And the Oscar goes to...

Once upon a time, some years ago, I used to have this really great job in which I was paid to sit at my desk and write about movies all day long. I was the DVD & VHS category manager for an Internet retailer and I made it my mission to be very well-informed about all the movies I was writing about. So I spent a lot of my time on IMDB, I read Empire magazine, and I watched an awful lot of movies, sometimes getting invited to a lavish premiere by one of my distributors.

Back then, the Academy Awards were a big event on the calendar for me; I'd seen most of the movies under consideration in the main categories and thought I had a fairly good idea who would win. To make things interesting I ran an office pool, inviting my lesser-informed co-workers to pick the winners and paying a token fee to enter. The prize pool went to the person who'd picked the most winners. As I was organising this, I didn't enter - but I think my own predictions were pretty close to the mark.

Nowadays I'm considerably less clued-up about movies. I no longer buy Empire and I rarely look at IMDB. I very rarely go to the cinema anymore (the one and only film I saw at the cinema last year was the rather brilliant Casino Royale). I never get invited out to premieres. I'm happy to wait and watch movies on DVD in the comfort of my own home.

Also, if I'm perfectly honest, many of the current offerings coming out of Hollywood simply don't appeal to me. Either the industry's changed or my tastes have turned more towards other interests. Probably a bit of both.

All that said, this year's Oscar nominations have just been announced, and since I've not seen any of the movies in contention, I thought I'd make some purely instinctive picks, and having committed these to the public gaze in this blog, I'll check back after the Oscars are awarded on 25 February and see how close I got. Just like that office pool I used to run, only there's no cash prize, alas.

Best Picture: Babel
Actor: Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland
Actress: Kate Winslet for Little Children
Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls
Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett for Notes on a Scandal
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu for Babel
Original Screenplay: Babel by Guillermo Arriaga
Adapted Screenplay: Notes on a Scandal by Patrick Marber

Disagree with my picks? Why not post your own in the comments...

The answer is.... forty two

TSV 42 has now been added to the online archive. This time the online 'reprint' occurs in the same month of the year as the original publication. TSV 42 is dated January 1995, so the gap has closed to exactly 12 years. Still a long way to go before all of the out-of-print issues are available, but from here on in there are fewer issues each year so the catching-up process should appear to start to accelerate a little (though the issues do also get longer, so perhaps not). If all goes well I'm hoping to have narrowed it down to a decade by this time next year.

The leading item in issue 42 is a detailed guide to each of the World Distributors Annuals, compiled by yours truly. The inspiration for this piece happened at an Auckland Chapter meeting in 1994 where a group of fans were discussing which were the rarest annuals and whether the red or the blue Hartnell came first. Realising that there wasn't a good guide to refer to for these books, I set about creating one myself. I documented everything that I could find about all of the annuals, including the spin-off Dalek and K9 ones, and the compilations. Although I had a few articles in DWM to refer to, my own observation of each of the annuals formed the bulk of the article. I didn't have many annuals myself, but Rochelle had collected most of them and the ones she didn't have were loaned by Jon (I've since managed to collect a complete set). I also took the whole stack into the printers one day and got them to scan each of the covers so that I use good quality reproductions of each of the annual covers in TSV (I've re-scanned my collection in colour for the online version). As part of the Internet archiving project, I'm revisiting each of my own articles and updating them where necessary to take account of additional information that has come to light since the original publication. I'm pleased to say that the Annuals article hasn't had to have very many changes at all, which means I probably got it right first time around.

Another major feature of this issue is the script to screen article covering The Happiness Patrol. A mammoth beast of a piece this one, probably the longest script to screen we published, as there's enough deleted script material here to have increased the serial to four episodes. I recall that for a while I was considering splitting the article over two issues. Another problem with this item was that we lacked much in the way of relevant artwork to break up the pages and pages of text, so Rochelle set about drawing a stack of Happiness Patrol-themed pictures to illustrate the piece. I also asked her to illustrate the front cover. The Kandy Man's head was a black and white illustration. When I delivered the issue to the printers, I had to decide the spot colour for the logo as usual. I decided on blue as it fitted with the Kandyman's head, and then in a brainwave realised that the artwork, not the logo, should be blue. I think the result was very striking and effective. As was her one and only front cover I know Rochelle was very proud of the fact that this issue sold out much faster than any of the issues published around that time.

The Pakhars (from Gary Rusell's New Adventures novel Legacy) crop up in what was to be the last in Justin Reynolds' long-running series of Time Lord Game Additions. I don't recall the circumstances behind this closure but I suspect that Justin simply lost interest in continuing the series. A reader suggested to me around the this time that all of these articles should all be reprinted together in a collection for handy reference by gamers. Even at that time I think the Time Lord game book was itself out of print, but since then the e-book version has been made freely available, and now all of the game additions from TSV are online too. I wonder though if there's anyone who still plays Time Lord?

Phillip J Gray offers his defence of Dimensions in Time, a sorry little piece of Doctor Who history whose only redeeming feature was that it was all done for charity, which makes it all worthwhile in a perverse sort of reasoning that's supposedly above question. Many fans have wisely chosen to forget this was ever made - or at least consign to the non-canonical dustbin. Actually I've never been entirely sure whether Phillip is defending Dimensions in Time at all. His article is loaded with cleverly veiled criticisms and and witty asides, so I suspect he actually may be having us all on. Draw your own conclusions.

One last observation about TSV 42 comes from Jon Preddle, who either has a prodigious memory or a well-documented diary (I suspect both!), as he recalls that the issue was compiled on Boxing Day 1994 at my flat in Belmont (I moved out a week later, incidentally). Jon goes on to say: "You'd organised a working-party to help get the issue completed... As for my contribution, I recall sitting in your bedroom with that wooden light-box contraption you used for lining up the pages, and cutting and pasting together the Annuals Guide - and making a right hash of it, too!"

Read TSV 42 here and see what Alden Bates (the other half of this TSV online archive project) has to say about TSV 42 here.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Another year ticks over. Time to look back on 2006 and look ahead to 2007.

2006 represents a couple of significant personal milestones.

Rochelle and I celebrated ten years in our house. We moved into it, initially as a rental property in August 1996 and a few years later we purchased it. We're proud that we own it debt-free and that we've done many major improvements to it over the years. Many of those changes were masterminded and implemented by Rochelle with the occasional helping hand from me (I'm not nearly as good at DIY home maintenance as she is). Possibly prompted in part by marking a decade in the same home, we're now starting to think about moving up the property ladder; renting out our current home and buying another one. It's depressing to see just how expensive houses are at the moment in Auckland though, and we're not keen on mortaging ourselves to the eyeballs, so at the moment we're just thinking about our options.

I also worked my fifth consecutive year in my current position at Noel Leeming Group, which makes this now the longest time I've spent in the same job, a record previously held by my four-and-a-bit years at Whitcoulls (1995-1999). I started in 2002 and my fifth anniversary comes up at the end of this month. I've held the same position (my official title is 'Internet Site Editor'), since I started, though the actual set of tasks and responsibilities that goes with that position has changed quite a bit over those five years.

The year had its ups and downs - we had a delightful holiday in the South Island early in the year, attending the wedding of our friends Adam and Sandra in Christchurch and then spending a week exploring the South Island by camper van. The trip ended on a sad note however with the news, that reached us while we were travelling through Marlborough, that Rochelle's cousin had died suddenly in a workplace accident.

We took another holiday in October, this time staying in the five star Outrigger resort in Fiji. Again we went for a wedding (of our friends Edwin and Tania), and stayed on for a week. Alas there was less lounging by the poolside sipping cocktails than we'd anticipated due to a few days of terrible weather; but we did make the most of the fine days to visit a small island and to go on a train ride and experience the Fiji Day celebrations. It's alarming to see on the news how the country has rapidly descended into anarchy and martial law in the few months since our holiday though as a consequence of the coup it's now considerably cheaper to take a holiday in Fiji than it was when we visited!

We traded in our old Toyota Celica as the automatic transmission was in need of work, and replaced it with a newer model Toyota Celica (creatures of habit, us!). A protracted battle of wits with the Land Transport Authority ensued over change of ownership when we went to renew the car registration six months later (apparently for half a year we'd been driving around a car that wasn't registered to us!). Fortunately after I stood my ground in the post office and then wrote a sternly worded fax to the LTA this was all resolved out in our favour and penalty fees erased.

Personal highs in 2006 included getting an article I'd written professionally published in the Telos book Talkback: The Seventies and finally seeing my favourite band, U2, perform live in concert for only the second time in my life. In 2007 we're going to see another favourite group, Snow Patrol.

I finished the handover of the TSV editorship to Adam McGechan (we'd shared editorial duties for the last couple of years), and got to sit back and watch as Adam produced his first two issues (the third is underway as I write) with a stonking new design and a strong focus on the new series.

The editorial changeover should have been a positive and re-energising time for TSV and the club but it was overshadowed by a heated argument on the TSV message boards with some readers objecting to all sorts of things to do with TSV and the club. Many months later I'm still not entirely sure that I understand everything behind such a vitriolic outburst. Dissent and discussion is all well and good, but this went further, turning into a personally distressing experience. Adam and I distanced ourselves from the TSV message board for a while after it became apparent that nothing either of us could say would help the situation. I shudder to think what any new visitors to the TSV website during this time would have made of their first impressions of the club.

More positively, the Auckland Chapter started up again in 2006 after a long dormancy and regular monthly pub meetings were held throughout the year in an attempt to emulate UK fandom's legendary Fitzroy tavern meetings. There are similar meetings held in Wellington and Christchurch. At their best, the Auckland meetings have had a good turn-out and I've met a few new faces. The pub meets have also seen the launch of regular issues of Zeus Plug, a wonderful mini-zine deftly edited by Jonathan Park and Peter Adamson. These have been a great talking point at the meetings and I've written a few pieces for various issues. Because it's so very different in both style and focus, I don't think of it as competition for TSV, but I am a little envious at its frequency and the relative ease with which each 16-page, A6 issue comes together!

On a happier note, having Adam take control of TSV left me relatively free to get stuck into my ongoing task of transferring the back catalogue to the Internet with the invaluable assistance of Alden Bates. That man is a powerhouse of web publishing! Eight issues of TSV (covering 1993-94), the Tardis Tales Collection, two 'missing' novelisations and a batch of material which had previously appeared in the Doctor Who Listener Vol.2 was all prepared and published online in 2006. This year I hope to keep up the monthly schedule by covering everything from 1995 and 1996, as well as hopefully the remaining novelisations, a third batch of Listener clippings and also another ebook, this time from outside the TSV stable, a highly sought-after, out-of-print Doctor Who novel (but I'm not saying which one just yet!). Most of these items are already well under way. Stay tuned!

How I learned to stop worrying and love Doctor Who

Last night we watched The Runaway Bride with a group of friends. No - not that awful Julia Roberts movie, but the brand new Christmas episode of Doctor Who.

I always feel a sense of trepidation and nervous tension when watching a new Doctor Who story for the first time. This doesn't happen with anything else I watch. I’m working my way through the latest episodes of Heroes and Battlestar Galactica at the moment and although they’re both great series, I'm able to relax and enjoy them with no effort.

It's the acute awareness I think that a Doctor Who story's events and revelations need to be absorbed into the series' continuity; what fans sometimes refer to rather ostentatiously as the "canon". Every scene, every line will be picked apart and analysed in great detail in books, magazines and websites ad infinitum. There are books (such as the rather brilliant About Time series) still being published now which take a fresh look at the minutiae of the continuity dating back over 43 years, so you just know that whatever crops up in a brand new episode will be scrutinised for a long time to come.

However there’s a persuasive counter-argument for not doing this, at least on a first time viewing – but rather instead just enjoying the story as a piece of escapist entertainment. Don’t look for the bits that contradict something that happened in an episode that screened thirty years ago. Relax and just enjoy. Sometimes easier said than done.

Many years ago I assisted my good friend Jon Preddle with research for his book Timelink (previously issued by TSV Books and soon to be professionally published by Telos in the UK). Timelink is an awesomely detailed chronology of the Doctor Who TV universe, picking up on the tiniest details presented on-screen to form a theory of a cohesive, single continuity for the series’ entire run. It’s a bit like trying to piece together a vast, incomplete jigsaw and only managing to get some of the pieces to fit by filing down the edges. My task was to watch through the entire set of Jon Pertwee stories making notes on the continuity. Some of my notes were subsequently published in issues of TSV (here, here and here). I was particularly delighted to pinpoint the dating of The Time Monster thanks to an obscure one-line reference. This all took place a few years before The Discontinuity Guide (which took a similar approach to documenting series continuity) appeared; and indeed TSV was acknowledged as a source in that book.

However, having gone through this period of intense scrutiny of Doctor Who, I then found the habit rather hard to break. For a long time I found it difficult to simply watch an episode without mentally checking for references to times, dates and other minor details and how these might link into other stories.

Over the last couple of years watching new episodes of Doctor Who I’ve made a conscious effort to try to be less analytical, at least on a first viewing. I want to get back to a point where I can just enjoy the story without worrying about how The End of the World fits in with The Ark, or what it would take for The Christmas Invasion to exist in the same universe as The Ambassadors of Death.

I think with The Runaway Bride I’ve finally succeeded; last night when watching the story for the first time I managed to sit back, relax and just enjoy the story. I only had one brief slip-up when I caught myself wondering why the hole through to the centre of the Earth hadn’t caused its destruction or indeed yielded any Stahlman’s Gas!!

Completing the Key

Doctor Who and the Pirate Planet, a novelisation written by David Bishop, is now available online as an ebook.

This adaptation of a television serial by Douglas Adams was one of a handful of Doctor Who TV stories never published by Target Books (I'm talking about the 1963-1989 run here). The omission of The Pirate Planet was particularly irksome to avid Target collectors - and I count myself as one - as it formed part of the six story Key to Time sequence. I still recall as a young and uninformed fan staring at the back of The Armageddon Factor novelisation and wondering why there were only five, not six, books listed in the Key to Time sequence.

The novelisation was first published in 1990 by the New Zealand Doctor who Fan Club. The author was David Bishop, an unknown name in fandom at the time, but now well-known as the author of several Doctor Who novels and Big Finish audios. Seventeen years ago this month, David was hard at work writing the first draft of this book.

I revised and expanded the novelisation for a new edition in 2001, with David's approval, incorporating a large number of sequences from the rehearsal scripts that had been cut from the televised story. For the new ebook edition, I dug out the notes I made in 2001 and attempted to document the changes for a editors' commentary.

After struggling through a few chapters, trying to convert numerous notes into readable prose, I decided that a far simpler solution was to present the deleted scenes from the rehearsal scripts as extracts from the novelisation and leave it at that. This proved to be a fairly straight-forward task, but to my surprise I discovered that I'd omitted a few of those scenes from the 2001 edition, so these segments appear for the first time ever in this ebook.

The ebook is also available as a downloadable PDF file and is accompanied by several 'special features', including an article about the book's publication history, a guide to the 'deleted scenes', a gallery of cover artwork, and David Bishop's notes from the original edition.

Loving the Nimon

Published in October 1994, TSV 41 marked the thirtieth anniversary of Doctor Who's first broadcast on New Zealand television (the exact date was 18 September 1964). A set of three articles by myself, Graham Howard and Nigel Windsor examined aspects of this theme. These items have been left out of the online edition. It might seem a little odd to overlook what were effectively the lead articles, but I have my reasons. Nigel's piece speculated on which TV channel might play the series next (it was off air at the time) which is of course now very dated, Graham's article was a research piece about the NZBC archives, since superceded by Jon Preddle's research in recent issues, and my own overview of the history of Doctor Who on New Zealand TV is much better represented by the Another Time and Space e-book. However these omissions don't particularly harm the online edition as there's still a good solid chunk of material from TSV 41 to revisit.

The highlight of the issue is to my mind Phillip J Gray's defence of a much-maligned story in Why the Nimon Should be Our Friends. That article was selected as the sole example of TSV's output in Paul Cornell's Licence Denied fanzine anthology. It's a great article which I think is at least partly responsible for some fans reassessing The Horns of Nimon and also re-evaluating the relative merits of the Graham Williams and John Nathan-Turner eras. Although Phillip was a regular reader he hadn't written very much for TSV up to this point, but TSV 41 saw a sudden surge of contributions from this talented writer. It's likely that the Continuum '94 convention a few months earlier - at which we'd met for a first time and got on very well - was the catalyst for this surge of inspiration and enthusiasm.

Another provider of much of the issue's content was the ever-reliable Jon Preddle, contributing several pieces including a script to screen instalment for Vengeance on Varos, an item about Gallifreyan language complete with Jon's sketches of various on-screen examples of Time Lord script, and also a fairly detailed history of K9. Jon was a god-send when content for TSV was in short supply. I could phone him up and ask for an article on a particular subject and without fail a floppy disk would drop through the mailbox (these were the days before the Internet, of course) with exactly what I'd asked for.

While I was scanning each of the pages for this online edition, I noticed in the 'New Series Rumours' news page a report that Paul McGann had been offered the role of the Doctor but had turned it down. What makes this remarkable was that the TV movie was still a year away from being made, and that at that time McGann would of course finally accept the part.

Tim Hill's cover artwork - featuring many different Cyberman heads (including the proposed Dark Dimension version) - doesn't relate at all to the issue's content, as there's nothing in particular about the Cybermen within. It's no reflection at all on Tim's great drawing, but the issue should perhaps have had a Horns of Nimon themed cover. Coincidentally this was the last of Tim Hill's front cover artwork.

Click here to read TSV 41.

The Boys Play Rock and Roll

Hello hello
I'm at a place called Vertigo
It's everything I wish I didn't know
Except you give me something I can feel, feel

The night is full of holes
As bullets rip the sky
Of ink with gold
They twinkle as the
Boys play rock and roll
They know that they can't dance
At least they know...

An entire year has passed since the tickets first went on sale and I’ve just seen U2 live in concert, on Saturday 25 November.

Over the last year, I've felt at times like it just wasn't meant to happen. I originally missed out on tickets for the Saturday show because the website for ordering them crashed, then a week later again missed out on buying tickets for the Friday show over the counter after queuing for four hours. Finally success: a workmate tipped me off about a US-based concert tours company selling NZ U2 fan party packages, so I bought tickets for myself, Rochelle and Jon for the Saturday show. But then U2 postponed the shows for an indefinite period, but we were told to hold on to our tickets. Then the US tour company closed down without letting anyone know, and for a short while before the replacement company contacted me, it looked like we might have lost our money and the tickets. I think I can be forgiven for having just a bit of doubt right up until the show started over whether we were actually going to get to see U2.

Was it worth going through all that difficulty and waiting nearly a year to see my favourite band live in concert? Most definitely!

The show, which lasted two and half hours, was absolutely awesome. We were standing about a third of the way down the field in line with the centre of the stage, so we had great sound, a clear straight-ahead view of the screens and if I stood on tip-toes I could see the band in the flesh. It’s a shame we couldn’t get closer, but it was a sold-out gig and even though we arrived a few hours earlier the field was already half full, so we were fortunate to get as close as we did. Having watched the DVDs of the Vertigo and Elevation tours over and over again (if these had been on VHS I would have worn them out by now), I have to remind myself that it was unrealistic to expect nearly such a good view in person. But what a DVD doesn’t convey is the sheer euphoria of being in the company of thousands upon thousands of people, all cheering and singing along to the songs I know and love.

I'd looked up the set lists from the Australian leg of the tour in advance so I had a fairly good idea of what U2 would play on the night. Even so, there were a few welcome surprises. The band vary the line-up of their middle section and the encores from night to night (partly to keep things fresh, and partly so that the fans who attend every gig get a bit of variety).

U2 kicked off with City of Blinding Lights, a song that feels like it was written as an opening number (“Oh you look so beautiful tonight”); and Vertigo, both off latest album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Then it was into the audience-participation number, Elevation, which went down very well with the crowd. I was absolutely ecstatic that U2 played Until the End of the World which is a personal favourite and had only been played on a few of the tour dates. I Still Haven’t Found What I'm Looking For was combined to great effect with In A Little While, and Beautiful Day drew a huge response from the audience - especially when Bono sang a verse with New Zealand-specific lyrics, mentioning Cape Reinga and the Fiords seemingly inspired by his tour of the country's scenic spots over the preceding week. Angel of Harlem was next, followed by an acoustic version of Walk On, and then a spectacular version of Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own with Bono giving it his all in an emotionally-charged tribute to his late father. The big surprise for me was the inclusion of Bad, receiving only its second airing on this leg of the tour. Bad is one of those U2 songs that is rather unremarkable as an album track (on The Unforgettable Fire) but electrifyingly comes alive when played live. Then we had Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bullet the Blue Sky (Rochelle's favourite), a haunting version of Miss Sarajevo with Bono impressively covering the Pavarotti bits in fine voice; the ever-popular Pride; Where the Streets Have No Name (which in my opinion has been somewhat watered down from the Elevation tour version), and then to close the main part of the show possibly U2's most popular song ever, the achingly bittersweet One.

But it wasn't over yet. The encore teased with the slot-machine animation (which included some New Zealand-specific images), making me think that we were going to get Zoo Station, but no, instead we had The Fly in all its glory, complete with a bombardment of slogans and catchphrases, recalling the fabulous Zoo TV tour. The Achtung Baby theme continued with Mysterious Ways, and then the first encore ended with an awesome rendition of With or Without You. After a short pause, the band returned to the stage to play the last songs of the night - the new track The Saints are Coming, a rocking version of Desire, and then - last of all - One Tree Hill, which was only performed for the New Zealand concerts. The song ended with the crowd softly singing the last verse back to Bono with no musical accompaniment. In the still night air this was simply magical and an awesome way to round out a fantastic experience. We were truly at a place called Vertigo.