dbskyler

OMG you guys, so I just saw Downtime for the first time, and that was the trippiest thing I've watched in a long, long time.

( cut for spoilers, if you can actually spoil this thing of wonder, which I doubt )

Thanks to john_elliott, I went looking for "The Five-Ish Doctors" and found it as a legal stream at the BBC website. From the official BBC summary: "With the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who about to film, the 'Classic' Doctors are keen to be involved."

Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, and Paul McGann wait for the BBC to call them about the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, and it takes off from there. Not only is it great to see these actors again, but the video is hysterically funny. Seriously, I was rolling. It was written and directed by Peter Davison, and wow, does he have a gift for comedy! Aside from watching the anniversary episode itself, I can't think of a better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary than by watching this. If you haven't seen it yet, go watch it!

I just got "Invasion" from Netflix, and after watching the first two parts -- and thoroughly enjoying the Brigadier's Brigadiery-ness *g* -- I took a break and watched one of the DVD extras. It was called "Love Off-Air," and I thought that maybe it was going to tell me about some off-screen romance between, I don't know, Frazer Hines and the actress who played Isobel Watkins or something. I couldn't have been more wrong! Instead I got a delightful set of interviews from people who made their own audio recordings of Doctor Who, combined with interviews from the people who then took those recordings and used them to reconstruct wiped episodes. It was full of nostalgia and love -- nostalgia for recording with cassette recorders with their big red buttons, and the need to keep everyone else in the room quiet; nostalgia for the excitement of listening to Doctor Who the next day and revisiting the episode (one person said he would re-enact "Armageddon Factor" with his Doctor Who action figures, but he didn't have a Romana so had to fill in with a Scotty from Star Trek, LOL!); and above all, pervasive love for Doctor Who. They even had a quote from someone who had only heard a friend's recording of "The Daleks," and was convinced that at one point the tape recording had picked up the beeping of someone honking a bicycle horn outside, but when he finally got to see the episode years later, he found out it was the sound of the TARDIS' food machine! And he was disappointed! LOL, I would've been disappointed to learn that was an intended sound effect, too.

Speaking of DVD extra gems, I also recently watched the extras on the "Edge of Destruction" DVD, and they were like a "Here's everyone who created Doctor Who" special event. Interviews with Verity Lambert, and Sydney Newman, and Brian Hodgson, who's the guy who made the TARDIS dematerialization noise -- still used today, and probably my all-time favorite sound effect EVER -- and Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who took Ron Grainer's score and made it into the original Doctor Who theme by building up the sound electronically one piece at a time.

So that was also very, very good, but I have to confess that the one that really left me with a smile on my face was "Love Off-Air." Of course, it helped that when they started waxing on about the vagaries of cassette tapes, I knew exactly what they talking about, right down to the part where you try to fix them with a pencil inserted into those holes to rewind the tape. : )

Guess what just became available to buy in the U.S.? Sarah Jane Adventures Series 4, that's what! The series that includes "Death of the Doctor"! Plus other good stuff! But also "Death of the Doctor"!

So I did some comparison shopping and decided to purchase from Amazon. The only trouble was, the item qualified for Super Saver shipping (aka free shipping), but only if the total order was at least $25, which it wasn't. So I hemmed and hawed, and thought about adding Doctor Who Series 6 to the order because I do want to own that one day, but I was going to wait until the price went down a little since it's expensive and I have all those episodes on videotape anyway. So I poked around the site to see what else I might want to buy, and there it was: ANDROID INVASION! The episode that I used to have on videotape that I watched and re-watched until it sadly disintegrated due to age. The episode that I really enjoy despite all its flaws, because it has a great plot, great banter, Sarah's face falling off, and a wonderful moment where Colonel what's-his-face says that the astronaut has traveled farther than any human ever has before, and Harry and Benton give each other this look. Yes, I could practically buy the DVD just for that moment. Anyway, there it was, and I was aching to buy it, but it's not being released until Jan. 10. I can pre-order it, though, and the website seems to imply that if I add it to my order, I will qualify for Super Saver shipping. So I hit the "add to cart" button and watch what happens, and I'm just waiting to be told that both my DVDs will arrive together in January after "Android Invasion" is released, and I don't want to wait that long for Sarah Jane Adventures, but no! Sarah Jane Adventures is being shipped now, and "Android Invasion" is being shipped when it's released, and both are being shipped for free!

Hooray!!!!!!!

And now suddenly I'm in the mood to go shopping for a bright pink sailor suit. I can't imagine why. :D

Just came across a hysterically funny macro at doctorwho, and had to share. Spoilers through S5, but non-spoilery for the S6 premiere.


macro here

(It's possible it's only rolling-on-the-floor-funny to Americans, but you must have advertisements like this over there in the UK too, right? Even if the wording wouldn't quite be the same?)

I have finally finished a major milestone for work, and as a reward I decided it was time to go on to the British Amazon site and buy three things that I can't get from the U.S. site, or are far more expensive there -- Writer's Tale, Single Father, and Takin' Over the Asylum. (Yes, I'll be putting my multi-region DVD player to good use!)

So, off I went to amazon.co.uk. I clicked on check-out, and I told them I'm a new customer. After all, I haven't bought from them before. Except -- strange! -- they said they already have someone with my email address in their system. So I put in my regular U.S. Amazon password, and there I was, there was my account, and there were all my shipping addresses, including places I haven't lived at for years. Even my credit card information was already in their system!

I suppose I should be slightly freaked out, but actually it was kind of nice. They even gave me an automatic currency converter to tell me how much I'm paying in USD.

In other international news, I've been spending a lot of time hanging out in the help_japan auctions. There are some amazing offers going, especially in the "interesting stuff" category (which, amazingly enough, is full of interesting stuff!) I'm really amazed at some of the ideas people have come up with that don't require much outlay of money, or indeed any money at all. Like six months of flattering emails. "Box of [local place where offerer is from]" seems to be both popular and doing well, and there are also a lot of offers to send postcards, letters, etc. Who would've thought that plain old, regular snail mail would be so popular in the internet age?

So I finally went to buy RTD's "The Writer's Tale" (more because I'm interested in the writing process for Doctor Who than because I'm interested in how RTD writes), but after a long wait, Amazon.com has now informed me that they can't get the book! How hard can it be to get the book? I can get it myself from Amazon.co.uk -- well, assuming they'll mail overseas, but it looks like they will. Other American bookstores are having the same trouble. BBC America says the book is "unavailable" as well. Come on, guys, there's no "region 1" vs. "region 2" issue with a book! The British version is fine! It's still in English! If things are occasionally spelled "ou" instead of "o," I think I can deal.

So now the question is, should I go ahead and order it from England, and pay the international shipping? Or should I wait until my upcoming trip to England and buy it there? Sometimes it's nice to have a book to read while you're traveling, but I don't want to be lugging around anything too heavy.

I mean, I know it's Casanova, not the Doctor, but David is using the same accent, and a lot of the same mannerisms, and damn it, I give up, here, have a video of the Doctor confessing to a priest about all the sex he's been having lately.

(Be advised that the video has content I would call teen-rated)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAE0C3l6gGo

( image behind cut )

Drawn for me by tempestas_inu, who is awesomely talented. It's an illustration of a scene from one of my fanfics. Isn't it great?

First person to guess which fic (who isn't tempestas_inu) gets a virtual cookie, as well as the opportunity to amaze me by being a second person who can remember specific scenes out of my fics.

Just passing on that the first Ninth Doctor episode, "Rose," is currently free for download at the iTunes store. Personally I don't consider it one of my favorite episodes, and I wouldn't pay for it, but I didn't mind getting it for free. Other Ninth Doctor episodes are only 99 cents. I think they're having a sale or something. So if you want to fill in your Ninth Doctor episode collection, now's your chance!