jblum

Sun, 11 May 2008 09:33:57 GMT

I've really begun to notice something about my brain. So much of the time, even when I'm hanging around with friends, I veer between being desperate to keep them entertained -- feeling like I'm not giving them value-for-money if I'm not being witty and interesting enough -- and feeling awful if they are being entertained and I'm not contributing anything. Earlier today I was getting savagely miserable because they were having a great conversation going on around me, and I had barely anything to say.

I don't think it's an I've-got-to-be-the-center-of-attention thing... it's less of a greed for listeners than a desperate obligation. But I do think it comes back to that need to feel like a part of what's going on -- that people care about what you care about, and care about what you're feeling.

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:40:35 GMT

Well, despite my best efforts at denial, a bunch of my friends on LJ noticed that I was having a birthday today. And made me feel all appreciated and NOT AT ALL OLD, even now I'm now officially out of the most desirable demographic!

Thanks, guys. You rock. I know I haven't been the most communicative lately, but I'm really thinking of all of you.

And the old creative neurons might be beginning to fire again... I'm beginning to have ideas about a short film I could do. which would be a great excuse to get to see people...

The Poison Sky

Sun, 04 May 2008 04:53:13 GMT

Aw *YEAH*!

In fact, that basically sums up my reaction to series four of Doctor Who so far. It's not stretching itself as far as the last couple of years, but what it's doing it's doing damn well, and with tremendous heart.

And I hope to God Wilf gets a trip in the TARDIS. Just once...

Sat, 03 May 2008 06:43:18 GMT

The best thing about revisiting Time Rift is realising just how much fun we had. Even after I'd bungled my romance with AC, we're still there laughing and carrying on on-set, with Cary keeping us all in good spirits.

The worst thing is seeing how much we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We were surprisingly professional and copeful, but still making basic errors of judgement like thinking we could get away with vast amounts of background noise, and only re-recording some of the lines.

And I've just had to wade through Episode 2 Scene 7A: twenty-two takes across two shots of the most hideous exposition known to man, drunkenly shot and mumble-mouthedly delivered by yours truly with a rapidly slipping grip on my lines. I swear I was clean-shaven when we started and stubble-ridden by the end. Badly written, badly acted, badly shot, badly logged (perhaps perceptively, I didn't label any of the takes on these shots as "best"), and the EDL page was missing so I had no idea which takes out of this morass I needed to retrieve.

Only about half of this scene even made it to the rough-cut... large chunks were re-shot with inserted close-ups, and what was left was split into two bits with something hopefully more interesting between them. But the original was nearly three minutes long, and lurched from topic to topic in a way which even at the time I knew was desperate and amateurish. I'm including the un-re-edited version in the Deleted Scenes segment as a warning to future generations. But don't worry, Aaron, you won't have to clean it up!

Fri, 02 May 2008 02:03:40 GMT

Well, it's been one of those put-your-head-down-and-your-bum-up kinds of weeks, as Kate's mum would say. On the plus side, yesterday I did a bit of writing for the first time in ages... Angel Express has ground to a halt, but I'm beginning to have thoughts about that spec script again.

But my spare time has been taken up once again with Time Rift. Y'know, back when I first decided to do this DVD version, the one thing I was absolutely clear on was that I was not going to re-edit this thing from scratch from the raw footage. That would just be an insane amount of time -- much more sensible just to go back to the rough-cuts and save a couple of VHS generations. But the FX shots I'd do from scratch... and then there were the new pickup shots I was doing... and the final scene had such bad sound and needed a complete reconstruction anyway... and then there were just a few problem scenes where even the restored sound wasn't good enough, and I'd really get much better results from sound that hadn't already been fiddled with... and just a few shots where the generation loss meant the picture was too flickery... and now that I've fixed this scene and that scene, it'd look really odd if I don't clean up those few shots in between... and... and... and...

Well, the upshot is that now it looks like about a quarter of the story will have been recut from scratch. Yes, I'm a fool.

So I've basically spent the past week in a frantic blur of ripping and cutting, so I can get the last batches of assembled raw sound files to Aaron the Cleanup Guy before Kate puts her foot down and takes the VCR away from my computer. (Not just on general principles -- she needs it to watch a documentary for the story she's writing.)

But is it worth it? Well, see for yourself.

On the left, the unrestored master tape; on the right, the raw footage:

My God, the skin tones, the sweater, the no-longer-flared color. Between the picture and the sound, this really is going to lift the story from Iffy to Watchable. And that's going to make all the difference.

One of those good-news-bad-news things

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:01:04 GMT

In the spirit of ISIHAC, and a tribute to Humph...

The good news is, the long-discussed film version of Edge of Darkness is back on -- with Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Zorro, Casino Royale, and the original Edge of Darkness) attached as director. William Monahan (Kingdom of Heaven) did the adaptation.

The bad news is, Mel Gibson is playing Ronnie Craven.

...Okay, we're not exactly talking The Dark Is Rising level of f***ing-with-a-treasured-text-ness. But it's a big step down from Bob Peck...

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:26:39 GMT

Every so often Doctor Who fandom can still astonish me.

After this last week -- which was probably the most old-school story yet, UNIT verus a Sontaran invasion, familiar objects like satnavs and emissions controllers turned lethal, all the most charming cliches of the Pertwee era in one neat package -- I've seen old-school fans complaining that the new show has got it wrong because:

* the Sontarans are acting sneaky and stealthy instead of going for an all-out invasion (when in every single old Sontaran story for one reason or another they were being stealthy, and we never once saw an up-front invasion)

* the Doctor is being shamefully rude to his friends at UNIT, not at all like the old days (when he was CONSTANTLY rude to his friends at UNIT, and indeed anyone who disagreed with him ever from Romana to Ralph Cornish)

* the Doctor sometimes makes political comments (so, not at all like the days when Mac Hulke used him for Green Party political broadcasts, Robert Holmes had the workers of the world Pluto unite, or Andrew Cartmel went after everything from nukes to Thatcher)

* the Doctor is making a big deal about not liking guns (which he's been saying since 1966, while at the same time being happy to use them when he needs them)

Now, obviously Doctor Who appeals to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. But all these "my Doctor would never have done that" bits are just so, well, completely and utterly factually wrong that I'm finding myself resorting to the great cliche: What show were you watching again?

And I'm just wondering where some of those ideas could come from -- most of all, their idea that the Doctor used to be nice. (Sorry, folks -- he was brilliant, funny, caring, astonishing, brave, wonderful, and quite frequently an asshole.) I think a fan just gave me a bit of a clue with something they said about him: "He didn't go around judging people and he didn't hate people unless they were the baddies."

Now, this fan said that completely obliviously of the huge judgmentalism right there in that statement. But more to the point, it made me think of the kind of people they missed him judging, the ones who the Doctor saw as beneath him... who are quite often the ones the young fans would have thought were beneath them too.

And I think that might be the key. When they thought the Doctor was nice, what they really mean is that they thought he would be nice to them. Cause they were like him -- smart, geeky, a bit isolated, surrounded by a bunch of petty smallminded fools and all that. (Yep, the school system's got a lot to answer for.) They knew who the idiots and the baddies were in the world too. And they were sure the Doctor would only pick on the people who deserved it, the ones who'd pick on them.

But now, maybe, now that they've grown up, they can get an inkling of what it would be like if the Doctor's casual scorn were turned on them. To be a Ralph Cornish or a Brigadier or an Elton Pope or a Sir Colin Thackeray, just doing the best you can, even doing the right thing rather than the wrong one... and then this big-mouthed genius swans up and takes over and starts having goes at you and making smug little comments to the girl at his side. And they don't think you're wonderful, and better than all the others. And he might not invite you for a trip in the TARDIS.

That would be unbearable, wouldn't it?

(And I have to wonder how much of the venom directed at [insert companion of your choice] comes from a similar sort of primal scream -- what makes her more special than me?)

But of course those special bits of your childhood when you were sure you were the Doctor's best-friend-in-waiting couldn't have been a lie -- so he must have changed, not you. And that's how people can accuse the Doctor of having become "one of the cool kids" -- not recognizing that the arrogance of the cool kids and the arrogance of the geek squad are just two sides of the same coin.

This is rather a lot of words for Livejournal, so I'll try to compress this thousand into an icon: it would be a rotating series of pictures of the Doctors, from the first through the tenth, with text reading "CHANCES ARE HE WOULDN'T LIKE YOU". And I should probably throw House and Sherlock Holmes in there as well!

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:59:26 GMT

Been having a non-stressful and healing weekend with Kate; we spent some time wandering around the maritime museum and realising just how much of our knowledge of naval protocol comes from Hornblower and Battlestar Galactica, and I had a lovely dinner with our old friend Anna.

Also been continuing to watch UFO, which has reached new heights of competence. There are still a scattering of episodes which serve mainly to showcase overlong model shots (Close Up was disappointing, it had a clever twist but way too much faffing about with hardware in the lead-up to it), but a surprising number of more human stories -- Kill Straker!, a nicely executed brainwashing episode, E.S.P., in which John Stratton goes slowly over the edge as a man developing psi powers and finding out about SHADO, the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin-but-rather-cleverly-at-that Court Martial, and Ordeal which is effectively disturbing up to the cop-out ending and bizarrely long tag-scene. A lot of them suffer from saggy '70s pacing (even compared to contemporary Doctor Who), but episodes like Sub-Smash are still genuinely effective. The show was also really bold for an SF series in 1970, in that they've already done a completely FX-less and alien-less episode entirely about the breakdown of the lead character's marriage (Confetti Check A-OK), and a story with an unredeemedly bleak ending (A Question Of Priorities).

The big draw has to be Ed Bishop as Commander Straker, deeply unusual for an SF hero of the time -- thoroughly Type A, obsessively driven, buried in his work after the loss of his wife and death of his child (and not at the hands of the aliens attacking Earth as you'd assume), capable of cold-blooded decisions with barely a flicker of remorse, endlessly stressed, claustrophobic, so rigid you can see when he's bound to crack... and quite possibly, completely psychotically insane. Yes, he's always got a good reason for playing head-games with a new recruit, making a recalcitrant general sweat at ground zero of an alien attack, or stalking a brainwashed Paul Foster with a gun... but you also get a sense that he's really enjoying the chance to get off the leash. (Especially in the last, where his comments about how Foster has been challenging his command ring just a little too true.) When Foster accuses him of empire-building in Kill Straker!, it's supposed to be a product of Foster being brainwashed by the aliens... but it's actually quite possible that he's right. Given time, I could see this character building up into a cross between Avon from Blake's 7 and Hannibal from The A-Team: both relentlessly cold and calculating, and a cigar-chomping military man whose sense of judgement is off its fucking trolley. I'd love to see this guy put in the "Orbit" situation from Blake's 7... who would he chuck overboard for the sake of the mission?

Most of the rest of the cast are the usual Gerry Anderson robots, though George Sewell puts in a nicely rumpled performance in the second-banana role, and a wonderfully bizarre man named Vladek Sheybal keeps popping up as an unnerving psychologist/interrogator, an Eastern European suspiciously named "Doug Jackson". (Hmm, wonder if they picked him up at the same post-World-War-II fire-sale where they got Wernher von Braun.) But there are flashes of a show which goes above and beyond its surroundings, and those are enough to keep us interested.

Oh, and we've also decided that SHADO is Torchwood One circa 1980. Secret underground base... Morally dubious... questionably competent... trashes your personal life... retcons people with hilarious results (The Square Triangle)... the name of their secret organisation emblazoned on the sides of their (half-track) SUVs... token American in command of a largely British (though officially "international") team... then again, Jack Harkness would only dream of the string-vest uniforms on the submarine crew or the spangly silver Moonbase outfits. Now if I could only edit the Torchwood intro text into the teletype screens in the ultra-funky title sequence... or get Eve Myles into one of those purple anti-static wigs...

Humphrey Lyttleton RIP

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:31:48 GMT

Humphrey Lyttleton, jazz trumpeter (who inspired "Lady Madonna") and broadcaster extraordinaire, host of BBC Radio's antidote to panel games I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, died the other day.

He wasn't able to make the first recording of the latest tour season of ISIHAC, so he sent a recorded message: "I'm sorry I can't be with you today as I am in hospital... I wish I'd thought of this sooner."

In character to the last. I've lost count of how many evenings Kate and I have been lulled to sleep by his ruthless deadpan. So sadly the lovely Samantha will never again be able to sit on his right hand... We'll miss you, Humph.

Thanks

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:13:38 GMT

Thanks to everyone, and Kate finally getting out of the house with me, and a bit of time out on my own with friends (who are threatening to teach me Mah Jongg), I'm feeling substantially better. Not properly writerly head-focusy again, but not quite so trapped and despairing...

Wake-up Call

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:12:46 GMT

Wow, that's the first time in as long as I can remember that I've woken up crying from a stress dream.

I found a posting months ago where I said my pattern was that things were going well, I didn't post, but when they were going badly I bemoaned my fate at length. Well, that's done a complete bit-flip lately -- now I haven't been talking because things have gotten so miserable that I can't even seem to have a moan, because (A) I don't seem to have the focus to articulate my thoughts, and (B) I'm convinced everything I'm feeling is utterly boring and repetitive anyway.

But I'm really having a hard time coping at the moment, with Kate's illness and all the ordinary grown-up stuff, and trying to feel like anyone thinks I'm worth looking after or paying attention to. Not that I feel people are being malicious towards me, just oblivious or disinterested. And the silence about how bad things have been has made that a nice little vicious circle, I suppose...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:01:22 GMT

Okay, so Sky One, the UK channel which co-produced Battlestar Galactica, appears to be reacting to its ending by trying to revive Blakes' 7.

As B7 revivals have spent nearly a quarter century being legendarily doomed on a par with revivals of "The Prisoner", it's early days yet... But this could really be fun.

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:59:47 GMT

I've really begun to notice that my friends fall into two distinct groups: the ones who you can't get together with unless you book them two weeks in advance, and the ones you can't be sure you'll be able to get together with until less than a day in advance.

Both of which really suck if you ever want to plan for the weekend on a Thursday!

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:42:13 GMT

Okay, random Doctor Who - and Torchwood-related speculation for next year... not actually SPOILERS for anything, but if I'm right, it could be huge...

Let's see:

1) Russell Davies and John Barrowman have said that Torchwood series 3 is going ahead... and a fan who asked Russell reported that he said it would be moving to BBC1.
2) ...but the BBC haven't officially announced the renewal yet.
3) Why would they be holding off on the announcement?
4) There are also rumors that the BBC1 run of Torchwood will be some sort of Special Event-type broadcast -- more of a miniseries than a full season, filling in for the lack of Who. That could be worthy of a major press launch.
5) But that still wouldn't be a reason to delay the announcement after Torchwood's season finale.
6) One possibility: something about the third season's new format or cast will depend on what happens in the season finale of Doctor Who, so they're holding off to avoid spoiling that.
7) This would fit nicely with the rumors flying around that Martha is going to join Torchwood as a new regular.
8) But... since we already know Martha can wander into Torchwood any time she likes, after her previous guest spots, that wouldn't be a Who spoiler, would it?
9) What about someone else joining the team as well?
10) Someone mentioned Mickey as a possibility.
11) He'd have to end up back in our universe, which would be a pretty big spoiler of just that sort.
12) But it's hard to picture him leaving Rose behind in her universe.
13) Hang on... A couple of years back, didn't Russell successfully pitch a one-off Special Event thing to BBC1 which never materialized, showing Rose working at (her universe's version of) Torchwood?
14) ...Oh my God now *that* could be a spoiler.
15) I can hear the internet exploding from here...

Now: I have no idea whether this is even the slightest bit right. But if next season's Torchwood is the Jack, Martha, *and* Rose Show... you read it here first.

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:21:31 GMT

I saw this meme going round ages ago, never answered it, but found myself thinking about it again, because I'm in sort of a reflective state right now...

Name three things in your life you absolutely can't live without, and one thing you'd like to live without!

1) Music

I don't play my guitar or do any sort of drumming nearly often enough, since our regular jam sessions stopped being regular. But I've lost count of how many worthless days have been redeemed by walking out to lunch with the Wondermints shimmering in my ear. Or Fourplay, or grooving down the street to the sound of old T. Rex. (Or even -- obligatory plug for the great thegameiam -- the Franchise.) The other night Stevie Wonder saved my life all over again, with that irresistable combination of the zig-zagging swing horn line in "Sir Duke" and the irresistably frisky "I Wish". Even thinking about music, and the songs I really should finally finish writing and demoing, gives me a lift from inside.

2) Sex

Or, in a less attention-grabbing sense, the whole idea of loving touch. Physical affection, intimacy, and closeness of all sorts are crucial to me... my mood just spirals downward if I don't get plenty of cuddles of various sorts. Even an innocent caress across my back speaks volumes -- that I'm being gifted, by someone who knows what I need and thinks I'm worth giving to. And when I say Kate's still discovering things that work even after a decade... this is not a bad thing. :-)

The importance of touch to me really sank in for me when my parents were down here on a visit a few weeks ago. I met them at an Italian restaurant and was just bemoaning how stressful my week had been, with work, Kate being ill, et cetera. My mother reflexively reached round the table and started giving me a back massage... and within moments I practically melted into my fettuccine pesto. A simple determined touch short-circuited all the whirling thoughts and misery in my head, and finally allowed me to relax and understand that I was safe and warm and loved.

3) Doctor Who

As with 2), this is actually shorthand. It represents a particular type of storytelling, which I discovered in childhood and have been delighted to find growing up along with me: inventive, offbeat, playful, passionate, heartfelt. Engaged with the world, whether in joy or pain, rather than cynically commenting on it from outside. It's a mindset which drives all my writing, whether related to that series or not: a deep-seated sense of spirit, of connection to the truly valuable things in life -- all the things which are too easy to lose through exposure to the workaday world. I'm incredibly grateful to the revival of this show, in its new spectacular Hugo-winning heartstring-tugging form -- proving once again that it's the bst story ever told -- for reaffirming all these connections.

And the thing I want to live without?

1) My judgmental side

Not my judgment in general, but the bottom-line aspects to it. My mother is a wonderful woman... but she has very clear mental lists of Good People and Bad People, and someone who makes it onto the latter list can expect no quarter of any kind. No matter what they do, their actions will be interpreted in the most uncharitable way possible. It's a tendency I see in fandom too, where a character who is Hated will be slammed whatever the story has them do. And I see it in myself, in the way I can be so dismissive of fans I'm arguing with, on a level beyond whether they're factually wrong.

I thought I'd be able to be more poetical and insightful about these traits, but I don't think I have the brain cells at the moment! So... this is me.

Doctor Who: Partners In Crime (no SPOILERS in post)

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:30:12 GMT

This reminds me why I adore this show so much. Forty-five minutes of sheer gleeful invention, playfulness, and unbridled optimism. Donna Noble is suddenly the new Sarah Jane Smith... which just makes the fact that we've still got the old Sarah Jane Smith in her own show as well all the more delightful. The Doctor gets a couple of significant character beats, showing that he's beginning to realise how oblivious and hard he's been. And that one moment towards the end was a sheer "they're not -- they can't -- they ARE" heartstopper.

So when do I get my squeaky-toy Adipose?

(There may be SPOILERs in the comments, but none in the post itself.)

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:55:04 GMT

Last night Kate and I were talking about the Steptoe And Son play from a few years ago, Murder In Oil Drum Lane, which starts from the premise that Harold Steptoe finally snapped and killed Albert and is now being haunted by his ghost.

This prompted a whole series of other sitcoms we'd like to see wrapped up in such a fashion -- starting with the made-for-TV movie Napalm Strike On Gilligan's Island; a crossover between Are You Being Served and Dexter; the suicide-pact Very Special Episode of Three's Company; the goat going berserk on The Good Life; and "This week's special guest star on Mind Your Language: a large tube of antimatter..."

(Said tube, we decided, would have the words "Squeeze Me Please" written on the side in large friendly letters.)

UFO: A Question Of Priorities

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:51:53 GMT

Okay, now that's more like it. A really elegant treatment of a simple, powerful idea. I love the fact that Straker didn't make the crucial decision... but when it was made in ignorance by someone else, he went along with it... and that was enough for the tragedy to happen. Full marks for bravery, and great performances drawn from very spare and stark dialogue.

UFO

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:25:32 GMT

Okay, it's the tail end of the Sixties, and you've got a team of purple-wigged women wearing tinfoil on a moonbase, a submarine that launches a fighter-plane from the seabed and a crew in string-vest-tastic uniforms, a secret underground base buried beneath a film studio with operatives riding around on little buggies and prancing in more skintight uniforms, a moon-shot rocket-plane and supersonic jets, a hardass boss fighting off secret UFO attacks to a score by Barry Gray...

...how can you make this dull?

But sadly that's what's been dominating my sense of the first four episodes of UFO -- there's so much material which should be delightful, but it's absolutely crushed by terrible pacing. It's not just that it's 1970 -- put it up against even contemporary stuff like the Tara King Avengers or The Persuaders! or Star Trek or even those years of Doctor Who, and their events move along so much faster, and with so much more personality. Derek Meddings' modelwork is gorgeous, but the editing is so limp, and the live-action they intercut with it is so often monotone shots of astronauts moving controls. In terms of plot-developments-per-running-time, the first half of each episode usually feels at least one beat light.

I can't fault the cast -- when they get a chance to breathe, and display a bit of personality, they rise to the material, and Ed Bishop is already showing what a sharp cookie Straker is: clever, relentless, and perhaps the tiniest bit unhinged. But so far, it's really making me appreciate Space: 1999. I'd love to see this show cut to a modern syndication running time -- keep all the same scenes, just tighten them up to 42 minutes rather than 50, and it'd feel like a whole different show.

Still, next episode is "A Question Of Priorities" -- I've been told this is a good one...

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:09:18 GMT

Oh, where to start, where to start...

Since getting back from the NZ con, we've been various degrees of wiped-out; Kate's been up and down the rollercoaster of energy levels so many times she's almost seasick. But we had a lovely time with my parents in Sydney, ate far too much good food, and are only now getting the house back into some kind of tidy shape.

Much to my surprise, I've found myself writing the first couple of scenes of Angel Express, a novel proposal which has been hanging around in hazy form for about three years. I still don't have a proper outline. Plus there's that whole spec-script thing I should really be finishing first... but this is the first bit of writing in ages that's moved me, that's come from the gut. I've got to run with this while I can, I think.

I've also, for the first time ever, burnt DVDs of Time Rift. Yep, fifteen years on, my old college film project is now about 95% restored, and almost ready for a proper DVD release -- these copies are for the cast members I'm bringing in to dub various stray lines. If there's anyone who really wants to give feedback on the film before it's completely locked down, let me know!

Other random cool stuff: they're actually making the pilot for Caprica, the long-delayed Battlestar Galactica spin-off! And Spooks is doing their own Torchwood -- a BBC3 spin-off called Spooks: Code 9, set in the near future after London has been evacuated from a nuclear attack, with a bunch of young, hip MI5 agents all living together. Ah well, any market's a good one. A year or two ago I would have been over the moon about Caprica in particular; maybe my enthusiasm will perk up once the latest season of BSG begins! The bigger perk-up was that, by freak chance, I found a box set of UFO for $50... I've been meaning to get this show for literally years, and seeing it for less than half-price was basically a Message From God. Expect lots of '70s moonbase flashbacks and string-vest submarine action here shortly...

Oh, and Bill Baggs has finally released Zygon, apparently with all his extra added bits on view. I haven't seen a copy of the finished product, but I've been assured my name is not on the credits or the box. (I'm hoping to find it on a check soon, though... we'll see.) Now the first reviews are turning up on the net. "Kopyion" over on Outpost Gallifrey gave it perhaps the best review I can imagine, in part:

It didn’t need to have been gratuitous, but the impression is given that whenever anyone behind the camera saw any naked flesh they started giggling like naughty schoolboys and lingering on it as long as possible. However, beneath all the naked frolicking, there’s a real good, but badly mauled, script that Jonathan Blum was quite right to defend.

Oh, and:

But if you’re thinking of buying this purely because it looks pornographic then don’t: buy some actual porn instead, because it’s usually better shot.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:30:02 GMT

One of the advantages of doing a reading at Conjunction was that it reminded me what I liked about our earlier work, on a sentence-by-sentence level. Where The Prisoner's Dilemma was -- as befits the style of the TV series -- rather dictatorial in tone, a surface layer of cool-and-commanding description covering an almost hectoring relentlessness, and full of detail to the point of being overwrought... Fallen Gods was much more viewed from inside. The scenes were sensual enough that you could feel the sweat on the characters' foreheads, but concise and playful, and most importantly emotionally driven. These are passionate characters, fully engaged with a wide range of emotions.

In the five years since then, I think I've been erring too much on the side of making my characters grounded in the real world; that actually gives them more of a sense of distance and cynicism, because I've been equating real life in recent years with the passionless side of existence: the eternal Day Job, the cycle of quiet disappointments caused by Kate's health problems. Bernice in Nobody's Children is fighting against feeling numbed, but fundamentally she has been numbed. But even a somewhat cynical and hardened character like Alcestis (the way she starts out) is cynical because she's feeling her bruises -- what you get is not a lack of engagement, but the aftershocks of engagement.

The stuff I've been writing lately, particularly the spec scripts, have been me trying to have fun -- focusing on being slick, polished, and a bit playful. I can do good work that way... but I'd like to do great work again. So I've got to work out which project I can find that heart in. I'd better go back and look through The Decision Tree, and I'm finally beginning to figure out how to attack Angel Express...

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:56:23 GMT

Well, all those of you who were having a wonderful time at SwanCon... we missed you, but we were too busy having the time of our lives at Conjunction in New Zealand.

More coherent thoughts once I put my brain back in the right way around. But Elizabeth Moon is a living legend, Pip Ballantine is a darling, Daena and Cat kept us so well looked-after, we met so many new friends who we're already trying to figure out how to get back to... but the most important thing is what this con did for both of our states of mind.

Over recent years, Kate's been developing quite a lot of anxiety when it comes to travel, as well as a general social phobia about public speaking and dealing with fans... but by the end of this convention, after sailing through it (with plenty of breaks), running glorious panels, and putting on a bravura performance at the auction, she was positively joyous about the whole thing. We hesitate to use the word cured, but I haven't seen her so happy about spending time with fans in years.

And me? After years of seeing fandom as primarily a source of arguments, backbiting, and stress, suddenly I'm reminded that fandom is really about silly poetry at room parties at three in the morning. Thanks to Sean McMullen for triggering that little epiphany!

We gave a storming guest-of-honor speech which we hope to write up from our fragmentary notes, which was a summation of all the amazing things that have happened in the past decade. Arthur C. Clarke was remembered at great length. I played Nicholas Parsons at the "Just A Minute" panel. And Kate sold my body at the auction! (I came up in full suit with tuxedo jacket to auction off free breakfast with me, with special bonus backrub, and hilarity ensued. There would be photos, but my parents were laughing too hard to take them. Yes, my parents were at the con, due to a long and complicated story which I hope to get into in the comments.)

In other news, Paul Cornell and some Moffat bloke got another Hugo nomination each. And Cath Tregenna for "Captain Jack Harkness" over in Torchwood. Congratulations, ya bastards. This con has reignited our determination to join you one day...

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:54:37 GMT

Many, many thanks to everyone who gave me thoughts for the GoH speech -- especially the ones like Craig and jackryder who gave a whole list of stuff which I didn't have a spare moment to respond to!

Things are deeply frantic here, and I'm shedding commitments as best I can before we head out the door on Thursday. So the Time Rift sanity-checks and mixdown are waiting till next week sometime. But further thanks to everyone for the good words.

Adding to the frantic-ness was that the Powys Media site -- which I used to administrate a few years back -- went spectacularly down yesterday. And for a heartstopping hour or so I thought I'd screwed it up when I'd done some maintenance work for them last month. I'm flinging all my old backups at them, but for obvious reasons they date from about 2004-5... I don't envy my replacement! (Especially since now he thinks he did it. Ulp.)

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:57:31 GMT

Fifteen years ago this month, I started work on Time Rift, my college film project: a full-length four-part Doctor Who story.

Today, I finished filming.

Okay, so the whole thing was actually finished and released in 1996. But since late last year I've been doing the DVD cleanup, and compiling a list of little fixes I'd love to do. And so, this month I got around to doing a day of pickup shooting... which, in the grand tradition of Time Rift, took about four days, because we couldn't get all the crew there at the same time. And the boom mic broke.

But today was the last.

Probably the last time I'll wear that fricking question-mark jumper, especially in this heat.

And to commemorate it, a still from today:

The remount of the Doctor's very first scene, which used to look like this:

Note that that isn't the same Ace (Anna Bilalis was a scarily well-matched stand-in)... but that is the same TARDIS. Digitally upgraded from fifth-rate to second. :-) And yes, I re-recorded those lines!

Yes, it's only roughly graded and composited. And there's bits of dubbing and more audio cleanup and music and what-not left to do... but most of that is Not My Problem. And even all those areas are now mostly finished. All I need to do now is a sanity check (if I can manage it) of the last two episodes, and then I can send reference copies off to my various co-conspirators. (And beta-testers, if anyone would rather not wait for the finished version -- suggested fixes always welcome.)

I've been wondering why I've been lavishing this much attention on an old college project, and I think I've figured it out... It's not just nostalgia for the time I had a large circle of collaborators, it's not just that I promised DVD copies to people about six years ago, not just maintaining a connection with friends from back in the US, not even that it's a way of staving off depression and boredom without actually doing any useful work... all those are in there, but it's also because I've connected with something at the heart the story. The way the entire tale comes down to that final line, "You're a real mess, you know that... you need looking after." It's an image of acceptance and forgiveness and unbroken connection which I need to hear in my own life, after these long and isolating years, at least as much as back when I was 21.

That's why I'm so grateful to everyone who's helped me unconditionally in pursuit of this bit of old fannish madness. Over the years these projects have made friendships and strained them, but so many of the strong ones are still there, and will remain so.

And soon, Kate will have her husband back.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:35:37 GMT

Okay, still working on our Guest of Honor speech for the NZ con. And I could really use some help.

Paging catsparks, flyingsauce, angriest, gregmce, thegameiam, murasaki1966, anyone else who thinks they're reasonably up on the things that have been developing in literary SF in the past ten years...

What are they?

I'm trying to draw a picture of the overall trends, but I'm not sure how many of the famous developments are only "famous to me", as Kate once put it. I can gas on a little bit about the New Weird, but a lot of the stuff I've been seeing develop has been more on the fantasy end of the spectrum than SF. (Which will be part of the point we'll be talking about, that the cultural pendulum has swung tremendously towards fantasy and comic-booky stuff and away from galaxy-spanning SF in particular.)

I'd love to talk a bit about the growth of small presses over the last decade, and the way the Internet has made it both easier to find obscure bits of writing but harder to filter the wheat from the chaff, but how it's still not quite what people were hoping for a decade ago...

Any insights, people? Please? Help?