Friday 28 February 2020

The distance of time

AV Club takes a look at Ranger In Time, a series of children’s books about a rescue dog travelling in time to help in disasters, which drew some controversy overnight with someone flagging up the new book about 9/11.

Author Kate Messner responded that it came from her audience asking - kids born after the event.
Those kids were born years after 9/11 and don’t have the memories we do as adults. To them, it’s an awful thing that happened in history, like Pearl Harbor is to many of us. They want to know more about it, but adults don’t like to talk about it. So kids are left wondering.
It will always be too soon for me, but it’s true. Where do we draw the line, and when does it move?

Saturday 22 February 2020

Surprise!

Dropping one kind of enemy into a different kind of story works pretty well.

Maybe not three times in eight episodes though...

Wednesday 19 February 2020

A--ac- Of The Cybermen

For a non-serious Cybermen adventure, their voices break up like Discord calls.

Sunday 16 February 2020

The Haunting Of Villa Diodati

“Definitely a hand!”

The Haunting Of Villa Diodati comes weighted with expectations. The Year Without A Summer is one of those stories that science fiction, horror and fantasy fans know very well, from the resulting Frankenstein and The Vampyre to Ken Russell’s Gothic and many more.

I did it in The Door In Time too, drawing ideas from Frankenstein’s Womb by Warren Ellis and Marek Oleksicki, and I suggested it as a historical setting for the Frankenstein-inspired Chronicles Of Darkness RPG Promethean: The Created.

This includes audio and comic Doctor Who. So the TV version is not the first, but as the one that gets on TV it will be the definitive Whovian take for many.

Help! (See what I did there?)

A new poster on RPGnet seeks adventure hooks based on Beatles and Bond titles. Far be it from me to refuse.

Sunday 9 February 2020

Can You Hear Me?

“I tried to warn you.”

Emily Cook at DWM reports that this is the first episode with a question mark in the title. Considering the title of the show and the accessorising of most Doctors in the 80s, this surprises me.

Sunday 2 February 2020

Praxeus

This is not a normal day...

Happy Palindrome Day by the way!

Mary Somerville

A Google Doodle celebrating Mary Somerville, mathematician, geographer and astronomer, who worked out that Neptune must be there.