02/06/2013

Good news for a good friend

I am absolutely delighted to be able (finally) to announce that my goof friend and mentor, Terry Jackman, has landed a book deal for her novel 'Ashamet'

Terry runs the Orbit writers groups, organised by the BSFA, and has been instrumental in getting my writing to the point where it does not look like the output of a gifted four-year-old. I first read her book about four years ago, and thought then it needed to be published.

Well done, Terry :D

Matt Smith to Leave Doctor Who

Or so it was announced yesterday by the BBC. Now some will think I am going to be bouncing up and down with glee at this, as I've been a little vocal in my lack of support for the current era, but I'm not. I'm actually disappointed.

See, in my humble (stop laughing) opinion, Matt Smith could have been one of the Great Doctors, but he's been let down by poor choice of companions, poor scripts, and this utterly abysmal thing that's crept in about short, broken up series.

One of the things I really cant get my head around is how Moffat and Gatiss can do such a jaw-droppingly great job on 'Sherlock', yet consistently get it so wrong with Doctor Who. It is almost as though they had too much on and didn't concentrate on it. Wonderful sidekicks have been shockingly ignored - I would love to have seen a spin-off Steampunk-esque series with our favourite Victorian crime-fighting trio :) - and there has been a constant theme of ending through the last series, as well as a very poor choice of companion in Jenna-Louise Coleman.

What I am now afraid of is that we have entered another period of terminal decline (if that makes any sense) in Doctor Who, much as we did with Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

I hope not.