It’s a GOOD weekend to be a Doctor Who fan. Not only did we get Day of the Doctor today, we also got An Adventure in Space and Time, which aired on BBC America last night in the States. For those of you unfamiliar with this, this is the new docudrama about how Doctor Who got started.
Overall reactions behind the fold. Not so much concern for spoilers here since this is a docudrama, but nonetheless!
Spoiler-free picoreview: OMG OMG OMG OMG that was awesome. I totally clapped my hands and squealed like a little kid at the ending, and even as I type I’m teary-eyed with Happy. 😀
Later on I think I’ll have an actual reaction to the actual plot but for now: OMG OMG OMG OMG I LOVED IT. It made me HAPPY. Thank you, BBC! Thank you, Doctor Who! What a BEAUTIFUL celebration of the 50th anniversary!
P.S. Dara has her reaction post up here. She’s got some thoughts on the beautiful An Adventure in Space and Time docudrama about the start of Doctor Who as well–I’ve got a forthcoming post about that. 😀
P.P.S. I also now have a post up about An Adventure in Space and Time, here!
P.P.P.S. Tor.com’s reaction post is here, and The Mary Sue’s is here!
My own spoiler-heavy reactions behind the fold!
Not too long ago on Facebook I was giggling over the Easter egg on Google Maps that actually takes you into a TARDIS interior if you click on certain police boxes that show up in the UK. Related to that story, I went and dug up this old pic of myself from 1995, from when Dara and I went to the Worldcon in Glasgow in Scotland that year. We called this “Anna Buys a Used TARDIS”.
Anna Buys a Used TARDIS
I posted it to Facebook and was promptly asked whether I lost the vehicle in a card game. This was my reply!
Certainly not. There was a PERFECTLY LOGICAL EXPLANATION for the entire affair. See, this little Scottish dude with an umbrella showed up and said to me, “YOU! I NEED YOUR HELP! I seem to have parked my police box here without proof of ownership and aheh, well, I’ve got something I’ve DESPERATELY got to take care of. I don’t suppose I could convince you to buy it from me for oh, say, half an hour?”
“What?” I said? “Why only half an hour?”
“Well,” the little Scottish dude with the umbrella explained, “that’s the RULE. But if you’ve bought it from me that makes you the legitimate owner. It’ll be safe then!”
“Ummmm okay?” I said dubiously, but what the hell, we were only just wandering around being tourists anyway, and it was going to be nice to hang out for a bit. “I’ll give you five pence for it.”
“SOLD!” he said, and dashed off like his shoes were on fire. That’s when things got REALLY weird, because THEN a guy with curly blond hair and the most hideous coat I’d EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE showed up.
The blond guy started to argue with me about the police box being HIS, but I said quite firmly that I HAD just paid five pence for it. So then he stormed off, gesticulating and pontificating wildly, and I was about to say bugger to the whole thing when a THIRD guy showed up. This one had pointy hair and a pinstriped suit on and he was running as fast as his red trainers could carry him. “For the love of all that’s holy, GET OUT OF THE WAY!” he bellowed as he charged past. “Also, you might want to duck!”
I ducked because somebody was firing FRIGGING LASERS over my head, and when I turned around, wait, what? Stompy robots? In Scotland? Da hell? They weren’t even wearing kilts or playing bagpipes. Just kept blithering on about YOU WILL BE DELETED, and they stomped off after the guy with the pointy hair.
By then, I can tell you, I was DEEPLY confused. But that was when the door to the police box opened from the inside, and the little Scottish dude with the umbrella poked his head out and smiled at me. “Here you are then, here’s your five pence back! Also, you might want to have a dash of this nitro nine. On your way now. Be on the lookout for those robots.”
Which was when the police box promptly vanished, with a WHRR-WHRR-WHRR noise that I was pretty sure that police boxes weren’t actually supposed to make. So I went on my way, wondering what the HELL had just happened, and chucked the nitro nine over the fence just so that last robot would explode nicely.
And then I had tea.
Cross my hearts, this was exactly how it happened.
Picked up in print from Barnes and Noble, because I DO buy Kit in both formats:
Picked up from Kobo:
Also picked up from Kobo, but calling these out in a separate list as they’re all the ebook releases of the special 50th Anniversary editions of selected Doctor Who novels, one for each Doctor!
52 for the year.
I’ve gotten out of the habit of posting in-depth TV episode reviews, but here’s this, because I wanted to get this out of my system and provide an opportunity for folks to yak about it with me if they so desire.
Spoilers will of course ABOUND behind the cut, and in the comments! Don’t clickie if you haven’t seen “Asylum of the Daleks” yet!
So I’ve been following my Doctor Who Podcast boys for a while, and one of the awesome things they did a while back was to interview Scarf Doctor himself, Mr. Tom Baker. In that interview one of the questions raised was whether Baker would consider joining the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctors in recording audio adventures with Big Finish. At the time Baker made ambivalent yet interested noises, and 
solarbird
People, it looks like Big Finish have indeed scored Tom Baker. There are going to be new Fourth Doctor adventures as of next year! With Leela as the Companion in the first set of them, and Romana I coming in for the second set!
I told Dara this last night, and watched her eyes get huge and her face light up. She then informed me that we need ALL OF THESE–given that Leela is her favorite Classic Who Companion and all! That set is due out in January 2012, so WOO! Yule present, baby!
So for those of you who like Scarf Doctor, GO TO. Hell, you should check out Big Finish if you haven’t already, because they do excellent work with the other Doctor adventures they offer as well–full cast plays with excellent sound effects and music. They have several productions in particular of stories that had been scripted for the TV show but never got produced, and so they call those “Lost Stories”. Great fun!