Falldog

Spring has sprung! With thanks to Dulwich Woods and my Lensbaby…

I’m working in Windows, using IE7… and quite liking it. I’m still on a Mac, mind you (lovely, lovely Boot Camp), but even so. I am practically shaking at the thought of all the creepy-crawlies trying to hack their way into my machine however, so I won’t stay long.

Play.com still doesn’t work when I try to place orders on it, nor have I had a reply to my week-old email asking about the problem. (Any other Mac users had this? When you click on checkout, it just takes you to a list of your current outstanding orders.)

Oh, and my internet bank is throwing up unrecognised security certificates. I phoned them and they said they knew about the problem, and I should just go ahead and use the service. Which was fine – until the site threw up even more unrecognised certificates. Hmm. I’m just going to leave it alone for the moment.

Also, the spam continues to clog up the pipes behind this site. I’ve a few ideas to cut it down, while also making commenting easier, and I should implement them soon.

Meanwhile, an uberconstructive week reaches its end, with me about 10,000 words richer than when it started. Today, therefore, I’m leaving the computer alone (after this, anyway) and going shopping… If only I knew how much spending money I had in my account…

I’m afraid it’s all gone a bit mental: the blog has received over 700 spam comments in about a fortnight. I just don’t have time to deal with that kind of crap, so if you’d like to comment on this blog, I’m afraid you’ll have to register. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s all quite straightforward – just click on a comments link at the foot of an entry and follow the links to register from there. You’ll have to provide a working email to register, but I promise it won’t result in me just forwarding all my spam to you instead.

(Of course, I bet spambots are clevererer than I give them credit for, but this should at least stop them for a while.)

I’ve been working at home, writing a thing for Doctor Who Magazine and piddling around with a piece of fiction, for a week now. I always imagined this would be glorious: brew some coffee in the morning, deal with my emails, slap on some music and get down to some creative typing in slow-motion luxury, basking in a happy glow of relaxed inspiration.

No such luck. I’m getting stuff done – and, I’m glad to say, the stuff I’ve done today has restored my faith in myself as a writer, after a shaky first week – but the simple fact is, there isn’t enough time in the day to do as much as I want. I’ve done a number of words today which any reasonable person would be proud of producing, but it’s not enough. I’m off out tonight, and I am casting angry glances at the clock in the corner of this screen, which tells me I’ve got less than an hour before I have to leave. Also, with my flat on the market, a lot of time has been lost in just keeping the place tidy for prospective buyers. (It’s amazing just how much mess one man can make by sitting at a desk all day.)

At the moment, every time I hit a smooth patch for writing, it is interrupted by something: phone calls from the estate agent, more viewings, or what I laughingly call my social whirl. And, on days like today, it’s cripplingly annoying – I’m doing good stuff, getting somewhere, really cranking my brain up… This is precisely what I wanted, but there’s a world just over to the right of my desk which is making, frankly, unreasonable demands. I feel a cabin might be in order, somewhere far, far away.

(Of course, the cabin would have to have a DVD player, so I could complete my mini Dalek marathon. See? Real life even gets in the way of watching television. I mean.)

FLIPSIDE: I know how lucky I am to be ‘living the writer’s dream’ by working at home and writing a novel and all that… but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a bitch about it, OK?

At least there’s one person in this house who could have a shot at a modelling contract. The lazy tart.

One of the things that struck me most about the look of Doctor Who on its return was that all the cinematography seemed over-exposed. All sources of light glowed brighter, and the highlights where it bounced off, say, Rose’s hair shone with a bright blur. One of the finest examples of this in the first series (and it definitely wasn’t used quite so much during the second season, nor so far during the third) is the Gamestation in ‘Bad Wolf’/'The Parting of the Ways’. That’s just one of the things I love about this two-parter.

Another is the extremely bonkers manner in which it kicks off. The pre-credits sequence, of the Doctor finding himself in a Big Brother house, incredulous of his situation, is a wonderfully weird way to kick things off. Throw Rose into a deadly Weakest Link and Captain Jack (Oh, when he was fun! And glorious!) into a sadistic Trinny and Susannah show, and we’re definitely in one of the most surreal, and thoroughly enjoyable, bits of telly ever.

There’s emotion here too, lots of it, but all handled with a deft touch totally absent from ‘Dalek’. But that, I suppose, is what Russell T Davies is good at. It’s the quieter moments that impress most: the Doctor warming to Lynda, Rose’s unwillingness to give up and run away, the rough-edged romance between the TV programmers, Rose’s agonising chips with Mickey and her mum… All of this is neatly played against a Dalek-fuelled apocalypse, with shouting and gunfire and religious fundamentalism. Great stuff. And it’s when the emotion becomes fierce and heated that the whole thing comes together: Rose raging at her mum about the importance of her new life, Mickey acknowledging that Rose has to keep fighting to get back, the Doctor’s decision to send Rose away for her own protection. All of them crucial moments for the characters and the plot. Finally, Rose doing everything in her power, becoming a goddess, to save both the Doctor and her new life. That’s the way to do it.

Appropriately for the first season finale, this is the first time the new series became truly great and played to all its strengths. The competence of the action and the sheer capability of the production, coupled with a healthy injection of ‘real life’. The second season consolidated this mix brilliantly, again rising to a crescendo for its own finale.

Which is next! Hooray!

EDIT: The excitement is too much. ‘Army of Ghosts’ and ‘Doomsday’ will follow tomorrow.

Not off to a great start.

It seems ridiculous to be saying this of something two years old, but ‘Dalek’ hasn’t stood the test of time. In fact, with three exceptionally strong episodes under the third season’s belt, it’s remarkable to see just how far Doctor Who has come since its relaunch in 2005.

So far this year, we’ve seen the more emotional side of the series exposed brilliantly, with the strange tension between Martha and the Doctor played out through the stories – but in ‘Dalek’, the emotion is slapped in your face, brazen and without any subtlety. The Dalek and the Doctor spend the episode hating each other, before realising that maybe their behaviour makes them more similar than they’d like to think. Rose, meanwhile, is a curious object of their affection, something purely emotional against which their hatred is judged. But that’s pretty much all that’s there, and heaven forbid any of this interplay is carried out in the subtext.

There’s no real story: the Dalek escapes, kills some people, gets confused, then kills itself. There’s no real jeopardy: although it was part of the episode’s job to remind people how deadly these comical pepperpots can be, the swathes it cuts through the hapless extras prove too conclusively how unstoppable it is. Theres no room for any real plot to manoeuvre. All that’s left, therefore, is to add the hackneyed bit about how the creature’s new, more emotional life (and I don’t even have to put inverted commas around the emotional – it’s that obvious) is just too painful, so the Dalek saves the story from having to do any work by killing itself.

Surprisingly disappointing, considering how exciting the return of the show felt just 24 months ago. Still, I have clearer, fonder memories of ‘Bad Wolf’ and ‘The Parting of the Ways’. So, here we go…

The Mrs has chided me once or twice over the last couple of days about this blog. “Poor blog,” he would whisper, gazing sadly at the un-updated site.

We’ve just watched Gridlock, tonight’s rather marvellous episode of Doctor Who – at this stage, possibly better than last week’s. (I only dare say this publicly because dear Gareth, who wrote me into last week’s episode, has said he thinks it’s the best of the new series.) Then, carried away on a ‘ZOMG! Daleks next week!’ high, we decided to watch all the new series’ Dalek episodes tonight. (We’re still discussing whether The Long Game counts… But anyway.)

So, to make up for not blogging much this week, I’m going to take you through the whole thing, from beginning to end. WARNING: We will probably be asleep before the end of The Parting of the Ways, but at least we will have tried – and I will have wasted your time, also, so everyone’s a winner.

And so, without further ado…

… surfing the net instead of doing any work. (An amusing re-captioning of a Nintendo merchandise catalogue from 1990, since you ask.) The managing editor of the mag I’ve been working on since December comes over, thanks me for all my hard work and gives me a bottle of champagne! I hurriedly hide the obvious evidence of not-hard-working-at-all until she’s gone, when I get back to my reading.

Then the editor himself nips over to thank me as well, so I have to swiftly switch to another window all over again. Honestly, sometimes it’s been harder work to look busy here than the work itself. But it is over! This long stint has finally ended. Or it will do this afternoon, though I detect a strong whiff of not-really-working from everyone around me. Hooray for Easter!

In other news, don’t forget to watch Doctor Who this Saturday. The episode is called The Shakespeare Code, it’s written by my friend Gareth (who rightly loathes Dan Brown, just so you know), and features a bawdy prostitute named after my good self. Pride, fannish confusion and excitement rules the day.