A couple of brief plugs. The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine, has another of my Blogs of Doom. They said it wouldn’t
last. Some of them demanded that it shouldn’t. But it’s still going, and some
people even quite like it now. Hooray! There’s lots of other marvellous things
in the magazine too, I imagine, I haven’t got my copy yet.
I do have a copy of the latest issue of The Essential Doctor Who about Adventures
in the Future. For this I wrote the introductory article, giving a broad
guide to the TV series’ depiction of the future. It’s a huge subject – over half
of all Doctor Who stories are set in
the future to an extent – so I tried to
focus on various themes; the depictions of progressive, egalitarian futures of
the Troughton era, the depictions of repressive futures in the Pertwee era;
depictions of the Earth’s environmental degradation; the future of humanity.
Plus a couple of box outs on how the present day is ‘remembered’ in stories set
in the future, and how, in the future, some things will remain the same. It was
quite tricky to write – I had to hold almost the entirety of Doctor Who in my head at once, like
balancing a tower of plates – with the onus very much on trying to say something
new, deliver some new insights or perspectives rather than simply listing Every
Story Which Does A Thing.
I’m most proud of the sentence:
Doctor Who even
successfully predicted the threat of climate change due to deforestation,
although, somewhat less successfully, it predicted that it would lead to a new
ice age.
Anyway, copies of both magazines can be found in all good
newsagents, and various supermarkets. Seek them out!
Next month will be fun, as three Big Finish things I worked on will be coming out! It never rains
but it pours etc. So I shall rack my brains trying to think of fascinating
things to say about them, as they ‘drop’.
