Michael Lee's Train of Thought

I've been reading an new guide to Doctor Who, Lawerence Miles and Tat Wood's About Time. One of the things that I find interesting between American and British Who fans is that the context is a little different -- I saw all seven years of Tom Baker in nine months -- and so I didn't "age" with the series in the same way that Miles and Wood did. And it's frequently clear that one of the reasons that they sometimes differ in their opinions about the series is that they came of age during different periods of the show's history.

It's also interesting to read comments about the original series in context of a new series in production in the UK. The shadow of both the end of the series and the failure of the 1996 revival dominated things for a long time, and now things are put into a new context. In fact, I suspect it will be even more interesting when we can re-evaluate everything in a couple of years as we can put it all in a new context. We start to see it in this series with references to 45 minute episodes and other things -- but it's still too early.

Labels: doctorwho

I was listening to NPR's On The Media show this afternoon, and found a fascinating story about their Meatbot Massacre game, and more importantly, their Ransom model business plan.

I'm fascinated by approaches that are more possible in the internet era -- and really, this isn't that different from a shareware model for software, especially when that gets you a key to "unlock" features, and then also I recall something where Steven King or someone tried (and I believe failed) to do a book where they sold a chapter at a time. And it's also somewhat similar to Marillion pre-selling their previous two albums instead of getting an advance...

Obviously, it's not a model that would always work -- but it's a fascinating idea.

One of the things about classic Doctor Who fandom is that the history of the show is so fascinating -- and that so many of the 1960s episodes no longer exist. Nothing at the End of the Lane is a terribly detailed look at issues relating to the restoration and research into all sorts of interesting things from the 1960s. If you're at all interested in strange and obscure Doctor Who production information -- and words like telesnaps are a part of your vocabulary -- Nothing at the End of the Lane is a good place to get deep into the subject.

Labels: doctorwho

I was thrilled to read Marv Wolfman's comments about CONvergence -- since most of us who started to read comics in the late 1970s or early 1980s were reading comics written by Marv, it's especially nice to have them say nice things about the event you worked on...

Labels: convergence