Automated Attack Monkeys, Scalpel Mines, & Acid

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

This is a question that's open to interpretation. It could mean:

• "When does one qualify for the epithet fan?", or
• "what age was I when I first became a fan?"

I really don't like interpretation one. Like the ladies of the Verity Podcast, I firmly believe that the only "qualification" necessary to be called a fan is applying that label to yourself. I'm not going to gatekeep. I'm not going to say "you're not a proper fan unless you do/believe/like/know x". That's just shitty behaviour. If someone loves Doctor Who, in whole or in part, and they want to be known as a fan, that's good enough for me.

The second interpretation, then.

Unfortunately, that's harder to answer. I don't actually remember a time when I didn't watch Doctor Who. But when I was, say, three did I know what being a fan meant? I don't know.

So a bunch of people have been doing this "describe your job using only the 1000 most common English words" thing. I've had a go. I don't think it's worked very well.

I phone people up and ask them about who they would like to run things, and if they would like anything done.

I store their answers and then someone else decides whether anything needs to be done about the answers.

Words I was not allowed to use: vote, government, council, local, representative, politician, record, responses.

I think that list of words I wasn't allowed to use is the best illustration one can have of how irrelevant politics is to most people.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry )

Ah. Foolishly I answered "favourite Actor" in a non-sexist way without looking ahead to future questions, so I have already answered this one here. Ooops. For those who can't be bothered clicking, those I mention are Lis Sladen, Cousin Di, and Jacks Pearce.

ETA: although I suppose, to give this entry some content and purpose, I ought to add that I am a big fan of both Louise Jameson and Nicola Bryant, particularly in the way they have taken to new media and behave on twitter.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry )

This evening's post is somewhat delayed because I have been recording a podcast. No, not the long awaited episode of Baggage Man where we discuss the Horns of Nimon and solve the UNIT dating controversy. Sorry. I thought I'd ease myself back into things by being a guest on someone else's podcast. We had lots of fun recording, and best of all I don't have to do the editing! I shall provide links to the finished product when it appears - it should definitely be of interest to you classic who folks out there.

Anyway, most annoying character. This is going to be hard. I mean, do I go for a companion, a villain, a one off character or a recurring one; maybe even an incarnation of the doctor himself *coughcoughtennant*?

The thing is that all the characters who annoy me, personally, do have redeeming features. I feel it would be unfair to pick on any one of them. The slitheen are mostly bloody annoying, for example, but I have a real soft spot for Margaret. Peter Kay's performance as the absorbaloff really wound me up, but the character was designed by a little kid who did a reasonably good job. Dodo Chaplet is just pointless but she's not actively harmful. etc etc etc.

I think if I'm going to single out any one character it will have to be Rose Tyler. Because I loved her so much with 9. I really did. And then she turned into the sort of person I want to slap. And that really IS annoying. Travelling with the doctor should make you into a better person than you started out as, not a worse one, and for pretty much every other character who travels with him this is what happens (unless they get mind wiped like Jamie/Zoe/Donna). So yes, with some measure of regret I shall pick Rose.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Funniest Episode

• Unintentionally funny: The Krotons - combines the traditional "OMG those monsters are rubbish" funny with some really hilarious cod science.


• Intentionally funny: City of Death - chock full of witty lines and amusing historical revisionism.


• Honourable mention: The Kingmaker - more historical revisionism, with a hilariously deadpan Richard III. I have chosen to consider this audio play to be actual historical fact in my headcanon.

Scariest Episode

Track one of the Big Finish audio play Davros. The rest of the play could quite conceivably go into funniest, as it's basically an odd couple farce of Six and Davros being forced to work together, but that opening track is stunningly well-written, and a pitch-perfect performance from Molloy.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Season 18.

There are some stories I am very fond of in Season 18 (Keeper of Traken, for example), and my first memory of anything ever occurs at its end. I would point out that this is "least favourite" rather than "most hated".

Nevertheless, my reasons for picking season 18 are twofold. Firstly, when you watch it, you can see that Tom's heart is not in it any more. He can't even be arsed to phone it in for some episodes, and for those where he IS there he alternates between utterly manic (where he would have been quirky and charming in previous seasons) and morose and grumpy.

Secondly, the show's been Bidmeaded. The serious scifi leavened with wacky humour of the Adams years has been replaced with po-faced pretentious bollocks. Also, I really really detest Warrior's Gate. And, you know, Adric.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

It's got to be The Five Doctors. I have soft spots for Dimensions in Time and the Three Doctors and many others, but the five doctors is just lovely. It's got daleks and cybermen and the master and three and two and Rassilon and EVERYTHING. And of course the best thing is The Raston Warrior Robot. The Raston Warrior Robot should totally get an outing in the new series.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Doctor Who has some pretty iconic villains. Sutekh, The Master, my beloved Davros... But if I had to choose one, it'd be Helen A, who definitely isn't Margaret Thatcher at all, oh dear me no, and is masterfully portrayed by Sheila Hancock in The Happiness Patrol.

I've seen a bunch of people doing this on G+ and tumblr, so I'm going to join in. By the look of the graphic it's been around for a while, so I don't think I'm going to upset anyone by not sticking to the right days. I'm choosing to "start" it on the first of January, so I'll do both day one and day two below to catch up and then the rest of them on the right days.



Day 1: Favourite Doctor

Six. It's a very clear memory for me, the "oh thank God for that" feeling when Peter Davison turned into Colin Baker. Looking back, I think I was probably a bit harsh on 5, but to my pre-teen self he just seemed so WEEDY. I LOVED Colin's big, brash loudness. In the hands of a lesser actor Six could easily have been everything that his detractors accuse him of and worse; but somehow Colin imbues a depth of emotion that makes even his most worrying moments interest. Watch his face, or, on audio, listen to the cadences in his voice.

I like flawed-but-lovable in a character - it's why I've fallen so hard for Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock in Elementary - and Six has that in buckets.

Day 2: Favourite Companion

This is harder. Peri, Sarah-Jane, Martha, Charlie, Liz Shaw, Zoe-and-Jamie, Nyssa. It could have been - should have been - Ace. But I take the view of Ace that a lot of boys take of Adric - I felt like she was taking the piss out of me. It's interesting that Holly LOVES Ace... In the end, though, I think I shall have to plump for Evelyn, who is the perfect foil to Six.

Day three's post is here
Day four's post is here
Day five's post is here.
Day six's post is here.
Day seven's post is here.
Day eight's post is here.
Days nine and ten got answered together here.
Days eleven and twelve got answered together here.
Days thirteen and fourteen got answered together here.
Day fifteen is here.
Days sixteen and seventeen got answered together here.
Day eighteen is sort of answered here, although really it's answered on the same entry as sixteen and seventeen because "actor" is not a gendered word to me.
Day nineteen's post is here.
Days twenty to twenty-one are here.
And the final day is here.

I fully recommend Nostalgia's ALL THE ANSWERS AT ONCE post, too.

The Expendables 2 is coming out soon, and James and I have been looking forward to it as a guilty pleasure. We're both fans of cheesy over the top action movies, and they don't come much cheesier than The Expendables. And yes, I know it's cliched and sexist and racially stereotyped and problematic in many other ways... But I still really enjoyed it.

We were talking about the names of the characters, and they are (hopefully intentionally) cheesy too. I mean, Jean Claude Van Damnation is playing "Jean Vilain" - John the Villain. And the others are stuff like Toll Road and Ben Christmas and Trent Mauser. So we figured we could start a meme: what is YOUR Expendables name?

If you're male, and have English as your first language:

• your first name is the river nearest the place you were born


• your surname is the holiday nearest the date of your birth.


• This makes James Trent Summer, because the long holidays between academic years ARE known as The Summer Holidays, and being more specific makes him Trent August Bank Holiday. Or possibly Trent Harvest Festival. Similarly, Mat is Dart Summer.

If you are male, but have English as a second language, or don't speak English at all, your Expendables name MUST be an EITHER aspect of your character "foreignised" (like Jean Vilain), OR a horrible play on some stereotype about your nationality/ethnicity (Jet Li's character Yin Yang)

If you're female:

• Girls only get one name in The Expendables, because no woman is important enought to deserve a surname, and to find out what it is you have to decide if you're going to be a Token Female Action Hero or a Love Interest


• if you're a Token Female Action Hero you get the river thing that the boys get for first name - This makes me Colne.


• if you're a Love Interest you must name yourself after a descriptor which applies to your underwear (c.f Charisma Carpenter's "character" Lacy). If I was a love interest I would be Skimpy

What about you lot?

After my post yesterday, several people seem to have picked up the meme. And, inevitably, it has evolved. I would like to point out to Jonathan and Nick, who seem to have taken it in a willy-wavey direction, that the reason five posts was chosen is not because I (or Caron) have only been blogging for five years, but because five is a reasonable number of links.

The proof: 15th May 2004 blogpost - 8 years ago.

Now lets stop it with these ever extending lists, boys. The level of extension doesn't impress anyone :P

No time to backread right now because BEER FESTIVAL ARGH BUSY BUSY BUSY but am going to do a quick meme. Incidentally, if anyone fancies BEER festival goes on till closing time tomorrow, so perhaps Lib Dems on their way home from conference could nip in for a couple? Anyway, meme.

1, Sherlock or Doctor Who?
Doctor Who just edges if it we're talking about the entirety of Holmes fiction, but if just the 20XX BBC Sherlock, then Who by a Country mile.

2, Moriarty or the Master?
Stealing James's answer for this one:
The Master, cos all you have to do is hit him over the head until he changes into something less annoying. Vaguely hope the story of someone approaching John Simm and saying "You were really good when you were Roger Delgado. Are you going to turn back into him?" might be true.

3, Benedict or Martin?
Benedict. Martin's a better actor, but I can't forgive him for being in The Office.

4, Favourite Doctor Who companion?
If I'm allowed to include audio companions then Evelyn Smythe by a huge distance from all the others. If not, then Liz Shaw. Honourable mention to Wilf because the Cribbins is made of awesome. Although favourite Who companion ACTRESS is Louise Jameson, especially after watching some of the extras on recent DVD releases. I have a huge soft spot for Nicola Bryant too.

5, Favourite Doctor.
Colin Colin Colin Colin Colin.
Colin.

6, Favorite Sherlock character.
Either Mrs Hudson or Molly. Both of them appear to be tropey, but have lots of depths when you look more closely.

7, Favourite Sherlock episode
Baskerville.

8, Favourite Doctor Who story.
Tomb of the Cybermen. The Invasion. The Green Death. THE DAEMONS. The Horns of Nimon. Genesis of the Daleks. Caves of Androzani. Vengeance on Varos. Mark of the Rani. The Two Doctors. The Three Doctors. The Five Doctors. Attack of the Cybermen. Revelation of the Daleks. Remembrance of the Daleks. Battlefield. Dalek. Vincent and the Doctor. Davros. Jubilee. The One Doctor. Real TIme. THE KINGMAKER! No, definitely The Kingmaker because that is TRUFAX and actual history.

9, Favourite Doctor Who monster.
Davros. Especially Terry Molloy Davros.

10, Least favourite Sherlock character.
Moriarty. Not only an awful perversion of the original character, but excruciatingly annoying every time he is on screen.

11, Least favourite Doctor Who character.
Tenth Doctor, the only Doctor who has episodes that I haven't been able to bring myself to watch. Which is a shame, because Tennant seems like a really nice guy. Actually, Daft Jamie was bloody awful, too, and also played by Tennant.

12, The Doctor or Sherlock.
The Doctor. Mostly. Unless it's ten. Of some of five. Or a bit of four.

13, Rose Tyler or Amy Pond
Stealing James's answer again:
Amy. Rose with Eccleston was great. Rose with Tennant was clingy, gushing and a pain in the arse.

14, Least favourite companion.
I'm tempted to say Jo Grant because she was specifically designed to be a fucking idiot and replace Liz Shaw because even after Liz Shaw was dumbed down she was still too smart for insecure men to deal with, but I'm fond of Katy Manning, and Jo has an amazing end in the Green Death. I could say Donna, but I don't have a problem with Donna, other than that she's played by Catherine Tate, and that they fucked her over in the end.I could say Rose, but I loved her with Nine. I'd say Mel, but she's brilliant on audio... I think I'm going to have to be predicatable and say Adric. I did actually cheer at the end of Earthshock.

15, Thoughts of Mycroft/Lestrade.
If I'm playing Lestrade then YAY.

16, What do you think of Molly Hooper?
That fandom ought to pay more attention to her given how pivotal she is to the ongoing story.

17, Do you believe in Sherlock Holmes?
Only when he's played by Jeremy Brett.

18, 10th Doctor or 11th?
Stealing James's answer again:
11th by so far it'd make your head spin.

19, 9th Doctor or 10th?
Stealing James's answer again:
9th by almost as great a distance. 9th came across as someone who'd suffered, needed help but didn't want to inflict it on anyone else, cared deeply for others but felt he had to hide it. 10th came across as an absolute wankstain.

20, 11th Doctor or 9th?
This is more difficult. I'll probably go for 11, but I reserve the right to change my mind.

21, Thoughts on Johnlock?
Once you've read lanning's superlative fic, you'll think it's canon. Also, you'll worship Grandmaman.

22, Sherlock or Doctor Who cast?
Give it long enough and everyone in Sherlock'll've been in Doctor Who.

23, Favourite Sherlock actor
Mark Gatiss

24 Favourite Doctor Who actor?
Colin Colin Colin Colin Colin.
Colin.

Definitely Colin.

1. Make a list of 5 things you can see without getting up.
Roxy's eyebrows
Vincent Price on the telly
Also Jane Asher, looking shocked
A Mathmos lava lamp
A pair of Tardises

2. What color is your hair?
Faded dyed red

3. What did you want to be as a child?
A barrister. Or a rock star.

4. What's was the last movie you've watched in the theatre cinema?
Haywire. It was rather good.

5. What do you hear right now?
Vincent Price saying "I shall lead you through the cruel light and into the velvet darkness". The clicking of matgb's mouse. magister unwrapping a sweet.

6. What's your favorite guilty pleasure treat?
Lying in bed and doing nothing.

7. What are you thinking about right now?
How nice it is to be snuggling on the sofa with the Roxy dog, watching one of my favourite films.

8. Write the first word that comes to mind.
Scrumpox

9. Dog person or cat person?
I'm a Cat person, in that I own a dog. Cats like unconditional worship and fawning; you get that from a dog. Dogs like to serve and be useful; traits that are necessary in a cat owner.

10. If you came across £2000 (or other currency) would you keep it or turn it in?
I would hand it in, but make sure that I left my details at the police station so that if it wasn't claimed within the set time I would get it back.

11. What was the last thing you bought?
A bowl of bangers and mash last night, while enjoying the company of lovely people.

12. If you could afford to go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
On a tour of all my friends

13. Where do you see yourself in 2 hours?
In the bath. Or maybe the kitchen.

14. What book are you currently reading?
I'm currently between books. This is mostly because when I read I tend to read the entire book. I don't like putting them down half-finished.

15. What are you doing this weekend?
Working.

16. If you could play any musical instrument, which one would you play?
Guitar - I can play a bit, but I'd like to play well.

17. A quote that you like.
"When I'm good, I'm very very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better." - Mae West

18. What are you doing tomorrow?
Working

19. What were your favorite childhood activities?
Reading, playing with lego, climbing trees, general outdoorsy stuff.