constructed, objectively excellent episode. No pressure there, then.

DECEMBER 1983

Just as we thought the festivities were over, Doctor Who came to the attention of Noel Edmonds, host of the popular The Late, Late Breakfast Show, who presented Peter Davison with a Golden Egg Award for the unintentional humour caused when a horse drawing a cart in the as-yet-unscreened “The Awakening” managed to accidentally destroy a gate.

Sigh. This isn’t helping with the reputation for wobbly sets, my loves!

ALSO ON 1983:

Arc of Infinity [Wife in Space]

Snakedance [Radio Free Skaro]

Snakedance [The Angriest]

Mawdryn Undead Episode 1 [Chronic Hysteresis]

Turlough [Marlow Inc]

Enlightenment [Wife in Space]

The King’s Demons [TARDIS Tavern]

Kamelion [Marlow Inc]

The Women of the Five Doctors [TansyRR.com]

Not the Mind Probe! [Radio Free Skaro]

PREVIOUSLY:

Galactic Suburbia 78: The Hugo/Ditmar Cheers Sweetie Edition

The new episode of Galactic Suburbia is up! We talk about awards and NOTHING ELSE!

In which awards are dissected into itty bitty bits and eaten with relish. Tasty tomato relish.

HUUUUGGGOOOOOOS!

Ditmars



Solstice Awards

This looks like a short podcast, but it isn’t. No culture consumed for you! Which does mean that Alex will have read ALL THE BOOKS by the time we join you again.

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Hugolicious!

The Hugo nominations are out today! And the big news for me is that not only has Galactic Suburbia received a nomination for Best Fancast (for the second year running, giving us a perfect score for this category) but I’ve also been nominated (for the first ever time) in my own right as Best Fan Writer.

Seriously, I was so freaked out when I read that second piece of news, I had to go stand in a room other than the room my computer was in while I dealt with it. BIG. But thank you to everyone who has congratulated me today, it’s really a genuine and surprising honour to be on this list.

I’m so delighted for many of my friends, respected and colleagues and those famous people I like to fangirl from afar, who are on this year’s ballot. Hooray for you all & extra special hoorays for those of you who are on there for the first time (I KNOW, RIGHT?) or like me, eyeing a brand new category with trepidation and occasional skepticism. (ARE YOU SURE YOU MEANT ME?)

For those of you who have dropped by the blog to find out who this random person on the Hugo ballot you’ve never heard of is, Hi! *waves* I’m Tansy and I write about stuff.

Here are some of the fan writing pieces I’m most proud of:

Historically Authenticated Sexism in Fantasy: Let’s Unpack That. This was undoubtedly the piece from my blog that made the greatest splash in 2012, forming part of a wider dialogue about the use of “realistic” history in fantasy fiction. It was even crossposted on Tor.com and gathered over 250 comments adding to the conversation in (mostly) constructive ways. Hooray!

I also wrote pieces on Motherhood in Disney’s Brave, Gender & Sex in Season One of Game of Thrones, and why What Geek Girls Wear is None of Your Business.

Then there’s the Doctor Who writing. I do a LOT of that. In particular:

Domesticating the Doctor, a series of essays looking at the Doctor’s conflicted relationship with the domestic sphere. Only the first four essays in this series were written in 2012 (first published over at Doctor Her, then republished on my blog this January):

Domesticating the Doctor I: Cocoa, Test-tubes and the Classic Years

Domesticating the Doctor II: The Missus, the Ex and the Mothers-in-Law

Domesticating the Doctor III – John Smith’s Human Nature

Domesticating the Doctor IV: Marrying the Ponds

I started my Doctor Who anniversary blog series ‘WHO-50′ in 2012, covering 1963-1969. I think my favourite of these is the one for 1964, Barbara Wright at the Brink.

The other big essay series I began in 2012 was my Where The Wonder Women Are series looking at the awesome and interesting female superheroes that are out there (or have been out there) over the years at DC and Marvel, and the highs and lows of how these women have been written and drawn. I wrote, um. Thirty four of these in 2012. I’ll highlight Batgirl and Supergirl as two of my personal favourites, though.

My Pratchett’s Women series included several essays in 2012: Pole Dancers, Goblin Girls, and the Family Man, A Wonderful Personality and Good Hair, Has Scythe, Will Teach School and The Truth Has Got Her Boots On.

If you get through all that, you’re probably okay to navigate the rest on your own. Happy sailing!

Launch Achieved!

Okay, it’s two days later and I really should have blogged about my book launch by now. After a stressful week (most caused by couriers not getting books to the bookshop until the eleventh hour) we actually had a lovely day, leading up to a splendid if exhausting evening.

Many friends, family and general readers gathered at the Hobart Bookshop (as the rain started outside) for wine and book buying – the most common lament I heard was from people who haven’t been there for a while and were greatly distressed at how many beautiful, tempting books were on display. So yay, I’m pretty sure it was worth Chris and Janet’s while to work late that day… if nothing else, you can count on my people to be bibliophiles.

Tehani did a great job of MCing, and Stephanie Smith launched the book with a very sweet and heartfelt speech about the connections between fantasy and crime fiction, and her impressions of Tasmania when she moved here last year – in fact I only realised on the night that both of my support crew are very recent Tasmanians!

There was much wine drinking, laughing and chatting. I get so anxious about these events ahead of time and there’s really no reason – they always go splendidly. As usual I forgot to count heads, but I reckon we had a good 40 people there and I signed over 20 books. Including one to Scott in the US, hi, Scott! *waves*

It was rather lovely to see the new Livia book side by side with a display of the Creature Court books – and some of those sold too!

The children were very well behaved, considering. The kids corner at the back was brilliant, and the horde of children who attended managed to entertain themselves for the most part. Every time I looked up while we were doing our presentation, Tehani’s little baby D was being held by a different one of our friends! He was marvellously unfazed considering he had not met most of them before! Jem had a couple of minor fusses and one panic attack when the crowd got too much for her (she’s so much shorter than everyone in that shop!) but for the most part it was smooth sailing.

I have published my speech (or at least the version I prepared – I deviated a bit from the script) over on the Livia Day website, so you can check it out if you’re interested.

When we were driving home after grabbing dinner with friends (a stupidly long table, involving many hungry cranky children), I got to enjoy the tweets from the Perth launch, including the ridiculously beautiful food displays. So sorry I couldn’t be there too! I do hope all those pretty cakes/sweets got eaten.

If you’re in Tasmania, then the Hobart Bookshop definitely still has copies (though not nearly as many as they did on Thursday) – I’d love to hear about other bookshops that have them in! Otherwise of course you can always order A Trifle Dead by Livia Day directly from the publisher.

Friday Links Will Be Bosom Friends

Anne of Cleves Gables">As usual I have many favourite things on the internet this week, but one at the very top of the list is Anne of Cleves Gables, a Hark! a Vagrant retelling of the story of Anne of Cleves and Henry VIII as if she was Anne of Green Gables. It works surprisingly well and is both adorable and charming but honestly I had you at ‘Hark! a vagrant, right?’

There’s a new Verity! episode up. Erika, Deb, Kat and I look back on Series 7a in preparation for Series 7b which starts THIS WEEKEND!

The gorgeous Narrelle Harris has interviewed me – about a bunch of my work though she has particular interest in The Shattered City.

Bella Pagan of Tor.uk talks about the role of the commissioning editor in the new world of publishing social media.

The big news today is the purchase of GoodReads by Amazon. The official spin is here: Amazon press release; GoodReads press release. But the Publishers Weekly article does a better job of addressing some of the concerns of readers. Even if it doesn’t quite reach the emotional intensity expressed over Twitter…

Another big publishing news story this week is the current conflict between publisher Simon & Schuster, and book chain Barnes and Noble, which led to B&N refusing to take the next couple of months worth of titles. To see how authors have been personally affected by this move, see Stephanie Burgis‘ post about how it has hurt her new release. I read and loved Kat, Incorrigible, which is a magical regency adventure romp for middle grade readers, so can thoroughly recommend this series.

Random Alex interviews Thoraiya Dyer about her first collection, Asymmetry (part of the Twelve Planets series)

One Small Step (featuring my first short story sale this year) got a great review over at Publisher’s Weekly. They said some lovely things about editor Tehani!

i09 has a great collection of portraits by Vicky Trochez of the Parks and Recreation characters as members of the Justice League – which is wonderful except that no way is Leslie Knope Robin. Superman, Black Canary, SURE. But let’s not pretend she’s anyone’s sidekick, even with Ron Swanson as Batman.

All my other links for the week involve the whole ‘hey did nobody notice that women hardly ever write for Doctor Who’ discussion which has swept across the internet since this article in the Guardian. Short answer: yeah, many of us have been noticing this for a long time. Still, it’s nice to see the topic being taken seriously, by many male commentators as well as female – funnily enough women can talk about these issues until they are blue in the face, but it’s often only when men recognise there is a problem that the issue gains traction. Sigh.

In any case, while a lot of the most positive discussion was on Twitter yesterday (which is hard to link to) I recommend you check out posts on i09 and the Mary Sue, in the short-and-sweet podcast The Two Minute Time Lord, and this post by Deborah Stanish. For the sake of balance there’s also this post by Jonathan Morris, which does point out some of the unfortunate failings of the original Guardian article (such as the writer’s inability to recommend many women writers working in television for the show to call upon) but also is disappointing in its focus on the ‘meritocracy’ argument and the idea that writing is entirely an equal playing field. When you’re talking about a) science fiction, b) science fiction in the UK and b) television, that’s kind of laughable. Worth reading the comments in the Jonathan Morris article, though, especially the one that discusses the lack of female DIRECTORS in Doctor Who as well.

A blog post by Stella Duffy apparently sparked the Guardian article off in the first place – and after seeing this linked in various places I also want to draw people’s attention to Where Have All the Female Directors Gone?

To cheer you up after all that I wanted to share the awesome new Doctor Who vid doing the rounds which explains what happened to Strax the Sontaran between A Good Man Goes To War and The Snowmen but the BBC has taken it off iTunes. Mean!

instead, this week’s vid is brought to you by my three-year-old daughter who thinks the MuppetStudio channel is the best thing ever. It’s hard to argue with that.