Motivations We knew this would happen. New companions of The Doctor would return to Sheffield and from there, make a decision to keep going. In terms of Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey schema, heroes are called, get help (The Doctor), and then may resist the call (go home) but then decides to cross the threshold. The … Continue reading Doctor Who: Sympathy for the Devil
Month: October 2018
Review: A Star Explodes
I saw Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper's A Star is Born. I have many feelings. My friend thought we were seeing a 2018 version of Almost Famous. I imagined something about a musical. We were wrong. There are spoilers. So stop here. Firstly, the singing performances are everything. They soar. Obviously Lady Gaga can sing, but she is … Continue reading Review: A Star Explodes
Doctor Who: Balancing Act
In Rosa Doctor Who achieved the balance between education, personalisation, new stories, and call backs. The Doctor Calls It's a new era but the comforting sense of continuity um, continues, with call backs to the Storm Cage, Perception Filters and a Vortex Manipulator. New viewers won't care these have a provenance, while everyone else will … Continue reading Doctor Who: Balancing Act
Starting something
I didn't mean to, but I started something. I have an Instagram account, and it's mostly full of sunsets, art, and visually arresting things (and puns) and now RedBubble promotions. I don't really use Insta for writing related efforts. This week I started to. It's been both frustrating and creatively fulfilling. After endlessly tinkering with … Continue reading Starting something
Doctor Who: Setting Up
I'm going to concentrate on the craft in my commentary of Doctor Who, because: brand differentiation. I'm claiming it. Chris Chibnall is doing a couple of things with this story: cementing relationships and setting up the enemy. Call Backs: Looks like the Stenza have been set up as the Big Bad, first hunting on Earth, … Continue reading Doctor Who: Setting Up
Something old is renewed
You can never experience your own writing in the same way readers can. Writers know their own story, are often unaware of their usual or unusual foibles, and read what they want imagined, not what they put on the page. So they see the wood for the trees. Unless you write something and completely forget … Continue reading Something old is renewed
Doctor Who: Salad Days
Shipping steel There was plenty to relish in the first episode to feature Jodie Whittaker's Doctor The Woman Who Fell to Earth. These included the entirety of Whittaker's performance, but also the score, camera work and colour palette, and The Doctor building things, in addition to the sets. Plus Salad Man. The locations for filming … Continue reading Doctor Who: Salad Days
Uses of enchantment
I have Bruno Bettelheim's book Uses of Enchantment, somewhere. Yet I'm less interested in Freudian readings of myth and fairy tales than other types of interpretation. But that's not the point of this. I was reading how selling is the art of story telling, (in a Medium piece here) but earlier I'd been looking for a … Continue reading Uses of enchantment
Writing Bec 