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Holiday time

Gods Behaving Badly by not so struggling author Marie PhillipsWell, the countdown says it all: it’s day zero and I’m off on holiday. It’s an astonishing 14 days – two weeks’ holiday! Inconceivable! – but I should be back to regale you all with news, memes, paper-thin reviews and sarcasm towards David Caruso’s acting talents on the 20th.

Since it’s silly season anyway, what news that does emerge in the next two weeks is liable to be dull/completely made up anyway (current odds-on favourite as biggest news item in the next fortnight: David Tennant is to be replaced by the CGI version of himself from The Last of The Time Lords), so hopefully you won’t be missing anything, assuming you don’t all just go somewhere else for news. Hopefully, my third-episode verdicts on things like Mad Men can wait (or I’ll just claim I need to stick out until the fifth episode before delivering judgement).

In the meantime, I leave you in the hands of my rubbish web host, Dataflame. Seeing as everything’s been stable for the last 24 hours, which apparently is as good as I can hope for these days, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed and hope that I’ve finally managed to track down and stamp out the bizarreness that caused their server to have a touch of the vapours* and that the blog will still be here when I get back. It’ll probably still be belting out HG Wells and Orson Welles, as those irritating buggers backslap each other. Sorry about that.

As an aside, I spent the day in Maidstone for a wedding. Made a quick trip to Waterstone’s (Doctor Who annuals in the window and a somewhat presumptuous but entirely plausible invitation to “get to know my favourite new author**” Marie Phillips, whoever she might be, on the inside) before visiting the Pizza Express across from the theatre.

I mention this purely because despite the fact there were pictures of him plastered all over the theatre, I completely failed to notice the fact that the loud man on the table next to ours, gassing on about having to perform on stage three times a day***, was Bubble from Big Brother 2. That, my friends, is how observant I am.

Trust me. Trust my reviews. Hope my holiday makes me more observant.

Ευτυχείς διακοπές!

* For those who are interested, an interest collision between Movable Type’s dynamic publishing functions, FastCGI, .htaccess and hotlink protection; for everyone else, I’m really sorry for boring you rigid like that. I’ll be more interesting when I get back, I promise

** It might have said ‘my new favourite author’. Equally presumptuous, but equally plausible

*** When did panto season start kicking off in August? Is this like Christmas trees in Marks & Spencers?

Friday’s “one more day until I’m on holiday” news

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Valhalla

ValhallaFirstly, can I just ask, “What the Hell happened to the Big Finish web site?” Have a look at it: it’s horrible!

Putting that to one side for a moment, though, does anyone actually look forward to the Sylvester McCoy releases? Just before I’m about to listen to one, I always feel like I’m in that Revels ad – you know, the spoof of Deer Hunter – and someone’s pre-loaded the bag with toffees.

For one gleaming moment, though, it looked like I was going to get a coffee-flavoured audio play with Valhalla. No Sophie Aldred. Good. Sylvester McCoy playing the Doctor all quiet and melancholic, with scarcely a word beginning with ‘r’ in sight. Excellent. Hints that we’re going for season 25 or 26, rather than 24, with the Doctor having a cunning plan up his sleeve from the beginning. Excellente.

Then, oh dear. Mango-flavoured.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – Valhalla”