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Voices from the Past
Okay, this blog has been pretty quiet recently, and considering I’m just about to head off to London (and am likely to be internet-free for the whole time) it’s likely to continue. I’ve got a whirlwind of socialising, lots of meeting people, and hopefully lots of fun to look forward to. And I’m doing okay. June was a very rough month for me, but July has been better, and I’m aiming towards the future with something vaguely resembling optimism. Anyhow, there’s final packing and checks to be done. Have fun, and I’ll be back soon with some slightly more detailed bloggery…
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TV EYE: The New Who Costume Review…
Well, the filming is pretty obviously beginning. It’s kind of unfair that while Tennant only had to cope with about six months of “What’s he going to be like?” and being under the spotlight, Matt Smith is getting an even more intense version (considering the popularity of the show has only gotten bigger since Tennant joined), and aside from the immediate post-regeneration thirty seconds or so, we’ve still got just under a year before we find out what his Doctor’s actually going to be like. Which means eveything’ll be under the microscope, and everything will be “How could they!” and “For shame!” and “I hate it!” and on, and on… and the first pictures of the new Doctor’s costume has broken – available here. It’s kind of odd that it’s essentially gotten exactly the same reaction from me that Smith’s casting did – a slightly surprised, bemused “Oh…” followed by a bit of a mull, followed finally by a “Hmm, I quite like it, let’s see how it works in practice.” I’ve already been reading “I hate it” and “He looks too much like an English Professor” on Twitter, and they’ve certainly (as ianjclark quite rightly says here) dressed him older – it’d be easy to make Smith look absurdly young, but this’ll definitely give the impression of a 900-ish year old bounding around in a younger body. They’ve also gone for something that’s very distinct from both Eccleston and Tennant – and okay, it’s not as immediately fashionable as Tennant’s look was, but how would you do that again without simply ending up with something pretty damn close to Tennant? And also, they’ve got to give the Doctor a distinctive look that isn’t just hitting the ‘Edwardian’ button and going for something deliberately Doctor-ish. I’m certain the bow-tie will be a ‘controversial’ point, but again, it’s a distinct look. It’s retro, it’s fifties. It means that the Doctor isn’t going to easily blend into the crowd. And, I can’t help feeling that back in 1974, any dedicated fans of Pertwee looking at pictures of the new upcoming Doctor would have been thinking “What? What is going on with that scarf? The show’s doomed!” I’m not immediately blown away thinking “Yes, that’s ideal…”, but then, I was initially thinking Tennant was going to be ideal from the pre-publicity pics, and it actually took me until S3 until I started liking him in the role. It’s going to be fascinating to see how this works, and I would perhaps have preferred something a little scruffier and a little less buttoned-up, but at the moment, I am going to still reserve any major opinion until we finally see the 11th Doctor in action…
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TV EYE: Torching the Wood – ‘Children of Earth’ : Day Four & Five
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TV EYE: Torching the Wood – ‘Children of Earth’ : Day Three
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TV EYE: Torching the Wood – ‘Children of Earth’ : Day Two
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TV EYE: Torching the Wood – ‘Children of Earth’ : Day One
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TV EYE: Classic Who Overload (Part 2)
In which the writer hereby continues his batch of Classic Doctor Who DVD nostalgia. (He’d be finishing it if it wasn’t so bloody hot). Part one is here. For part two, read on…
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In Pursuit of Happiness
I wrote an entry last week, but I didn’t post it. I was pretty down and upset when I wrote it… but I don’t want to delete it. Instead, it’s here behind a cut. I feel like I want to be honest about how I’m doing here, and the fact that since I finished the rewrite, I haven’t been doing brilliantly. There’s been illness and a few other moments – nothing hugely dramatic, to be honest. I am sometimes very much a ‘pressure cooker’ kind of person, and it’s like a baseline of emotional noise keeps building and building in my head until steam starts metaphorically exploding from my ears. Despite everything, the fact that my life is much simpler now does mean that I do find things easier to cope with. But there are times when you find yourself having dark moments, and it’s like being trapped in a cold, dark cave. And you know the only one who can get yourself out of that cave is you. You’re just not sure exactly how.
Anyhow, the entry which I didn’t want to delete runs thusly:
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New Projects Ahoy…
One significant step is that I’ve got two new writing projects on the go. They’re both in the planning stages – there’s one in particular that needs a good deal more meat on the bones than there is at the moment – but they’re both ideas that are making interesting things spark in my brain. One of the things this last rewrite on The Hypernova Gambit has taught me is exactly how important character is – and I’m trying to approach these ideas from the right angle, to try and lay down strong character stories first and then construct a whole load of craziness around them. I still know what I want to do, I just feel like I have a slightly better idea of how to go about it now. I don’t want to pre-plan too much; the point will come pretty soon where I’ve got to just say “Screw it” and start writing. I’m also not sure which one I will prioritise first – one’s a loose spin-off from The Hypernova Gambit (completely self-contained though), and the other is a somewhat crazy mixture of emotional family drama and bugged-out psychedelic pulp storytelling. I’m actually tempted to try them both at once, bouncing from one to the other and see if one wins out naturally over the other. But either way… I know that this is what I need to do next.
I also had a quick look at The Hypernova Gambit again this morning. Maybe it’s not wise looking at a project once it’s out the door and being officially looked at by important people… but you know what? I’m really, really proud of it. Whatever happens from hereon in, I tried my damndest, I made some pretty significant changes (there’s only a handful of scenes that I haven’t tweaked in some way), and the book is now much, much better than it was in its previous ‘official’ incarnation. Frustratingly, of course, it won’t change anything with the editors who read the previous version of the book and turned it down (however much I’m filled with the desire to be able to leap up and down and shout “Look! It’s much better now, honest!”), but it gives me a much better chance with the remaining opportunities. Whatever is destined to happen, it’s taught me a hell of a lot about writing. And I’m not about to stop now…
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Walkin’ On The Sky
It has been what could safely be described as an ‘odd’ week, mainly due to being flattenned by illness. It hit me last Saturday, but was also a combination of a whole series of factors, from feeling run-down after the rewrite, an oncoming cold, gradually getting dehydrated, overeating, and a couple of other elements I could have done without. The end result was that while I was out and about on Saturday (which was a pretty hot day, after all), I suddenly started feeling exceptionally weird, and my body essentially went slightly nuts for the next forty-eight hours. My appetite shut down, I was incredibly dehydrated, and I’ve been spending most of this week recovering – early on, I actually had a couple of productive days, but ended up feeling worse as a result of them, so instead I’ve spent the last couple of days essentially under house arrest. I’m getting a couple of hours of proofreading done a day, and that’s it – and I’m going to keep it that way until at least Sunday. There are two advantages – one, things have gone a little quiet on the work front (just a lull, it ain’t scarily quiet yet), and two, I’ve built up enough of a backlog of incoming money that I can actually afford to not do very much for a little while. It is tough being ill while on your own – and sleep has been one of my biggest problems, with my average wake-up time for this week being about 4AM – but I’m coping pretty well, overall, and not letting it get me down.
Would be nice if my body would hurry up and get back to normal, though…
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Saxon Bullock 
