Category: Doctor Who

Issues related to the Doctor and all her adventures

Another Missed Munchie Squad

TimeHorse March 7, 2020 No Comments

I got in to cosplay a number of years ago. I was aware of it for quite a while but I really started to take an interest on a trip up to Connecticut to visit me mum. Back then I was in #CO2Fre3 or #CO2Fre2 and in those Nissan LEAFs, I had to stop a number of times to get enough electricity to get to my destination.

So, I stopped a Hotel in Baltimore to use the CHAdeMO charger and get some fuel when I passed some cosplayers going to a convention. I asked to get a picture and kept it as part of my trip log memories on Swarm, as I used to do back then.

Of course I was intrigued so when I heard about this new group, D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoot, forming on Facebook, I joined right away, getting in on the ground floor. I remember that phone call very well as I was driving #CO2Fre home from work. Sarah Brice, an amazing cosplayer in her own right, was there with the other founders. That’s when we planned out what the group would be and how it would be organized. In those early years I was more of a lurker rather than a participant.

I started going to a local Doctor Who convention, ReGeneration Who, now defunct. Seeing all those Whovian cosplays, I decided it was time for me to start building my own cosplays. That’s where I met one of my very best friends in the entire world, Ilona Hull Berberich, who is a dead-ringer for Susan [Foreman].

I was finally ready to attend my first D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoot event. I invided Ilona so I would have someone I met there and we made a great team, having a number of photos taken of us.

From that point I attended a number of D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoot events, building my cosplay database up from a since Doctor Who companion to various other media franchises, getting some great photos and making some great friends.

One of the best parts of all from those events was the Munchie Squad. After an afternoon of posing and snapping picture, we’d all gather and have a friendly meal together. I so enjoyed chatting with my very dear friends Rachael S. Norberg, an amazing cosplayer, and Kevin K. Nguyen, an outstanding photographer, and so many others! It was the perfect capstone to a great event.

But then I got burned.

Back in 2018, Regeneration Who was in its fourth year and they had an amazing lineup. The actress who played Tegan Jovanka, an Australian air hostess, Janet Fielding, was going to be there. Janet, in fact, is one of only a half-dozen my official Twitter aggregators. She’s wonderful! Mark Strickson, who played Vislor Turlough, was also coming. As was Matthew Waterhouse, who lived at the time in Connecticut, where I was born. And also Sarah Sutton, who is the sweetest, and Peter Davison, who was a wonderful Fifth Doctor, and the amazing Nicola Bryant.

I was going to do a Tegan crossplay for the convention. Ilona was coming and would be in a Turlough crossplay. We were both very excited.

I had commissioned a Tegan crossplay months before the convention. I obtained all the COTS elements of the cosplay: blouse, pantyhose, pumps, wig, and purse. I just asked the commissioner for a skirt, a belt, a jacket, and the pill-box hat. I hoped it wouldn’t be too hard. I would have done it myself but I didn’t feel up to the measuring and sewing, especially by hand.

Days before the convention my commissioner said she couldn’t do it. She really, valiantly tried, but it was just beyond her. I hold no ill will and have not asked for my money back but the whole event soured me to cosplay. I prepared and prepped for this perhaps once in a lifetime photoshoot and to come up short. It still hurts, to this day.

Tegan and Turlough meet the 1980s Doctor Who cast
My dead friend Ilona and I are cosplaying Vislor Turlough and Tegan Jovanka as the now-defunct Regeneration Who convention’s 4th and last year. Pictured with us are, in order, top to bottom, left to right, Mark Strickson, Peter Davison, Matthew Waterhouse, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, and Nicola Bryant. © 2018, Bryan Humphrey

All that said, Bryan Humphrey took a wonderful photo!

Today there was a D.C. Cosplay Photo Shoots event in Leesburg, VA. I haven’t been to a photoshoot in years because I have no new cosplays to share but I really wanted to go to the Munchie Squad! I miss all my cosplay and photographer friends, like Rachael, and I go to Leesburg at least once every fortnight, so it would have been no big deal.

But I forgot.

I really miss cosplay. What will you see me as next?

The Timeless Children

TimeHorse March 1, 2020 No Comments

WARNING: SPOILERS!

Well, that was a wild ride. To be honest, I think the tension was right, but the number of questions left unanswered still leave me uneasy. I think the start of the episode with the Doctor following the Master was a powerful opening and the Graham and Yaz interaction as well as Graham continuing to be the expert idea man was awesome. Hiding in the Cybermen armor was genius and had a wonderful payoff.

My only nit there was that the Cyberman ship seemed to enter the portal right after they were seen being examined by the half-Cyberman with no ship showing the four of them descending or appearing on the planet. This made it seem, cinematographically, that the four of them were still on the ship when it got to Gallifrey. While the payoff of surprise when they show up and rescue Ethan. Kind of like when Chewbacca from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Not so much Deus Ex Machina, but cinematic misdirection. Not that I per se approve, but like I said, the payoff was kind of cool.

Meanwhile, the end of the half-cyberman was kind of anti-climatic. Using the Tissue-Compression Eliminator to defeat him was very dissatisfactory and I feel the drama and difficulty could have been played out more.

The Matrix was a nice throwback but the whole Time Lord origin story was just weird. What’s more, having the Shobogans be native Gallifreyans and Time Lords be a hybrid with another, non-Gallifreyan race was a bit peculiar. Will this form a quest for the Doctor to look for the origin of that race in future episodes?

More confusing was the use of the idea of the Timeless Child name. Who was the Timeless Child. Was she Tecteun, or was she the orphan that Tecteun tested on and discovered Regeneration from? We are told the Doctor is the Timeless Child, but does that make the Doctor Tecteun or the unnamed orphan? And what happened to Tecteun? Overall, this aspect of the story could have been clearer and more direct in terms of the conclusions we’re expected to draw.

What’s more, we’re left with so many unanswered clues and questions. Why does the Master call himself O in Spyfall when clearly Omega was the Time Lord with the most O in his name? And why did the aliens in that episode look like the monsters from The Three Doctors and Arc of Infinity? And why did the aliens from that episode come from a place that looked kind of like The Matrix? Where was Rassilon when Gallifrey fell to the Master, and how did Captain Jack Harkness know about the lone Cyberman?

The resolution was rather predictable. Obviously someone besides the Doctor would pull the trigger on the Cyber-Time Lords destruction. It could have happened inside that TARDIS or outside, but overall the fact that the Doctor escapes is natural, and that the Master isn’t seen in the destruction in the final scene is also quite expected. He will be back. It’s still unclear if he still has the Cyberium though.

The Cyber-Time Lords were cool, though. Those costumes were awesome!

Overall, I enjoyed the episode, despite its unanswered questions and inconsistencies. It just seems weird to end with the Jadoon invading the TARDIS and putting the Doctor in prison. What’s up with that!?

Next time, Revolution of the Daleks. Thus begins the long wait.

Guess I’ll just watch Steven Universe Future…

Ascension of the Cybermen

TimeHorse February 23, 2020 No Comments

WARNING: SPOILERS!

The Cybermen are back and they mean business! So, who’s that orphan then?

Tonight’s episode was quite a wallop with non-stop danger interspersed with a tranquil orphan story in a quaintly Georgian or Edwardian, Northern Irish village where the only jobs seem to be farmer (appropriate when following CountryFile and tonight’s series [season for the Yanks] finale of Call the Midwife) and the Garda, the local constabulary.

I’ll get back to the farm boy constable in a moment but first this episode immediately follows The Haunting of Villa Diodati. The half-man, half-Cyberman is back, the Doctor having traced his position from the data left in the previous episode. There, they meet the last seven humans in that part of the Universe.

At this I want to stop. I mean, we got that at the Utopia, one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who serials! In that story, Captain Jack Harkness grabs the TARDIS as it’s taking off from Cardiff. They land on a planet trillions of years in the future, where the last of humanity is protected from total annihilation from lack of resources by a Professor Yana—You Are Not Alone—who turns out to be… the Master.

But I’ll return to that in a moment.

So, our intrepid time travellers, the Doctor, Yaz, Graham, and Ryan, arrive on the planet with the last humans and proceed to totally fail in their rescue attempt. When the Doctor tries to cover everyone so they can escape, Ryan is separated from Yaz and Graham, and he, the Doctor, and one of the human wunderkinds, who is able to hack cyber-ships and able to save the Doctor and Ryan.

Meanwhile, Graham, Yaz, and three more humans—three of the original seven having died—blow out their escape ships engines. But as luck would have it (can you say Deus Ex Machina) they’re in a cyber-war graveyard. They are able to pilot the ship into a Cyberman Troop ship and instead of doing the intelligent thing, knowing that the ship is full of Cybermen, of piloting it back to the planet with the TARDIS, they go and take it to the gateway to try and bring their problems for her to solve.

Screaming Cybermen? What’s that about. It’s mentioned once and then never again? But again, I digress.

Anyway, so the Doctor, Ryan, and the Wonderkind make it to the gateway and meet the last guardian of the gateway. He shows them the portal and the Doctor is aghast to see her ruined home Gallifrey beyond.

At the same time, Yaz, Graham, and a about a million Cybermen have arrived.

To add insult to injury—I told you I’d get back to him—The Master is back, stepping though the portal to Gallifrey.

Meanwhile, remember that orphan Garda? Well, it turns out, he has the same power as Captain Jack Harkness: he cannot die. He’s shot and falls off a cliff. He dies for a moment, and then he gasps, and recovers. On his body is no sign of his injury.

And does a Garda have to have his mind erased when he retires? Are they a cyber-nursery?

So many questions! How does the orphan relate to Captain Jack? How did Jack know about the lone Cyberman? How are the orphan and the half-Cyberman connected? Why was the half-Cyberman rejected for upgrade? Who is the Doctor from The Fugitive of Jadoon? Where is Omega? What happened to Gallifrey? And what was the Master doing there?

Next week, the series finale, Timeless Children!

Double Rainbow over Portree

TimeHorse February 18, 2020 No Comments
Double Rainbow over Portree
A Double Rainbow in Portree, Skye, in Scotland. The outer Rainbow can barley be seen but is just visible as a faint fuchsia streak that extends from the trunk of the tree on the right. Photo © 2019 TimeHorse, LLC

Every since I was a child, I dreamed of spending my mild summers in Scotland and my mild summers in New Zealand. Who needs winter?! Although I’ve yet to visit the lovely submerged island continent that is New Zealand, I have been to Scotland a few times and it never ceases to impress me. I’m so in love with the lands north of Hadrian’s wall I could happily spend months there just enjoying the sights.

As I got older, I became a bit of a polyglot, thirsting for new languages to speak. So when I read that you could secure Scottish residency by becoming fluent in Scots, I decided that was a language most assuredly on my bucket list.

The great thing about Scotland, and Edinburgh specifically, is that it has a thriving Doctor Who fanbase that meets monthly at an awesome bistro right off the Royal Mile, the Tron.

The Tron, Edinburgh
The Tron is a sports bar in Edinburgh where the Monthly Edinburgh Who show meets. Photograph © TimeHorse, LLC

I’m not sure when I’ll be back in Edinburgh or Scotland, but if you’re going, won’t you take me with you!

The Haunting of Villa Diodati

TimeHorse February 16, 2020 1 Comment

WARNING: SPOILERS!

The Doctor lands in 1816 on the coast of Lake Geneva and makes the welcome aquaitence of Lord Byron, Mary Godwin [Shelley] and Dr. Polidori—author of The Vampyre.

The story starts out with a lovely play on a ghost story with the surprising appearance of the Doctor, Ryan, Yasmin, and Graham at the door in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. The gothic horror is increased by the arrival of mysterious apparitions, deepening the mystery. And then, the question begs, where is Percy Shelley, Mary’s husband to be and the muse to her magnum opus, the story of The Modern Prometheus?

The story continues into a wonderful MC Escher like play on architectural configuration that would have made the Logopolins proud. The Doctor and companions deftly solve the confoundment of the ever changing rooms by shutting their eyes and walking through walls. But when they’re all together, quite convenient to the plot, that’s when the mysterious lady of the lake appears and turns out to be a half-built Cyberman!

On the run, we finally find Percy Shelley, sulking in the basement, a mysterious air about him. Here, the plot runs into high gear as we build to Captain Jack Harkness‘s prophecy about the lone Cybermen. It tuns out, Percy has taken upon himself a Quicksilver containing the entire database of Cybermen defeats (shaded of Genesis of the Daleks). After a threat to history by Ryan, the Doctor instead takes the cyber-computer from Percy and into herself only to face down the lone Cyberman. When the Cyberman threatens the Earth and history, though, the Doctor must capitulate and gives the cyber-computer to the lone Cyberman, fulfilling the most disastrous prophecy.

Overall, I think my main nit is that the final act relied too much on deus ex machina elements to bring the story to its logical conclusion. Also, I didn’t like Ryan so easily suggesting the Doctor kill Percy Shelley. And the Doctor could have used the knowledge from the cyber-computer to do more than simply capitulate when the world of the past was threatened, thus threatening the world of the future. Would a fallen Earth before the beginning of the modern era have been an even greater boon to the Cybermen? With no humans to destroy Voga or defeat Mondas, wouldn’t the Cybermen have fared even better?

I guess the Doctor made the right decision after all. But, what will the consequences be?

Next week, Ascension of the Cybermen!

My First Web Page

TimeHorse February 12, 2020 1 Comment

I started writing web pages in 1993, months after Tim Burners-Lee published the first HTML specification. The first page I created was dedicated to my love of the Quiet Beatle, George Harrison, and the Roger Damon Price science fiction series, The Tomorrow People. The Tomorrow people was ITV‘s answer to the highly successful Doctor Who series on BBC.

When I created it, I was still at McGill University and so for a while it was hosted on the university web servers. When I left the school I was allowed to download the page and installed it on my work computer, then brought the code home, eventually letting it settle on my official web server.

If you’re curious what that page looked like, search no further than here: The Original George Harrison and Tomorrow People Home Page. Please note, some of the links are long dead but all internal documents are still there. Enjoy!

And remember, I’m available for hire.