Saturday Waffling (March 15th, 2014)
Absolutely scrambling at deadlines right now, although I just about sort of kind of maybe but not really have them under something resembling control. Sorry, thus, for a recklessly short Waffling – I’m just absolutely buried.
Let’s just do Q&A, shall we? Depending on the level of response I may or may not get to everything promptly, but I’ll at least answer what schedule permits.
March 15, 2014 @ 12:22 am
What posts do you feel differ the most/will differ the most from the original version to the book version?
March 15, 2014 @ 12:51 am
Do you think you'll finish this project before the outbreak of World War 3?
March 15, 2014 @ 12:59 am
Do you feel you've taken on way too much? I couldn't even imagine writing half of what you do at this sort of schedule. Most people who blog about shows don't write as much in a single entry, and quite often will only do one post per week (like a lot of the Tor.com rewatches/rereads, which can be entertaining).
March 15, 2014 @ 1:06 am
Can you please get your deadlines under control so mine can stay recklessly out of control?
March 15, 2014 @ 2:15 am
If you were given the opportunity to novelise one Doctor Who story of your own choice, which one would you choose?
March 15, 2014 @ 2:45 am
Have you ever though about making a Doctor Who Tarot? An Albion Tarot?
March 15, 2014 @ 4:53 am
I'd love to know your process for writing an episode review. Do you watch it once? twice? thrice? Do you make notes as you watch? Do you start with an outline or do you write it in the rewriting? Copycats want to know.
March 15, 2014 @ 5:03 am
When will the Baker 2 book come out?
March 15, 2014 @ 5:23 am
Leather or pleather?
March 15, 2014 @ 7:52 am
Any good reading suggestions for the history of DC Comics?
March 15, 2014 @ 8:38 am
The Eighth Doctor comics essay is slated for a full rewrite. I'm nondescriptly unhappy with much of the Williams and Davison era entries, so could well opt to rewrite large bits of those as well. So those are the leading candidates.
March 15, 2014 @ 8:38 am
Our deadlines are in identical amounts of control.
March 15, 2014 @ 8:38 am
I feel like this requires some third way answer, but I just can't quite get the punchline to land, so I'm going to have to be boring and say leather.
March 15, 2014 @ 8:39 am
If you've a whiff of masochism to you, Paul Levitz's absolutely massive book on the subject is comprehensive.
March 15, 2014 @ 8:40 am
I don't know yet. I've got the first 50 pages in with the copyeditor, and will get cracking on the next 50 when I get those back. So, in progress, but not very far along quite yet.
March 15, 2014 @ 8:43 am
I don't find most pop culture tarots terribly interesting. The Vertigo Tarot is a prime example – I constantly feel like what really lets it down is the large swath of the Major Arcana that are just comic book characters. The saving grace is that Dave McKean is so non-representative in his artwork that you can ignore it for the overwhelming majority of them, but I still can't help but feel like that deck would be improved immeasurably if it were just Dave McKean's tarot.
Plus, no art skills.
No, what I'd like to see is a Blake Tarot that's not done by someone who is too cowardly about copyright and who thus does sub-par redrawings of all of Blake's work instead of doing digital collage with the originals. Basically, a Blake Tarot as done by Kat Black.
March 15, 2014 @ 8:44 am
Time of the Doctor, because I don't think it's possible.
March 15, 2014 @ 8:46 am
For new series stuff, most of which I've already seen two or three times, I rewatch it a few days to a week before I intend to write the entry and then just write it. I did notes for a lot of the classic series stuff, but I increasingly found my attention wandered if I was taking notes, so I gave them up in favor of watching more closely.
March 15, 2014 @ 8:46 am
Are you asking me to predict what's going to happen in the Ukraine?
March 15, 2014 @ 8:47 am
I've taken on almost the exact amount I can handle, for better or for worse. I'm a fast writer, so I can produce the amount the blog takes pretty reliably, but squeezing in non-blog work is at times tricky. But it gets done – if I ease off, it only needs to be by a little, honestly.
March 15, 2014 @ 9:47 am
Do you like the wooshing sound of deadlines as they fly by, ala Douglas Adams?
March 15, 2014 @ 9:50 am
Despite the more obvious reading, for a moment I thought you said a Blake's 7 tarot – which would be, well I'm not sure what. Still having just finished reading The Luminaries everything sounds better with an astrological bent.
March 15, 2014 @ 10:03 am
I'm finding lately that certain pop music reminds me of certain eras of Who, or vice versa. For example, Robyn Hitchcock and the Hinchcliffe era are associated in my mind for both aesthetic and chronological reasons, and I'm finding increasingly that lots of upbeat British pop (typically Pet Shop Boys, Spice Girls, Kylie, a few others I'm forgetting) feels like the mood of the RTD era to me (or vice versa).
What music is linked to Doctor Who for you in this way, if any?
March 15, 2014 @ 10:12 am
I've just finished the Luminaries too. I am not sure quite what the astrological symbolism adds to the story, but I'm glad it's there. I think it helped me as a reader keep the cast of characters straight.
March 15, 2014 @ 10:20 am
I know what you mean. I read it on a Kindle and my wife has the phonebook sized paperback. I think I won on portability but I had to regularly sneak a look at the list of characters at the front of her copy.
March 15, 2014 @ 11:40 am
Based on your current plans, on what dates will TARDIS Eruditorum reach The End Of Time Part One, The End Of Time Part Two and The Eleventh Hour?
March 15, 2014 @ 2:30 pm
Should I bother tracking down a copy of Skizz since it seems to be out of print?
March 15, 2014 @ 3:01 pm
Could you please revive the TARDIS Eruditorum video blog thing when we get to "The Eleventh Hour", just to do a similar comparison between the aesthetic styles of that episode and the RTD era that you had done in your "Leisure Hive" and "Time and the Rani" articles?
Would be interesting. 🙂
March 15, 2014 @ 3:02 pm
Going back to the Blake Tarot, presumably the Four Zoas correspond to the four suits? (Which one is which?) And the major Arcana would be?
March 15, 2014 @ 3:04 pm
Probably not – it would be interesting, but I doubt I have time before it's going to go up.
March 15, 2014 @ 3:05 pm
Monday, Wednesday, I'm not quite sure, but sometime in the week of the 24th.
March 15, 2014 @ 3:05 pm
Eh. It's good but not great. Up to you. Looked quite cheap though – I think I saw copies for $3 or so?
March 15, 2014 @ 3:06 pm
No. I hate blowing deadlines. Hate it. I probably push myself harder than I should to try to avoid it.
March 15, 2014 @ 3:07 pm
The McCoy era, for me, is wrapped up in the entire 80s alternative scene.
Pertwee, obviously, is glam as hell.
March 15, 2014 @ 3:08 pm
Oooh, yay.
Not that the posts on 2009's stuff haven't been great, but (much like it was at the time) it's been a long gap between proper Doctor Who episodes filled not entirely adequately with spin-off substitutes 🙂
March 15, 2014 @ 3:08 pm
The Zoas are pretty easy to map – Blake kept them in line with Aristotelean elements. Urthona/Wands/Fire, Luva/Cups/Water, Urizen/Air/Swords, and Tharmas/Earth/Pentacles.
It's the emanations where things get screwy.
March 15, 2014 @ 3:10 pm
Yeah, there's a nice big chunk of fairly constant Doctor Who coming. Though there's still plenty of Sarah Jane and Torchwood to cover – 8 more SJA posts and ten more Torchwoods. And six Sherlocks.
March 15, 2014 @ 3:24 pm
Well…. why not make time? Push back a deadline; make the Eruditorum last just a little bit longer for the rest of us. 😉
March 15, 2014 @ 3:26 pm
Because I can cover the information faster textually. And much of what I'd be making time for is really boring stuff like ripping DVDs and waiting for files to encode.
March 15, 2014 @ 4:11 pm
I'm sure Dicks would have a good stab at it (Doctor Who and the Time of the Doctor?). Mind you, he'd probably rewrite Tasha Lem as a comedy feminist. And possibly Clara as well.
March 15, 2014 @ 4:21 pm
You're covering Sherlock as if it's a Doctor Who spinoff, and not just a single Pop Between Realities post? Interesting…
March 15, 2014 @ 5:36 pm
Classic Doctor Who was entirely produced during the Cold War, and many stories engage with the concerns of that conflict. You are, by my reckoning, too young to have much in the way of first-hand memories of the Cold War. What effect (if any) do you think this has had on your psychochronographic project?
March 15, 2014 @ 5:46 pm
I'd disagree about too young – I have a very strong sense of 1989 as a year that felt big and eventful, even if I wasn't old enough to understand what was happening. Even if I don't have a ton of first-hand memories of the War itself, so much of my childhood played out over its aftermath that it's always, for me, felt like something of an origin story. It's notable, I think, that so much of my aesthetic and intellectual interests are rooted in the 1980s. All three of my big blogging projects have been, in their own way, anchored in the 1980s.
The only thing, I think, that really fails to resonate with me from the Cold War period is the sense of the apocalypse as something that's right around the corner. It's been deferred – the world now feels more like it's on a Ziggy Stardust-esque five year timeline to the end. The sense of inevitable doom hasn't shifted, but it's ever so slightly out in the future. The image of the clock at three minutes to midnight doesn't quite resonate the same way it did. (It's become, I think, the most dated aspect of Watchmen)
But I think even there I'm less thrown than a lot of people, just because my own intellectual thought has always taken very seriously the inevitable collapse of the entire social order. The one constant of history is that every intellectual, social, and political system eventually crumbles and gives way, and I've long taken for granted that this includes the current system of the world.
Which is perhaps why the Cold War has always felt fairly intuitive and familiar to me – its eschatology and I get along well.
March 15, 2014 @ 7:13 pm
Well… I mean, you did it before, and they were greatly entertaining, PLUS the visual example greatly enhances the argument, I think (especially as it did with your "Tomb of the Cybermen" video)… so, I think you ought to try.
If you need assistance, I'd be more than happy to provide it. 🙂
March 16, 2014 @ 7:33 am
What are some of your favorite books/movies/shows, etc that have not been or will not be covered in the Eruditorum?
March 16, 2014 @ 3:42 pm
Off the top of my head, Borges, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and… nope, at a loss for shows.
March 17, 2014 @ 3:11 am
Would you agree that Bidmead and Moffat are the eras most reminiscent of Borges?