Come along, Ponds

So in a half-hearted attempt to try and make my books fit on the shelves (I am being SO GOOD and actually removing ones that I'm pretty sure I'm never going to read or I read and hated, even so, still stuck with a couple of hundred Doctor Who books that I am mostly hrrm at) I found the The Thick of It, The Missing DoSAC (I bet I've got that capitalisation horribly wrong) Files and got a wee bit distracted reading it instead. It is almost entirely lovely, which I put down to half the writing and half Peter Capaldi, for despite him merely being in some pictures, his voice was VERY LOUD as I was reading. What I didn't like was that in order to give it the feel of a missing documents folder (I assume this was the reason), the pages were all perforated along the top, and still stuck together, so I had to tear the blasted things apart. Mostly this went badly, for I am not good with perforated paper. And tearing the pages of books is NO FUN AT ALL. So much judgieness unto whoever designed that thing.

Also, catching up on Torchwood, I saw episode six last night. Which was painful. Very painful. There were three things I liked: ( spoilers, yo )

Other than those few minutes, it was awful. If you're going to discuss the banality of evil, you do not need smash your audience over the head with anvils. Repeatedly. That hurts. It hurts a lot. It was so bad I don't even care about how much handwaving they're asking to audience to do about how the central premise of the story works. I have to leave it at that or I shall start on a massive rant. And I know I should stop watching, but I really want to see the Trek dudes.

A NICE THING: Torchwood Babiez, the final part. I spluttered into my poor tea three times before I finished it.

MORE NICE THINGS: You Told the Drunks I Knew Karate, an Amy/Rory vid by settiai and Black Dove, a River Song vid by kiki_miserychic. Both just make me ridic gleeful and filled with joy at these characters what I love.

I have been doing this meme SO WELL. That is how FULL OF JOY I am, anyway:

1. Post about something that made you happy today, even if it's just a small thing.

2. Do this every day for eight days.

Due to skipping of like a week, here be more than one thing:

1 - PETER CUSHING'S HEAD. Omg. Someone has made Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin's head and it's so TERRIFYINGLY EERIE I kinda wonder if they built a time-machine instead, popped back and lopped it off. Except that's gross and surely if you had a time-machine the first thing you'd do is go back and rescue sixties Doctor Who? And I still haven't seen Marco Polo so that's UNPOSSIBLE.

2 - Anyone on teh flist who's posted about the new X-men movie as y'all seem to share my priorities, and there's only been GOOD THINGS SAID on the Magneto/Xavier front, so hurrah.

3 - PIRATES. I am going to see Pirates tonight and as My Expectations are basically the presence of Geoffrey Rush, and I know FOR A FACT he's in it, it'll probably be Not Too Shabby.

4 - This is a lovely post about all the things I like about The Almost People. Also there are pictures, LOVELY PICTURE GRAPHIC THINGIES, including a smashing one of my Very Favourite Thing about the episode.

6 - Doctor/TARDIS vid, omg, it are beautiful.

7 - Last week's STUNNING COOKERY SUCCESS where I managed to make BEAUTIFUL BANANA SOUFFLE.

I am Somewhat Unable to adequately express my Utter Glee at some of the latest Who spoilers that I totally accidently saw (I've been very good at avoiding spoilers, yes, so this is the only thing I know about that isn't in the season six trailer.) BULLETPROOF NARRATIVE KINK, DUDES. This episode (mouseover is spoilery, yo) can be as cack as bloody Four To Doomsday and there is no way I won't love it.

( spoilers for a season six ep, nought major, I don't think )

Also, this is dead good - CSI: Gallifrey, a Doctor Who/CSI: Miami opening credits parody. I've seen exactly one episode of any CSI programme ever and still I think it awesome:

So I was sort of vaguely aware of there being a new Pirates of the Caribbean film and thought "yay" for I am Quite Fond of Jack Sparrow, but "boo" for I knew there was no Elizabeth Swann and she is almost my favourite. NOBODY EVER MENTIONED THERE WAS GEOFFREY RUSH OMG THERE IS GEOFFREY RUSH. There is going to be shiny, shiny new Barbossa!



Mostly I'll be judging the movie on whether or not they kill off Barbossa. Again.

In other news, Mekhi Phifer has been cast in the new Torchwood. Mostly I know him from Lie To Me, where he was Quite Good. Also, he is hot. Which is nice, because, sadly, I was always going to watch new Torchwood anyway. Jane Espenson's writing for it! Surely that means at least one good episode?

And possibly I want to go rewatch season two of LotS, for such_heights made an awesome Kara vid and OMG KARA. I forgot how much I adore her facial expressions! Also there are wee bits of Kara and Kahlen and such things make me happy, yes.

It is possible I have spent a large chunk of today watching vids. Here are some recs:

I Can't Hear The Music by settiai Deep Space Nine - A Kai Winn character vid and it is gorgeous. Winn's a brilliant character, brilliantly played, and this manages to encapsulate her complexity and is a sympathetic and powerful look at the conflict between her faith and her ambition.

Stay Awake by laurashapiro (multifandom) - This is horrid, and creeped me out rather a lot, which I mean in a good way. It has a point to make, and does so with sharp wee needles that stab you then try to turn you inside out. It's also a great demo of the sort of point that I think the vidding medium is able to make in a way that hits home like no other sort of fannish produce.

Seven by hollywoodgrrl and ohvienna (David Lynch movies) - Confession: the only Lynch move I remember in any detail is Dune, so the subtleties here are right over my head, but it is a beautiful vid that vividly portrays parts of a whole that you feel should connect together to make a lovely picture, except it's a surreal madness that's about to leap out and pull you in.

Take On Me by greensilver (Doctor Who) - Okay, to be fair, it's QUITE HARD for me not to love a vid that is ALL OF LOVELY WHO but also it is an AMAZING VID. It's ridiculously exciting when a vidder what I know is Pretty Damn Good does classic Who, cause it doesn't happen often, and, oh, it is good. It is very, very good. And happy-making. And good. The clothes trying out section makes me GLEE and omg Kate O'Mara's face has never been more hilarious. If you like any of Who ever, watch this. Kthxbi.

Lend My Your Teeth by greensilver (New Who) - Oh, this is scarily beautiful. It is like all that fear that I had when I first watch in Blink dialled back slightly so I'm not actually going "eeek!" and hiding behind anyone, but can enjoy a deliciously tense atmosphere with one of the most fantastically creepy aliens of the Whoniverse.

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by damned_colonial Age of Sail multifandom - Ridiculously good fun. Women from more than a dozen Age of Sail (real, real-ish, and fantasy worlds) being pretty damn awesome as they fight, drink, laugh and dance through their smashing adventures. Also, many a clip from Cutthroat Island, which I'm embarrassingly fond of. Ahem.

If I Had You by dualbunny (Legend of the Seeker) - This is just hot (and, y'know, marvellously edited and a deftly constructed story and other stuff I was not concentrating on really due to the hot.) It's Richard and Rahl and everything I ever wanted from a Seeker vid if I was going to be shamelessly shallow about it.

Big Finish are having a whacking great sale tomorrow with the first fifty audios all reduced to £5. Which is great, apart from the fact that I stopped buying Every Single One somewhere in the fifties so, um, yes. Boo. Nevertheless, I shall use my complete knowledge of these first fifty for the powers of good! Like so:

So of these fifty audios, what would you suggest for the BF newbie?

006 The Marian Conspiracy (Six, Evelyn) A smashing historical adventure in Tudor times with a sympathetic, well-rounded portrait of Mary Tudor and the Sixth Doctor being calmer and kinder and all those things that make people say "gosh, he was rubbish on telly but he's awfully good on audio" (which I judge a bit cause he was awesome on telly, but y'know). Introduces Evelyn, who is merely Mildly Annoying at this point (probably should point out most listeners do not share my view of Evelyn as Most Consistently Irritating Companion Ever.)

009 The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (Six, Evelyn, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) Basically an excuse for the Brig and the Sixth Doctor to have an adventure together, yay fanwank! But it is a jolly good adventure all the same. There are moors! It feels a bit like a Terror of the Zygons remix, set in Cornwall instead of Scotland, and with added awesome from the Brigadier. Evelyn is only A Bit Annoying.

011 The Apocalypse Element (Six, Evelyn, Romana) Er, you may be noticing a pattern here. Yes, it's another Sixth Doctor and Evelyn story, OH WELL. This one also has Romana and Daleks though. It's all exciting and action-y and Lalla Ward is rather marvellous in the first episode especially. More fanwank plottery as the Daleks invade Gallifrey, but it's a bit epic and there is Romana, yay. Evelyn is Bloody Annoying.

014 The Holy Terror (Six, Frobisher) Yes, other Doctors do have stories, they just don't seem as good as Baker's at this point. SORRY OTHER DOCTORS. Anyway, this one is brilliant. It's got Frobisher, the shape-shifting talking penguin companion, and a ridiculous amount of wit and charm and lolarious cynicism and all feels rather wonderfully Gormenghasty. With a bit of an I, Claudius parody. The Doctor and Frobisher are messengers from Heaven in the midst of a tricksy fight for who gets to be the next God of Everything. You could call it a BF classic, if you're inclined to do that sort of thing. "All hail the big talking bird!"

020 Loups-Garoux (Five, Turlough) Werewolves! Not the Sixth Doctor! Oh, this was my favourite BF for years and years and I still love it madly. It's the fifth Doctor and Turlough in South America getting involved in a power struggle between werewolves and the Doctor manages to get himself engaged to Eleanor Bron, who is a bit amazing, and mostly this story makes me Ridiculously Happy. There is Lovely Interaction between the Doctor and Turlough which manages to be simultaneously Quite Slashy and Quite Shippy for the Doctor and virtually all the women he's travelled with.

024 The Eye of the Scorpion (Five, Peri, Erimem) OH I LOVE THIS. I love it like delicious cherry pie. This is one that I think everyone should buy and listen to and love because it is the start of my VERY FAVOURITE BF THING: Team!Peri&Erimem. A lot of listeners talk about how BF redeemed Six and/or Mel for them and made them awesomes, but I thought them both awesome already and lo they continue to be so in audio form, but Peri, Peri was meh. She was...just there, like Dodo, minus the lovely hats. But combine her with Erimem and you get the very best of Big Finish companion teams, and one of the very best companion teams of all. It begins here, in ancient Egypt, where Erimem is pharoh and there be Exciting Political Shenanigans afoot.

029 The Chimes of Midnight (Eight, Charley) A deliciously spooky haunted house tale set in an Edwardian mansion. People are being killed in absurd, macabre ways; people are reacting in absurd, macabre ways. The first episode is practically perfect, and the rest are rather smashing as well. It's claustrophobic, creepy and terribly funny.

030 Seasons of Fear (Eight, Charley) My favourite Eight & Charley adventure. Charley and the Doc are having a perfectly nice time in Singapore when this dude called Grayle pops up to gloat at the Doctor about how he's killed him. Cause when he kills him he doesn't have the chance to gloat and, darn it, if you manage to kill the Doctor, you should totally get to gloat at him first. Then Charley and the Doctor have an Exciting Adventure through assorted historical locations with smashing banter and Charley having to drag around a whacking great sword and there are Romans and Edith of Wessex (Edward the Confessor's queen) being a bit annoyed about the Doctor because he left her at the altar. Also, Nimons. Gloriously good fun. You see why I love, yes?

038 The Church and the Crown (Five, Peri, Erimem) My favourite BF team in 17th century France with political sneakiness, plenty of swordfighting and a ridiculous amount of Three Musketeers jokes; how could that possibly go wrong? It couldn't, obviously. This is my second favourite of all Big Finishes and it is deliriously good as well as brimming with Stuff What I'm Easy For. It draws fantastic portraits of Louis, Anne and Richelieu, and is especially marvellous in its portrayal of Erimem, to whom the 17th century is a fantastic futuristic world. She gets to blows stuff up, unite disparate factions of French soldiers and lead them to defend Paris against the English. Case that's how awesome she is.

039 Bang-Bang-A-Boom! (Seven, Mel) I like season 24, and this is very, very season 24, in the best possible way. It's a great big parody of the Eurovision song contest with the contestants gettings murdered and the Doctor and Mel investigating and it is as camp and absurd and a wee bit cleverer than it sounds. Mostly it makes me happy.

040 Jubilee (Six, Evelyn) Or That One Dalek Was Based On. But while Dalek was a fairly straight up action/adventure, Jubilee is a twisted look at society and the cruelty of people through the glass of an alternate twentieth century where England got hold of Dalek technology in WWI and conquered the world. I've a very vivid memory of listening to this for the first time and, at one of the cliffhangers, thinking, "that's too obvious, it can't be *spoiler* so that means it has to be *spoiler*...no...no way, he wouldn't...omg, it is!" (Yes, I think in acronyms, shusht.) It's terribly good.

048 Davros (Six) A marvellous character piece with some nice dicussion on morality and some immensely good scenes between the Doctor and Davros. Save Genesis of the Daleks, Big Finish have managed to do a lot more with Davros, a lot better and in a lot more interesting ways than anything on the telly.

033-050-052 Neverland-Zagreus-Scherzo (Eight, Charley, Romana, Leela, K-9) Okay, so this is really three audios and one of them isn't in the sale, and probably the trilogy really needs you to have heard Storm Warning, or at least be aware of what happened there, and it's obvously more effective if you've grown somewhat fond of Eight & Charley, or at least followed their adventures for a bit, and it's a ridiculously ambitious story and the alternate universe arc was pretty consistently dull and didn't go anywhere and then it it couldn't, since they brought back the telly show but, but I still think this stories are pretty darn awesome. These are three plays that are very closely interlinked and incredibly different. They highlight just how flexible the Doctor Who format is, how absurd it can get, how epic, how grand, how intimate and quiet. They play with stories: a children's nursery rhyme creates a monster, a companion outgrows her role as Wendy but refuses to go home, music is used to create life and Gallifreyan legends are reborn.

It also sets up that rather awesome spin-off, Gallifrey.

( more totally helpful words )

1) Am currently watching Peter Cushing in Space 1999. He is in silver paint and a daft hat and yet still looks tots dignified.

2) My ankle. OH MY BLOODY ANKLE (disclamer: not actually covered in blood). I really don't see why eight-ish hours of not walking on it shouldn't fix it. Which it has had every day for like a week. I'm hobbling ffs. It's ridiculous. I can't see it as a Proper Injury so I feel a bit like Oh Look How Injured I Am Poor Wee Me with all the hobbling. But it hurts darnit. (And at one point I managed to convince myself I was tots making up that it was really hurting so tried running and, um, yes, that was stupid and there was falling. Common sense: not one of my stronger qualities. Ahem.)

3) Hobbling aside, it's the Not Being Able To Run just after I was actually managing to do it regularly that's really frustrating. Boo.

4) Have you voted in Home Team 2009 Matches? Contrary to much of me flist, I found it Ridic Easy to vote for all of them, save one. Scully vs Cuddy. I mean, it's Scully, obv, but I haven't watch X-Files regularly for ages and voting against Cuddy just seemed strange and wrong and there were Whole Seconds of Indecision there.

5) Mostly I'm appalled that CJ's currently losing to Bones and Wendy Watson's not winning hers. LOVE WENDY MOAR FANDOM.

6) If you haven't read rawles's essay, about the importance of Uhura and Spock's relationship in STXI and representation of black women in the media, Uhura Is Not A White Girl, then you should go do that now.

7) Fic rec: selenak's Clean-Up Operations - Johnson and Alice post-COE. Characterlicious like yummy yummy pie.

8) I was quite "okay, that's nice" about new Four audio stuff. But seeing this is definitely causing Teh Squee. I think it's the pic at the bottom. HELLO TOM BAKER!

Now this is an anime series I'd totally watch. Venusian Aikido has never looked so cool and, zomg, the fencing! Sheer awesomeness:

So in 1968 there was some extra footage recorded as a trailer for The Web of Fear, naturally it got burninated, but the audio survives and someone made this gorgeous, gorgeous animation to go with it and it is fantastic. (There's also a fab wee Christmas story with Hartnell playing Santa, reindeer being exterminated by Daleks and Ten arriving just in the nick of time.)