I even tried to Google something, but all I got was articles and Reddit posts about… how to build your own WordPress theme for blogging. I don’t want to build my own WordPress theme! I want to turn people into dinosaurs blog about stuff!

Heavy sigh.

Over the next few weeks – ideally ahead of August, when I’ll be participating in the Burbank Comedy Festival – I hope to get this website entirely revamped to serve as a proper, decent hub for all of my nonsense. Until then… hello! And sorry.

I’ll also be performing comedy at Anime Conji at the very end of May. They haven’t posted the schedule yet, but I’ll be doing a couple of shows there! More details when I can provide them.

I’m also sad to say, I have elected to withdraw my appearance at SacAnime in June. I had been under consideration to moderate panels again this year, however following recent guest announcements I do not feel confident that SacAnime can provide a safe environment for its attendees, guests and staff. I wish the best of luck to my friends and con family who will be attending, working, and appearing as guests at the con. 

In this episode, I look at Disney’s Aladdin, one of the best-selling Genesis games of all time, and breaks down the influence it had over platform games in the 90s. Turns out, it’s quite a bit!

It’s back! A brand-new episode of PortsCenter is live – in this one, I break down my favorite games of last year. Numbers 1 through 5 might shock you!

Here’s where you’ll find me:

Thursday, January 10th

3pm-4pm – Lemar Harris Presents: The Otaku Comedy Stand-Up Workshop
Meeting Room 204 // OCC Workshops

4:15pm – 5:15pm – Whose Line Is It Anime?
Meeting Room 200 // OCC Live Programming

Saturday, January 12th

12:45am – HAHA-BallZ Comedy Hour
Lake Gregory // DT LP 3
(This one is after midnight on the Saturday night, which is technically very early Sunday morning.)

Bummed about the lack of new Doctor Who in 2019? Worry ye not, we’ve got you covered: Announcing The Game of Rassilon, a Doctor Who Roleplaying Game podcast – unique Doctor Who adventures, one roll at a time.

The Game of Rassilon is one of those “actual-play” podcasts, except instead of playing D&D or Pathfinder we’re playing the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game by Cubicle 7. Telling stories with a brand-new Doctor exploring time and space with a crew of unlikely companions, with an emphasis on great stories and, we hope, big laughs.

We’ll be announcing more about the players, as well as the characters they’ll be playing, over the next week. In the meantime, the podcast launches on January 16th. You can sign up to be notified when the first episode drops at TheGameOfRassilon.com.

I’ve had a lot of time to think on this season of Doctor Who. In many ways, it’s been the season I’ve looked forward to the most in the entire modern run of the show. Despite my reservations about Chibnall at a showrunner, despite the cynical tone of his previous contributions to the series and the uneven tone of Torchwood, I was buoyed by the prospect of change. After all, Steven Moffat’s first season as showrunner gave us what was the best season of the revival until Capaldi’s second season five years later. Doctor Who is a show built on change – that’s one of the reasons it has endured for as long as it has. If one is to love this show, one must embrace change.

However, not all change is good change, and while Whittaker’s turn as the Doctor absolutely sizzles, the writing and tone of the season have not. Let’s review, shall we?

Potential spoilers, obviously.

11.01 – The Woman Who Fell To Earth

Regeneration episodes have a history of being… well, difficult. For every success like “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Power of the Daleks”, there’s a clunker like “The Twin Dilemma” and “Castrovalva”. Even perfectly serviceable regeneration stories like “Robot” and “Deep Breath” are held to impossibly high standards – the first televised story featuring a new Doctor has a lot riding on it, and none more than “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”.

Fortunately, the episode is a dazzling experience that (mostly) works. We’re gradually introduced to each of the companions and their ties together as well as two separate pieces of a deadly alien puzzle before the Doctor herself drops into the middle of events and takes control. Throughout the episode we see the Doctor at her most brilliant and inventive best – putting pieces of the puzzle together while fighting her post-regenerative trauma, fighting off not one but two alien menaces (that, of course, turn out to be the same threat), and literally building her own Sonic Screwdriver using a mixture of Sheffield steel, Stenza technology, and her own brilliance.

The Screwdriver scene in particular is superb, but with hindsight it is perhaps the first instance of a problem that will plague this season throughout its run – Chibnall’s need to over-explain the scifi elements of the show. Don’t get me wrong, I adore this scene – we’ve heard about how the Doctor invented his Sonic Screwdriver, but its actual fabrication in-show has always been handed off to the TARDIS. Having the Doctor build one from scratch shows off that the Doctor is resourceful and, most importantly, that the Doctor is still the Doctor, regardless of the shift in her gender. We’ve never needed the Doctor to show the Sonic being built before, but this episode needs it to show how capable and resourceful this Doctor is. It’s a great note to hit, and it’s a pity that echoes of it rub me the wrong way later in the season.

The companions hold their own, too – Yaz is smart, capable and brilliant as a junior police officer who wants to do more, while Ryan is struggling with dyspraxia, a neurological disorder that affects his coordination, as his grandmother and step-grandfather, Grace and Graham, try to help him learn how to ride a bike. Graham’s core struggle at the start of the episode is getting Ryan to accept him as family, but by the end of it it’s dealing with Grace’s death at the hands of an alien assassin. Importantly, this is the most culturally diverse Team TARDIS yet, with an Indian woman, a black man and a n older man in, at the very least, his 60s. The Doctor has traveled with people of color before, but not enough – in the space of a single episode, the Thirteenth Doctor has traveled with the same number of POC companions that the Tenth Doctor traveled with in his entire run on the show. I love it.

The alien threat this episode comes in the form of T’zim-Sha of the Stenza. Cold, calculated and brutal, T’zim-Sha (or Tim Shaw, if you like) feels more like a foil for Torchwood than he does for Doctor Who, and it’s also interesting to note that much of this episode carries the darker, grimier feel of the spin-off that Chibnall shepherded for two seasons a decade ago. We never see just how brutal this monster can be, only ever hearing it as the acts themselves are carried out off-screen, but that arguably makes it worse.

In all, this is a strong opening for the Thirteenth Doctor, and at the time it bode well for things to come. What’s more, it ended on a cliffhanger! The Doctor and her new companions, zapping away to find the Doctor’s TARDIS, instead find themselves floating unprotected in the depths of space – no spacesuits, no spaceship, with death almost certain. We’d been led to believe that stories would be standalone, so the idea that those individual stories might bleed into each other, as they often did during the Hartnell era, was an exciting prospect.

Unfortunately, the next story didn’t quite live up to that expectation.

11.02 – The Ghost Monument

With that cliffhanger resolved Hitchhiker’s Guide style – two passing ships collect our team in two groups of two, and not only are they both heading to a nearby planet, they’re conveniently heading to the same planet where the Doctor’s TARDIS has vanished off to! Both ships are participating in an annual intergalactic race to the finish line, which gives us our first real problem for the episode – the race never feels like a race. There are no spectators, there’s no sense of urgency, and even the planetary hazards are handwaved away for the most part. A big deal is made out of the “carnivorous water” that the Doctor, her companions and the two competing racers are about to sail a boat across, but it never comes up again – a neat idea, not capitalized upon. Once again, a recurring theme in this season of the show.

“The Ghost Monument” can best be described as a long walk. There’s nothing wrong with a nice long walk, but as a source of entertainment walking has never been particularly engaging. Even The Lord of the Rings breaks it up with the occasional inter-personal argument or Wraith attack or what have you. Most of the threats they encounter are either easily overcome or, as with the water, just ignored entirely.

The episode gives us a couple of great moments of bonding between Ryan and Graham, but Yaz is woefully under-utilized here, which is the beginning of yet another trend that plagues this season just as it did in the 80s when the Fifth Doctor traveled with a trio of companions. Yaz’s only real contribution to the episode is to give Ryan someone to unpack emotions at, and this is something Yaz will find herself doing a lot throughout the rest of the run. Yaz, more often than not, doesn’t get to be her own person. Her personality is ill-defined, a product of a writer’s room – or, perhaps, a showrunner – that doesn’t really know what to do with her. She’s an interesting character – her origin shares similarities with Judy Hopps of Zootopia, as the internet has gone to great lengths to remind us – so it’s a shame that it takes such a long time to get her wheels spinning this season.

By the end of the episode, we have a couple of bits of foreshadowing – the planet they’re on was ravaged by the Stenza, the race Tim Shaw belongs to. And what’s this about the Timeless Child? At the time, these felt like seeds for season arcs, but they’re never touched upon again. Regardless of what you thought of the way Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat ran the show, they at least had strong throughlines through each of their seasons. Chibbers, on the other hand, throws a couple of ideas out that he largely abandons. For a season that has, more so than any other of the show, been largely informed by the way people are binging shows on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, it’s surprising that Chibnall opted to skip the season-long thread-tug approach that held people’s attention during his predecessors’ runs of the show. Instead, he presents several threads here with no indication through the rest of the season that he intends to unravel any of them.

This episode gave us a lot of firsts for the new season – our first look at the new title sequence, which is gorgeous. Our first proper listen of the new theme, which has been divisive but that I largely adore. And, of course, our first look at the new TARDIS. Which… well, where do I start? Aesthetically, I don’t hate it. It’s not my favorite TARDIS interior, certainly, but it’s better than “sheet hanging behind Sylvester McCoy as he leans to close to the console.” Unfortunately, it’s not much roomier. This is arguably the smallest, most cramped-looking TARDIS set we’ve had on the show since David Tennant had to use the smaller Doctor Who Experience version of the Tenth Doctor’s console room in “The Day of the Doctor”. The production even had to shoot from outside of the new TARDIS set with a crane to get some of the wide shots of all four of the leads around the TARDIS console, and that’s bad news. This is the most companions we’ve had on the modern run of the show, and you want a TARDIS that looks like it can fit them all in. This, sadly, doesn’t quite look the part.

It doesn’t help that it’s so dimly lit, and one wonders if the moody lighting here is in part to disguise just how tiny this set really is. The console isn’t much better either, with a severe lack of interactive elements for Jodie to play with. Eccleston, Tennant, Smith and Capaldi all had levers, dials, switches, toggles, buttons, pulleys and hammers to push, pull, nudge, elbow and fondle, while Jodie has a sandglass, a lever, and a custard cream dispenser. It’s really going to be difficult to show her piloting the TARDIS in the way previous Doctors have been seen to do it, and the distinct lack of shots of her doing this throughout this season are really telling. For the first time, I find myself looking at a TARDIS set that I really, really do not like. That’s a shame, because – as Michael Nixon pointed out during one of our Look Who’s Talking shows at Geeky Teas this year – we’re stuck with this set for at least two seasons.

“The Ghost Monument” was a weak, low-key second episode. It looked cheap, it spent a lot of time dancing around itself with padding, and – again – it looked grim, dark and miserable. Above all, though, it was boring. Compare with the second episode of almost any other season of the revival, and you have legitimate reason to worry. There was a legitimate hope that future episodes would pick up the slack and be more fun affairs.

But that would have to wait another week.

11.03 – Rosa

This is, I will be honest with you, an episode I was dreading. There are so many ways “Rosa” could have gone sideways; my concerns oscillated between the worry that they’d come up with a science-fictiony cause for the racism of the era – some kind of mind ray or space rock, for example – and the deep and, I think, valid concern that it would come across as patronizing finger-wagging. This is, after all, a British TV institution commenting on American racism. That’s a bit like getting a lecture on civility from your racist uncle.

We’ll be coming back to that analogy in a few episodes, by the way.

But “Rosa” was, despite its flaws, shockingly good. Alright, it has a lot of flaws – its main villain, Krasko, is a time-traveling space racist who can’t kill Rosa Parks thanks to a chip put in his brain as punishment for murdering thousands of people and oh, who cares? He’s dull. He’s easily the most boring part of the entire episode, so much so that the show can’t even commit to having him be a significant menace for the bulk of it, having Ryan zap him away with a time displacement gun slightly past the halfway mark (proving in the process that Ryan learned both bugger and all about guns from the previous episode).

But Krasko’s goal isn’t to kill Rosa Parks, mostly because he can’t. No, he plans to engineer events so that she doesn’t have to give up her seat on the bus that infamous night in Montgomery, Alabama. It might even have worked too, were it not for the fatal flaw in his plan: It’s stupid. He’s stupid. Team TARDIS consequently find themselves having to undo the changes he’s made to ensure Rosa winds up on that bus that night, and I will admit watching them dash about from place to place to ensure that historical racism happens on schedule did make me feel anxious and tense – the first time I’d felt either this season, and we’re three episodes in.

This is not an episode that shies away from how brutal, uncomfortable and unkind racism can be. Ryan is smacked across the face for the sheer temerity of trying to talk to a white person. Team TARDIS gets the stink-eye in a restaurant solely because half of the group has the sheer bloody-minded cheek not to be white. A cop barges his way into their motel room because it’s illegal for people of color to stay there. Some of these scenes give characters wonderful moments – the Doctor’s response to the probing cop is deft, and Ryan’s response to the waitress telling them they “don’t serve negroes” (“Good, ‘cos I don’t eat them!”) is inspired – but it doesn’t undercut just how severe a time it was for people of color in 1950s Alabama.

The episode mostly focuses on Ryan’s upset and Graham’s discomfort with the era the team have arrived in. Yaz gets a couple of moments, but she’s mostly sidelined again – her bit contributions in the episode are deliberately delaying Rosa Parks so she gets on the right bus at the right time, and, for the second episode in a row, giving Ryan someone to talk to about what’s happening. The writers seem uninterested or unable to utilize Yaz at this point in the season, and though they’ll find a balance later on (shortlived though it will be), shoving her off to the side in an episode about racial tension is unforgivable. Frustratingly, this will happen again in a few episodes time, and that’s in the episode about her Indian heritage.

In the end, the Doctor can’t help Rosa during that pivotal moment in history, a painful thing to watch considering the Doctor’s refrain of “When people need help, I never refuse” – said in the first episode, and included in numerous launch trailers for the show. Having the Doctor, a white woman, stand aside so that a woman of color can have her moment of strength is important. Yet it still leaves me feeling uncomfortable. Not because we had to watch our heroes allow Rosa Parks to be arrested, although there is a discomfort there which should absolutely be felt, but rather because… well, Rosa ultimately got her moment because a white woman and her friends (which, in all fairness, does include two people of color) stepped in to allow events to unfold that way. Rosa has her moment – a strong, impactful moment in the history of the American civil rights movement – but the subtext, to me at least, feels very much like “women of color get their moment only when white women allow it,” which was… not ideal. It was not great.

My takeaway from the episode at the time was that it will most likely age like any number of Quantum Leap episodes that tackle social justice issues – it’s progressive, important and good now, but it may well become cringeworthy telly in a handful of years.

Right now, though, I think it’s a gnat’s testicle short of being brilliant. A strong, powerful and important story. I just wish it’d happened in a season that was a little more fun to watch. Gritty stories like this are brilliant, but they’re best placed around more fun stories, and that’s something this season sorely lacks. We’ll come back to that.

11.04 – Arachnids in the UK

If there’s an award to be given for the worst episode of the season, “Arachnids in the UK” comes dangerously close to winning it.

There’s a lot wrong here. Giant spiders invade Sheffield, except they’re not from space – they’re from a fancy hotel owned by a Mr. Big from Sex and the City which was built on top of a landfill that, it turns out, cut corners and buried something potentially toxic. The Doctor’s solution to this problem is, essentially, lock the giant spiders in a cupboard and let them starve to death. She acknowledges there’s probably something toxic in the landfill, but doesn’t actually do anything about that.

Worst of all, though, is that the Doctor is so against using guns she’d rather watch a giant spider suffocate and die than put it out of its misery. Step in Mr. Big (who, I should point out, is a Trump-like figure) to shoot the spider dead and then just sort of… walk away. With a gun.

One of the biggest criticisms of season 11 up until this point is that the villains have all just sort of… gotten away. They’ve vanished. It’s not a criticism I actually agree with. T’zim-Sha got zapped away and blown up with DNA bombs. “The Ghost Monument” didn’t really have a villain, but it did have – and I’m realizing I forgot to mention this earlier, so pause for effect – was sentient bedsheets. “Rosa” had a villain, but he was just sort of removed from the story, more or less literally. But “Arachnids of the UK” is definitely guilty of this accusation. Whether you consider the villain to be giant spiders, toxic mutagens or the capitalist moron with a pistol, none are really dealt with. In the end, we’re left with a story that would have played out more or less the same if our heroes hadn’t actually shown up.

Yaz’s family plays a fairly big part in this episode, but don’t think that means Yaz herself gets more to do. We learn more about Yaz’s father than we do about her, and at almost halfway through the season that is a problem.

It’s difficult, really, to say anything else about the episode. It’s bad. It represents a real low point in not just the season, but the show as a whole. I had hoped that the show would bounce back the following week.

11.05 – The Tsuranga Conundrum

Enter “The Tsuranga Conundrum”, an episode title I have only this week managed to commit to memory, and an episode so boring that, at time of writing, nobody at the TARDIS Data Core wiki can muster up the enthusiasm to write out the synopsis for it.

The core conceit of the episode is a good one – there’s an alien called a P’Ting that eats everything loose aboard a hospital ship. People could die. They don’t, of course, because the Doctor is clever, but my God, do we take some time getting there.

This is an episode chock-a-block full of padding. This isn’t an exaggeration – at one point, the Doctor announces that everyone is to gather for a meeting in seven minutes, and then we literally spend the seven minutes before the meeting (though it feels much longer) having a bunch of inconsequential scenes with hospital patients. This fleshes out the patients’ characteristics, personalities and backstories nicely, but does el zilcho to actively move the plot forward. It’s perhaps upsetting to learn that we know more about some of these supporting characters than we do about Yaz at this point in the season. We see the P’Ting in, I think, two scenes, both fully half an hour apart – as threats go, it doesn’t do a lot to be threatening for the bulk of the episode, which is a shame because as alien creatures go it’s a belter. It’s just a shame it wasn’t put to good use. Certainly there’s the potential for someone to do something interesting with the concept in a later episode, or possibly a spin-off like a novel or a Big Finish audio, and it’s interesting to think that we have an alien who could well pull of a reverse Weeping Angel, where each successive reappearance makes them more interesting, more threatening. But maybe that’s just blind optimism.

In the end, an act of self-sacrifice and a small explosive save the day – the P’Ting eats a bomb and is flushed out into space full and happy, giving the “all the villains get away!” crowd another arguably undeserved feather in their hat. Ryan convinces someone who doesn’t want to be a parent that he has to keep the baby he’s about to have despite said parent actively stating several times that he’s not ready or capable of being a parent. The Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver gets eaten and becomes useless right up until the moment she needs to use it, at which point it starts working again.

A lot of it doesn’t work, and it’s compounded by some absolutely baffling writing decisions that make this not just the worst episode of the season, but arguably one of the worst episodes of the revival. Right now, if given a choice between “Fear Her”, “The Rings of Akhaten”, and this, I’d sooner watch the scribble monster or sing grandfather to sleep. Definitely not one I am in a hurry to rewatch.

11.06 – Demons of the Punjab

Like “Rosa” before it, this episode looks at the effects of white influence over people of color. Unlike “Rosa”, however, it absolutely fails to mention it.

“Demons of the Punjab” sees Team TARDIS traveling back to India to learn more about Yaz’s grandmother, and she learns a lot more than she anticipated. It’s been compared, not unfairly, to the season 1 episode “Father’s Day”, except this one is also a historical set during the Partition of India. On the day India is divided into two countries, Yaz’s grandmother, Umbreen, marries Prem, a man Yaz doesn’t recognize. But it all goes south, leading to tragedy.

Again, like “Rosa”, there’s an alien element at work here. Stalking this sleepy little Indian villain are the bafdflingly and forgettably named Thijarians, our second assassin race of the season… only they’re not assassins anymore. Their homeworld destroyed, they now seek to honor the forgotten dead, giving us our second set of creatures that visit people at the moment of their death in as many episodes. Dying in the Doctor Who universe has certainly gotten exhausting over the last few years – you get honored by the Thijarians, copied by Testimony, uploaded to Missy’s Nethersphere and, if you’ve been particularly naughty, you get a visit from the Tesseract for your troubles.

The Thijarians are there to serve as a red herring, to make us think this is a scifi story when instead it’s a human one about prejudice and family. Ultimately, it doesn’t need to be there – there’s a serious question about whether or not a modern audience can watch a scifi-less Doctor Who story, but Chibnall is not particularly interested in answering it. Instead, we have the Thijarians as window-dressing to a wholly personal story about the Partition of India, and the effect it had on the people who lived in a country being cut in half.

It’s powerful, moving, dark stuff, but it’s neutered somewhat by implying that all of the blame falls on the people of India. The meddling and involvement of the British is only ever alluded to once, and the Doctor handwaves it away with an exceedingly out-of-character glib remark that rather implies she’s good buds with one of the British men responsible for the mess in the first place. Considering how judgmental the show was about American racism not three episodes prior, this feels like a significant error of omission. We cannot seem pious about other nations’ faults, failures and missteps if we are going to ignore our own. It’s the Racist Uncle at work; a deep hypocrisy, and it taints much of the historical aspect of this episode for me.

Those flaws aside – not to undercut them, not to pretend they aren’t there, but addressing the narrative rather than the setting – it’s a strong episode and, like “Rosa” before it, deeply important. But the weight and importance of the episode is, I feel, slightly lost when it serves as yet another dark episode in a season that has been relentlessly dark. At this point in the season we’ve had exactly one episode that’s even paid lip-service to the concept of fun, and that’s been “The Tsuranga Conundrum”. I love “Demons”, and it’s a story I will be revisiting for years to come despite its flaws. But I wish it had appeared in a season with some lighter, fun episodes.

11.07 – Kerblam!

My initial reaction upon finishing “Kerblam!” for the first time, was…

After weeks of episodes like that have felt devoid of fun, without the joy or spirit of Doctor Who past, “Kerblam!” felt like a return to the form that Russell T Davies had developed for the show, and that Steven Moffat had perfected. A mysterious summons, a menacing robot, a mystery at a warehouse owned by Space Amazon. All the ingredients are there!

Unfortunately the whole affair begins to fall apart under scrutiny, and what in the moment felt like a fine steak cooked to perfection turned out to be a Burger King quarter pounder with a soggy bun and stale fries.

Doctor Who has, historically speaking, had a pretty strong stance when it comes to capitalism. With stories like “The Moonbase”, “The Caves of Androzani” and “Thin Ice”, the message is clear – people before profits. Yet in “Kerblam!” that ideology is flipped on its head – scifi Amazon-alike Kerblam! itself is calling for help, because one of its people – the 10% of humans employed by a company that is 90% automated – has gone rogue, killing people in preparation for a massive terrorist attack engineered to make it seem that the company’s automated components are responsible. But the Doctor saves the day, and the System is saved. What’s more, the company is going to shut down for a month so they can investigate what happened! That’s nice. Shame they’re only going to be giving the humans two weeks paid time off while they do it.

This desperately wants to be the dangerous-but-fun Doctor Who we all know and love, but its message is muddied. It’s a nice inversion, as the episode goes to great lengths to make the robots seem sinister only to reveal that it was them (more or less) who called for help! I do love a good inversion of a trope, but not when the subtext is “The systematic oppression of employers by a large corporation is basically fine.” Framing that company as Space Amazon, particularly given how much Amazon has been in the news over the last year, also feels like a misstep – this is a company where employees can’t even go and piss for fear of being fired, a company that made cities compete with each other to decide where their new headquarters is going to be only to choose the two most obvious locations close to seats of power anyway. Amazon isn’t a system, it’s a machine, and it’s a machine that does not value its human component. Framing it as anything other than that is a deeply, deeply irresponsible message to send out in 2018.

There’s so much cognitive dissonance going on in this episode it actively, properly hurts. The Doctor chides her companions for making fun of the robots – “That’s robophobic! Some of my best friends are robots!” – only to allow thousands of them to die at the very end of the episode. While you could argue that it was an us-or-them style conundrum, the Doctor doesn’t agonize over this decision for a single moment, nor does she consider any alternatives. The robots get blown up, neat bow, everybody lives, etcetera.

The Doctor also picks a fight with a supervisor, Jarva, for picking on one of the packing staff, but it’s never addressed again when it’s revealed Jarva is also looking into the same problem as the Doctor and her companions – the fact that he’s doing something good apparently trumps his dickish behavior earlier in the episode.

The episode’s biggest strength, however, is seeing the companions really come together as a team. It took seven bloody episodes, but Ryan, Graham and Yaz all have distinct roles to perform in this episode – nobody is sidelined, no-one exists solely to listen to another companion bare their soul. Finally, Team TARDIS feels like four parts of a whole, for individuals gelling for a common purpose. I like that. I wish it had lasted.

Arguably the best thing about this episode, other than the design of the Kerblam! robots (one gets the feeling they were manufactured by the same company that made Lister’s robot arm in Red Dwarf VII) is the performance by comedian and occasional actor Lee Mack. British audience know him from his standup, from being team captain on Would I Lie To You?, and for his long-running BBC sitcom Not Going Out, all of which demonstrate an acerbic wit. That wit is on brilliant display here, leading me to wonder whether the role was written with Mack in mind, or whether he did a lot of adlibbing that made it into the episode. Plus, both team WILTY? team captains have now been in Doctor Who, though arguably Mack is the only one of the two to appear on the show.

In the end, this episode wound up being not very good food at all, the television equivalent of seeing the McRib is back, ordering a McRib, eating a McRib, and then immediately regretting having eaten a McRib. It did leave me hopeful for more fun episodes to round out the season, but that hope was immediately dashed when the Next Time trailer included scenes of witches being drowned. Ooh ‘eck.

11.08 – The Witchfinders

Despite my reservations about yet another dark episode, this one ended up being one of my favorites, not to mention also being one of the most fun episodes of the run. A solid romp about witch trials in 17th century England, this is the first story that makes interesting use of the Doctor’s gender swap – first she uses the Psychic Paper to convince the locals of as village that she’s the Witchfinder General, but that trick doesn’t work when used on King James I who is incapable of seeing a woman in the role and so reads the Paper as saying she’s the assistant witchfinder. Later, the Doctor herself is tried as a witch. It’s superb writing, executed brilliantly.

The alien menace in this episode is also, shockingly, an actual menace! And it’s alien! Finally, our first proper threat after T’zim-Sha, and our first proper look at an alien since that first episode to boot (a number of episodes have featured aliens, but they have all looked disappointingly human). But it’s played as a mystery to begin with, as medieval witch trials give way to medieval zombies who, in turn, turn out to be possessed by an otherworldly alien force imprisoned underneath a tree for space crimes. The progression of the story is simple and organic, with dashes of folklore weaved throughout, though it’s easy to miss a key element about the tree that’s shared near the beginning of the episode but isn’t mentioned again until nearer its climax.

Alan Cumming plays King James as a camp admirer of torture implements who delights in witch hunting. The role is played for laughs, and I’ve seen arguments that the character shouldn’t have been a comic one considering he was instrumental in killing hundreds of women in his crusade against Satan. But what are tyrants for, if not to be mocked? Granted, King James isn’t alive to see the ridicule anymore, but putting him front-and-center as a ridiculous creature is, I think, the best thing for him. He deserves no better.

A wonderful mystery and a brilliantly-realized CG creature near the end both delight and entertain, leaving me to almost forget the rather disappointing makeup of the Morax Queen near the end. Team TARDIS comes together once again to face a foe, with each member of the team serving a function. At last, the show feels like it’s fallen into a groove. The wish – the hope – is that the shape of the season had finally taken form, and the production team new what they were doing.

11.09 – It Takes You Away

Ooh ‘eck, this could’ve been brilliant. Instead, it wound up just being very, very good.

What starts off as a wonderfully moody take on Scandinavian horror, complete with the esoteric name, takes several twists and turns throughout and becomes a piece about grief. Doctor Who has done grief before, most notably with “Heaven Sent” (which, coincidentally, was also the penultimate episode of its season), but this is a very different take on how grief affects us.

There are a lot of interesting ingredients in this episode that make for a compelling story – Erik, a father who, in the wake of the death of his wife, takes his blind daughter off to a cabin in the woods, who abandons that daughter and sets up a fake monster so he can travel to a mirror universe where his wife is still alive; the “Anti-Zone”, a buffer between this world and that one where a weird creature played by Kevin Eldon just sort of lives; a living universe, one that wants desperately to be a part of our own, but that cannot exist within it. Individually, these are great elements, and there’s a wonderful story to be told in there using them.

Sadly, this isn’t quite it. In the end, we get a sort-of retread of “The Three Doctors”, only this time the thing that can’t exist in our universe is… well, a universe itself, as opposed to a maniacal Time Lord bent on revenge. It almost works, and the moment between the Doctor and the Solitrat at the end of the episode is almost touching, but it isn’t quite there.

One of the biggest letdowns, though comes from that Solitrat mirror universe. The errant father gets to see his dead wife again, and Graham is even visited by his own recently-passed wife. But the Doctor gets… nobody. No one. The Solitract can’t think of a single person to bring back for her. The fan in me feels like this is a missed opportunity for a meeting with a mirror River Song, that seeing the Thirteenth Doctor reunited with her wife – albeit briefly, and as a duplicate – could have had some real impact for longterm fans. Hell, the longterm fan in me feels like this could have been a great moment for the Doctor to see Susan again (I am desperate for Susan to make an appearance on the show again – Carole Ann Ford is 78 years old now, and the clock is ticking on that potential moment). I understand why Chibnall might have opted not to have either of these possibilities happen, be it out of a desire to focus on the future or a wish not to tread on or undercut the stories of the past. My girlfriend pointed out that failing to have River appear feels like the producers have drawn a line in the sand – the Thirteenth Doctor can be this queer, but no further. I’m not sure I fully agree with that assessment, but as a queer man myself I understand that feeling. Certainly the optics aren’t good. It doesn’t have to be a deliberate snub, it just has to look like one to cause a problem,. And this, intentionally or not, gives the appearance of one.

I definitely recall enjoying the episode, but I’m having trouble recalling why. That can’t be a good sign. Lots of bits work, but in writing about it now I find myself struggling to piece together what it was that I watched. I know I enjoyed it. I know I loved every twist and turn, even if the execution left me wanting. But if you asked me for anything more than I’ve already given you, I’d turn up blank. There’s nothing there. I don’t like that.

Still, Erik isn’t winning as Father of the Year Awards, is he?

11.10 – The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

I’m just going to start with this – I hate that title. I hate it. I hate the name of episode even more than I hated the name of “The Tsuranga Conundrum”. Chibnall isn’t good at naming things. Say what you like about Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat (both of whom I adore, by the way), but their runs were filled with poetic turns of phrase and cleverly-named aliens. Their episode titles are, for the most part, descriptive. “A Good Man Goes To War” is still – still! – one of my favorite episode titles ever. But “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” is nothing. It says nothing, it means nothing, it describes nothing. There isn’t even a battle in this episode.

Fun fact: The Doctor translates the planet’s name as “Disintegrator of the Soul” which is an infinitely better episode title (though still isn’t great, obviously) and they just throw it away at the top of the episode. It’s not even alluded to or mentioned ever again.

The episode… is fine. It’s okay.

T’zim-Sha reappears, thousands of years later, after having been exiled to the planet Crab Rangoon. Once there, he abuses the powers of two super-religious Earthbenders (that’s basically what they are, let’s not pretend they aren’t) to create a weapon that can shrink planets down to the size of cricket balls. If that last part sounds familiar, it was also the plot of “The Pirate Planet”, a 1978 Doctor Who serial written by Douglas Adams. Hey, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best.

The reappearance of T’zim-Sha isn’t a huge surprise, considering the second episode of the season mentioned the Stenza, but it highlights a problem this season has had – no throughline. In Russell T Davies’ tenure as showrunner, we got standalone stories with keywords and repeated phrases popping up – Bad Wolf, Torchwood, the Medusa Cascade. In Moffat’s era we got recurring plot elements – the crack in the wall, Trenzalore, the Hybrid. Early on, Chibnall seemed to be paying lip service to that concept, and indeed as a not inconsiderable amount of the audience would likely be enjoying this season in one go on a streaming service sometime next year it’s not a bad trend to follow on. But he doesn’t, to the point where the mention of the Stenza way back in “The Ghost Monument” feels, like the mention of the Timeless Child alongside it, like wall spaghetti.

In previous seasons, the finale has been something we’d built up to; events have led to this. But for this one, we had nothing but an episode title we couldn’t remember and an abridged cast list of actors playing characters we’d not seen before. No build-up. In truth, I’ve loved that about this season – I’ve gone into every episode knowing almost nothing. That’s a far cry from previous seasons where we’d often know what to expect of the season finale long before the season itself had even started airing (oh, to exist in a universe where John Simm’s Master or the Mondasian Cybermen hadn’t been spoiled ahead of time). But even then, I had hoped for some in-narrative… stuff. Instead, nothing. T’zim-Sha is back, he’s shrinkin’ planets, and we’re expected to just sort-of roll with that.

The story plays with grief some more as Graham tells the Doctor he’s going to kill T’zim-Sha if he sees him, which feels like an odd choice considering we’d just dealt with that in the previous, largely unrelated episode, but there’s also an argument to be made that the events of “It Takes You Away” are what prompted this resurgence in Graham’s sense of loss over his wife. He did, after all, technically lose her twice. That’s more likely to be me reaching than it is to be a deliberate creative choice, though.

Despite him telling the Doctor that he plans to kill T’zim-Sha, however, the Doctor does nothing to stop him besides a halfhearted “go back to the TARDIS.” You can’t help but feel like Capaldi’s Doctor would have turned that into a shouting match, an order he won’t back down from, or Tennant or Smith’s Doctor turning it into an ethical debate, a plea for Graham’s soul. Whittaker, however, does nothing – it’d inconvenience the plot to have her more invested in Graham’s story, so it doesn’t come up again. At the end of the episode, after Graham has revealed he didn’t kill him (because of course he wasn’t going to) she calls him one of the strongest people she knows. It doesn’t feel earned.

Functionally, this episode has flaws. We have Paltraki, whose memory has been affected by the psychic attack of the planet itself, whose memory is spotty right up until the story needs him to suddenly remember something. The Ux are an interesting concept, but the episode makes a big deal out of T’zim-Sha taking advantage of their faith without really addressing the consequences or what that means for their belief system. The Doctor says shrinking planets is impossible and unstable, despite having seen someone do more or less exactly this very thing before. Then there’s that moment near the end, with the neural blockers.

I won’t lie, I thought that moment was going to set up something interesting – the Doctor and Yaz, suddenly without protection against the psychic attack of the planet. But it’s very quickly brushed off, and ultimately nothing comes of it. It’s another example, like the carnivorous water in “The Ghost Monument”, of an imminent threat that just sort-of goes away. The whole scene felt like watching someone play Dungeons & Dragons more than it felt like a scene with, y’know, stakes and risk. It’s disappointing moments like that one, littered throughout both this episode and others penned by Chibnall, that make it difficult to enjoy this season.

As finale goes, it had stakes. The fate of several planets, including our own, hang in the balance. But overcoming those odds feels almost effortless for the Doctor and her companions. Everything they need to succeed is handed to them – Hell, the Doctor literally stepped out of the TARDIS with the tools she needed to save the day in her pocket. There’s little in the way of genuine risk and every conceivable reward, including a Doctor-safe form of revenge for Graham and Ryan. Ultimately, what do stakes matter if resolving the crisis is as simple as switching the Ux off and on again?

And then it just sort of… ends, which might be fine for a middle-of-the-season episode, but even when Moffat was giving us single-episode finales there was still a feeling of epilogue to the last episode of the season. This one just sort of runs out of track, which means the season runs out of track. Season 11 didn’t finish. It stopped. that’s not great.

The finale has a ton of really neat ideas in it, but where it falters – and, again, this has been a recurring theme this season – is the execution. 

The Nutshell

There is a lot to like this season. Jodie Whittaker’s performance has been above and beyond expectations. The companions, when they’re given something to do, are phenomenal. Even Bradley Walsh, who I was most concerned about considering he is, in the UK, a gameshow host. Yes, alright, he’s appeared in other shows including Law & Order: UK and as many soaps as you like, but I’d not been exposed to that. I was delighted to learn that he was, in fact, brilliant.

Certainly, also, there is no shortage of big ideas. The Solitract, the Ux, the P’Ting, even the idea of doing Space Amazon is interesting. The problem, though, lies in the execution – this has been an exceptionally dour season of Doctor Who, lacking the energy and joie de vivre of seasons past.

There hasn’t been a lot of fun, or color. So much color was incorporated into the show’s publicity, including that brilliant, bold and vibrant promotional poster (left). The show itself, though? Dark. Grim. Moody. Cinematic, certainly, but at the expense of character. That poster almost promises a return to the Smallville lighting of the Russell T Davies era, and yet – and yet! – we get the most visually dim and uninspired season of the show since its return in 2005.

The best criticisms of Chibnall have come from people much, much smarter than I am. A critic on Tumblr – possibly scriptscribbles – once described his writing as cynical, and certainly looking at his past Doctor Who contributions it’s hard to disagree. “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” is a goofy romp, but it ends with one of the darkest decisions the Doctor has made in the modern run of the show. “42” and “The Hungry Earth”/”Cold Blood” are, at their core, about the worst ways people can behave. Half of Torchwood is about people showing their worst selves. That’s not to say that cynical can’t be entertaining – case in point, the season 4 episode “Midnight” -penned by Russell T Davies – but it can’t be that every week, and there’s been a lot of cynicism in the show.

Another critic of the season, Andrew Ellard (whose credits as a script editor include The IT Crowd and Red Dwarf), has said that the biggest flaw this season has been big ideas, huge moments, that have zero impact on the outcome of the story. “It’s an imitation of drama,” says Ellard, and that’s a damning and accurate description of why a lot of this season, particularly the episodes written by Chibnall, simply doesn’t work.

As someone with a disability myself, Ryan’s dyspraxia has me frustrated. At first, I was giddy to see a character with an invisible illness on-screen, and that it continued to pose difficulties in the second episode boded well. But aside from a vague allusion to the condition in “Kerblam!”, it doesn’t come up again. By “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” it is all but forgotten – a disappointment, and a shame.

If I had to rank the seasons – and I typically do once a year – this is not a high scorer. It might be a serious contender for the worst season of the revival. I hate that. I hate typing those words. But that’s how I feel right now. For as wonderful as Jodie’s performance is, for as much wide-eyed enthusiasm she pulls off in the role, she can’t paper over the cracks in weak scripts and half-baked stories that don’t rise to their full potential. The first woman to play the role deserves infinitely better than she has been given, because there are corners of the fandom who will blame Chibnall’s failures on her.

I’ll also say this – I didn’t come into this season expecting disappointment. I came in hopeful, enthusiastic and energized. There are people online who went into the new season expecting disappointment, which strikes me as an odd way to watch a show. I wanted to be dazzled, I wanted to be excited. For a while, for that first episode at least, I was. That excitement, sadly, didn’t last.

The Future – New Year’s Day, 2020 and Beyond

Yet I am still excited for her second season. My hope – my big, fond, improbable hope – is that Chibbers will learn from his mistakes and we’ll get to see some of that Chibnall genius we’d been promised from Steven Moffat, from fans of Broadchurch, from the people who inexplicably still love Torchwood despite the fact it contains easily the single worst contribution to Doctor Who lore since “Timelash” (it’s “Cyberwoman”, by the way, also written by Chibnall). The first season of a new Doctor is, with few exceptions, not perfect; as the new production team find their feet, can season 12 improve upon the template they’ve established?

The answer, perhaps predictably, is: We don’t know, and we won’t know for over a year. Season 12 is slated for an early 2020 release, meaning that 2019 will, New Year’s Day Special aside, be another year without Doctor Who. In the world of streaming television – indeed, in the world of British television – that’s not unusual. But with the ratings success the show has had this year (apparently larger audiences aren’t concerned with the stuff I’ve written about here, and why should they be?) it seems foolish not to capitalize on that as soon as possible. A brilliant piece in the New Statesman argues that Doctor Who not returning to TV in 2019 is normal, but dangerous – many children who have just had their first taste of the show may well grow out of it between seasons, while many children just now entering the prime age for the show to hook their tendrils into it might miss their window.

Of course, people said the same thing about the gap between seasons 10 and 11, and “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” had the highest season premiere ratings since “Rose” in 2005, so what on Earth do critics know, eh?

I do know one thing, though – I have never been more concerned for the future of the show that I love. A good season of Doctor Who is many things, but it is never boring. This season, I found myself bored several times, and that is a problem. Doctor Who is not a show that is allowed the luxury of boredom – the last time the show became boring, it was taken off the air and we had to wait 14 years for it to return. That’s a little bit doomsayer-y, I know, but I worry. Importantly, I don’t want to worry. I want to be hopeful. Whittaker’s first scene at the end of “Twice Upon a Time” had me hopeful. Her final scene in “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” – ironically, a speech about hope – did not instill such positivity. That hope in an improved season 12 is something I’ve arrived at later, either out of blind optimism or sheer bloodymindedness. Call it what you like.

Doctor Who needs writers with imagination. This season hasn’t been short on imagination, but it’s struggled in the execution. Hopefully, in 2020, we’ll see a bit more of both. I am, and always will be, the optimist. The hoper of far-flung hopes, and the dreamer of improbable dreams. Until then, roll on New Year’s Special.

Thanks for reading! If you’ve enjoyed this, please consider making a donation via PayPal. See you next time!

If you missed Invisible Powers: Invisible Illnesses in the Fandom and Entertainment Industry at Long Beach Comic-Con earlier this year (and given how bad their disabled access was, that isn’t at all surprising), worry ye not! We’re bringing the panel to the significantly more ADA-compliant LA Comic Con this weekend! Join us in Panel Room 308 on Sunday, October 28th @ 1pm for one hour of conversation as we talk about chronic and invisible illnesses.

I’ll be discussing my experience with fibromyalgia, how it has impacted my career and, perhaps more relevantly, how it’s impacted my ability to attend conventions. I’m looking forward to seeing you all there!

Can’t make it to SD Who Con? Don’t worry, I’ll be back in LA in time for Look Who’s Talking, the Doctor Who aftershow at Geeky Teas!

My full schedule is as follows:

Friday

6pm – All Ages Pub Quiz
How does your knowledge of Doctor Who trivia stack up against other fans? Come and find out. Maybe your brain is so bursting with Doctor Who factoids you’ll win gloating privileges for the rest of the con!

Saturday

11am – In Defense Of
Join us for a late morning gaming event requiring volunteers to defend their position on an audience suggested Doctor Who subject! Appropriate for all ages.

1pm – The IntelleXual Podcast – LIVE from SD Who Con
Hosts David and Whitney of San Diego podcast, The IntelleXual, will interview a selection of special guests as they record a LIVE podcast with audience participation!

2pm – How to Make a DW Fan Film With a Life Size Dalek
Remember Dalek Gary? For the first time since completing the series, join director and co-writer Michelle Osorio and me, as well as some of the cast and crew, as we talk about the process of making the film and shooting with a real, full-size Dalek!

3pm – Cosplay Contest
I’ll be judging the cosplay contest for reasons that continue to elude me.

7pm – In Defense Of – Adults Only Edition
Join us for an ”ADULTS ONLY” version of this hilarious game requiring volunteers to defend their position on an audience suggested Doctor Who subject. A winner will be chosen!

8pm – Saturday Night Dance Party “Doc Hop”
I’m returning as one of the entertainers for SD Who Con’s actual Saturday night dance. I’ll be doing ten minutes of standup. You lucky dogs.

Sunday

10am – Tabletop RPGs for Beginners
You’ve been watching Critical Role, you’ve listened to every episode of The Adventure Zone, and you’re ready to jump into the world of tabletop RPGs yourself. Join Ben Paddon – GM for the  Doctor Who RPG show The Game of Rassilon – along with Lynne Marie Martens and ‘Saving Throw’ regular Mac Beauvais as they talk you through how to get started on your own RPG adventure, as well as answering your questions about everything tabletop!

11am – Cosplayer Theater Games
SD Who Con presents an hour of wacky improvisational games led by our invited cosplayers in character.

1pm – The Game of Rassilon: The Doctor Who Roleplaying Game LIVE!
For the third SD Who Con in a row, British comedian Ben Paddon brings a motley crew of incredibly funny people to play the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game: It’s Dungeons & Dragons, but a little more timey-wimey! What misadventure will the Doctor and his (or her!) companions find themselves in this time, and how will they get out? It all depends on the dice…

Los Angeles based Doctor Who fans, I have something exciting for you! Starting October 7th and running through to December 9th, I’ll be hosting Look Who’s Talking, a live Doctor Who after-show, every Sunday at Geeky Teas. Each week I’ll be joined by special guests as we discuss the newest episode, what we liked, what we didn’t, and what we think of the season so far.

Admission for the show is $5 at the door. Doors open at 7pm, show starts at 7:30pm.

Not only that, but preceding each show is a complimentary screening of the newest episode at 6pm! This can be attended by ANYBODY free of charge – no ticket required, no purchase necessary!

Geeky Tea is located at 2220 W Magnolia Blvd, Burbank, CA, 91506.

For more details, check out the Facebook event.

If you’re going to Anime California this weekend, good news! I’m participating in a comedy show on Saturday @ 8:30pm in LP3 (Hollywood Ballroom). There’s a Facebook event set up for the show if you want to add it to your calendar. Do note that this is an 18+ only show, so be sure to bring ID.

Justin McElroy, savior of Earth and hero to all humanity, hovered above the Largfnaac pit, his body cocooned in an energy field restricting his every movement.

“I’m Justin McElroy,” he said. “Savior of the Earth and hero to all humanity. I bet you’re wondering how I got here.”

“Not especially,” said Lord Haalblaine, drumming his clawed fingers against the smooth handle of his obsidian trident. “We found you floating aimlessly in space, so we picked you up.”

“Ah!” smiled Justin. “And having heard of how I rescued the Earth from a celestial body by punching it square in the selfie surface, you’re hoping to enlist my aid in saving your own kind.”

Lord Haalblaine began picking at his claws with the tip of his trident, trying to remove some dirt. “Not as such, no.”

“No?”

“No, mostly we were thinking, ‘Hey, I wonder what space meat tastes like?’”

Justin furrowed his brow. “Space meat.”

“In fairness, Ja’ason was the most curious about it,” said Lord Haalblaine, motioning to another of his species standing in the corner of the room. The man wore what could loosely be described as a baseball cap, a tee-shirt bearing the image of short-lived 80s new wave music act Seona Dancing, and jorts. He gave a small wave.

“He was all, ‘Hey, I bet space meat tastes great,’” Haalblaine continued, “and at first we thought, y’know, that’s stupid. You’re stupid, Ja’ason. Is there even such a thing as space meat? The whole premise was absurd. But then the idea just wouldn’t leave our heads, and suddenly we’re jumping in the Deathspire hittin’ the big black in search of space meats.”

Justin couldn’t believe what Haalblaine was saying, though this was primarily because he couldn’t hear it — he was halfway down the adjacent corridor making a run for the shuttle bay, having used his captor’s rambling about space meats as a distraction that granted him the time to easily disable the small device that generated the laser cocoon.

In the decades to come, scholars of the Planet J’Vipnar — homeworld of Lord Haalblaine and his jort-wearing minions — would debate with ferocity exactly how McElroy had been able to disable the cocoon. As a field of purest energy, there should have been no way for McElroy to disable it. It would be almost a century before anyone even considered the fatal flaw in the device’s design — in order for it to function, the individual being held captive has to hold it in their own hand, a feat usually accomplished by handing it to your intended victim and saying “Hey, hold this for a sec.” In the millennia the device had been used, it had occurred to only one person that the device could be disabled by simply dropping it, and he was now sitting in the cockpit of a T-180 Cruiser, blasting away from Lord Haalblaine’s Deathspire and out into space. His meats, once again, were free.

“Shall we give chase, Lord Haalblaine?” asked Ja’ason, adjusting the hemline of his boxer-briefs.

Haalblaine considered for a moment. Then: “Nah, man. He earned it.”

~*~

Before we continue we must consider, for a brief moment, the biology of the Laarggfnac.

Laarggfnac are small, furry rodents roughly the size of a quarter, or a ten-pence piece if you’re from the UK (other nations, you’re on your own). They are unique among the galaxy’s various rodentia by virtue of the fact that their bodies are approximately 87% teeth, with the remaining body being mostly hair, two beady little eyes, tiny little human hands, and a tail so thin it can only be seen under an electron microscope.

They are aggressive, hungry, and relentless in their pursuit of their prey. This is why Lord Haalblaine, and indeed all the Dark Lords of the unfortunately-named Keimart Nebula, employ them in their various traps, tortures and pits — once a disappointment¹ of Laarggfnac have the scent of their next victim, they will not relent until they are removing the last morsel of meat from their teeth with an irregularly-sized toothpick.

And yet Justin, a man from a planet with exactly zero Laarggfnac living on it, had somehow managed to expertly evade these deadly, tiny creatures. Indeed, he’d managed to avoid falling anywhere near the Laarggfnac. This, too, would baffle scholars for some time — many millennia longer than the mystery of the laser cocoon would trouble them.

Four-thousand years into the future, in a time of commercially-available and relatively environmentally-friendly (if not necessarily affordable) time travel, the last scholar in the universe — Gavin the Curious of Planderex XXXVII — decided that the question could go unanswered no longer. Nearing the end of his life, he used the last of his money to travel back to this point in history to witness McElroy’s escape so that he might document it. He arrived in the chamber of the Deathspire, where his scent was picked up by the Laarggfnac, and was promptly set upon and chewed to death.

This allowed McElroy to drop silently and effortlessly into the now-empty pit, and from there he dashed down the corridor and towards the shuttle bay.

Gavin the Curious’ sudden disappearance was of interest to no one, in part because there were no more scholars to express such an interest, but also because he was, at his core, such a fundamentally unlikeable person. He was missed by nobody and mourned by no one.

There is no moral to this story, nor room to retrofit one for people who like to put neat ‘n’ tidy bows on things. Sometimes things just happen, and sometimes those things happen to people named Gavin.

And the universe spins on.

~*~

The T-180 Cruiser, currently occupied by the most daring hero that planet Earth had ever produced², scorched through space away from the harsh, utilitarian lines of the Deathspire and towards what McElroy hoped would be Earth. He was an expert at many things — cooking, lovemaking, identifying very specific brands and models of sporting utility vehicle from a variety of distances — but astrology was not what he would call his forte. This was evident by the fact that he had, in his mind, just referred to the science of observing celestial bodies as “astrology”, which was the one with the horoscopes.

McElroy performed several mid-flight checks. The Cruiser was level, or as level as a ship designed to travel through space was capable of being. He had enough fuel to last him 40 years. His reflection… yes, still gorgeous. Fantastic.

With the Cruiser on autopilot, he thought he was probably safe to take one of his patented macro-naps. This was a particular clever innovation of his, wherein a nap that would ordinarily take ten to thirty minutes would instead be spread out across a larger period of time — often as many as eight hours — to achieve the maximum potential rest. It was a brilliant idea, and he was always disappointed in people who hadn’t quite cottoned on to the premise themselves.

Short naps, he knew, did nothing. They left you feeling confused, frustrated, and inexplicably more tired than you were when you first lay down. But he discovered that the longer the nap, the more lucid and with-it you felt upon waking, and so before long he was taking as many as two macro-naps a day just to keep himself constantly and consistently refreshed. He often found he lost whole days, but he was more alert as a result, and that made it all worth it.

He was awoken seven hours and thirteen minutes into his nap by the sound of alarms blaring and the flash of mauve lights in the cockpit. As he looked to the flight coordinator and saw his Cruiser locked into a tailspin with the ominously red planet currently filling the cockpit windscreen at an alarming rate, he thought only two things: That his macro-nap had been cut short just prior to achieving optimal rest, and that the planet he was about to crash into was almost certainly not Earth.

He uttered an obscenity, figured there was little he could do to change whatever fate would befall him, and resumed his nap.

~*~

Deep in the crimson jungles of the most humorously-shaped continent of Planet X, wildlife scattered as the Cruiser doomf’d into the terrain, tearing down trees and destroying habitats.

Far away, atop Mount Signus, a figure in a tattered purple robe stood, his bony fingers wrapped around a crude wooden staff, as he watched the Cruiser collide with the vista below.

If someone had been standing in front of the figure, they would have accomplished two things. The first would have been to obstruct the figure’s view of the jungle, which would have annoyed the figure immensely. The second is that they would have seen the figure’s face, such as it may be called, contort into what could perhaps be described as a smile.

If they’d been there, the figure might have felt compelled to say something out loud.

Instead, they just smiled, and thought to themself: At last. He has arrived.

Previous chapter

One of the few people who took me up on this venture was Justin McElroy of My Brother, My Brother and Me fame. The prompt he gave me was “Justin McElroy: Hero To All”. I wrote the story and sent it to Justin. He seemed to dig it.

Earlier this year I spoke about the story on Twitter as part of a story about who Justin is to me, and the lessons he has taught me outside of just listening to his creative output. You can read the thread here. That got people interested in reading the story itself, and so with Justin’s permission, I published the story, unedited, to my Tumblr. Typos and all.

Now, a month later, I am reposting it here. Why? Because earlier this week I put out a call to try and raise a little money, and in return for hitting my goal I would write and publish a follow-up. I hit my goal, and so the follow-up will be posted here too. It’s in the hands of a couple of beta readers, but once they’ve given it a onceover it’ll be going here, live.

For now, though, here’s part one of the story.

PART 1
ONE OF OUR ASTEROIDS IS MISSING

“From the trajectory, it appears the asteroid will hit the Earth in approximately 72 hours,” said the General.

The President placed a cigarette between his lips, lit it, and inhaled sharply.

“Is there anything we can do?” he asked.

“We’ve liaised with several world governments, sir. Japan, China, Great Britain, Germany, France. No-one has the facilities to bring this asteroid down. We’ve also considered several suggestions from Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer, Steven Spielberg, and Roland Emmerich, all of whom agree it’s far too late to mount a daredevil mission to the surface of the asteroid to blow it up.”

“Who’s Roland Emmerich?”

“He directed a number of ‘disaster porn’ films, sir. ‘Independence Day’, ‘2012’, ‘The Day After Tomorrow’,‘Godzilla’…”

“Does ‘Godzilla’ count as a disaster movie?” asked the President.

“Hard to see how a giant monster rampaging through a major American city could be seen as anything other than a disaster, sir.”

The President stood up, and looked out of a nearby window. The view was unspectacular – they were a mile deep underground – but he’d requested the windows be installed so that he could look out of them in a contemplative manner.

He turned to the General, and flicked his cigarette at an unfortunately-positioned intern.

“What about Initiative J?” he asked.

The General shuffled in his seat. “With respect, sir, Initiative J hasn’t even been tested yet. We’ve no way of knowing if it’s even suitable for a large-scale disaster of this magnitude.”

“Well, we’re about to find out,” the President said, smiling.

~*~

Justin McElroy stepped out of the car wearing a finely-cut black suit and the most expensive aviator shades money can buy ($34.95 plus tax). He walked towards Air Force One where the President awaited his arrival.

“It’s an absolute honor to finally meet you.”

“You needn’t stand on ceremony with me, Mr. President. I’m just here to do a job.”

It is as this point that you may wonder exactly what Justin McElroy looks like. Mere words cannot convey this man’s exceptional good looks. Indeed, the movie rights for this story have already been optioned by a major movie studio based on McElroy’s looks alone, however all involved in production have asked that he be portrayed by British actor Matt Berry who, while certainly handsome, is just odd-looking enough to make all of the other actors feel a little bit better about themselves. McElroy himself has signed a lengthy contract forbidding him from appearing on set to avoid any work stoppages and tantrums from the actors.

Aboard the plane, McElroy laid out his plan.

“It’s a simple three-fold operation,” said McElroy. “First, I go up to the asteroid. Secondly, I punch the asteroid in the face. Finally, upon my return, there’s an orgy.”

“Are you sure?” asked the General.

“It’s more likely than not. Orgies tend to just happen when I’m around. We’re having an orgy right now.”

“I think he was referring to the second part of your plan,” said the President, wiping a small glob of butter from his eye. “You honestly think you can stop this asteroid by punching it?”

“In the face, yes,” nodded McElroy, maneuvering himself so as not to be kicked in the face by a female intern.

“Do asteroids even have faces?” asked the General.

“My dear General,” McElroy smiled. “Do you know nothing about Astronomy?”

~*~

Several hours later, McElroy was strapped into a space shuttle and blasted into the sky. Millions watched the event on TV and via a live web stream. The fate of the world rested in the hands of a man determined to punch an asteroid in the face.

The shuttle touched down upon what McElroy had dubbed the “hair” of the asteroid. The airlock doors hissed open, and McElroy took his first steps out onto the surface.

He looked up at the earth, looming above him. The blue marble.

He looked down to the asteroid. He clenched his fists, let out a mighty cry, and punched it in the face.

All around the earth, people watched in awe as the asteroid suddenly stopped moving towards the planet, instead spinning off into the depths of space, never to be seen again.

“McElroy, this is mission control. You did it! Come on home. Over.”

Silence.

“McElroy? Come in.”

Still silence.

McElroy had known all along he wouldn’t be able to return. He’d watched ‘Armageddon’ recently, and he’d always felt an affinity with Bruce Willis. While he was right about the orgy that would ensue after the success of his mission – an orgy that would be held globally on this day every year afterwards in  his honor – he would not be able to participate.

But there would be other planets. And, more importantly, there would be other orgies. Space orgies.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Next chapter

The con itself is from June 1st-3rd. You can pre-register for the entire weekend on their website for $50, or it’s $55 at the door. Alternatively, if you just want to come the day of, it’s $25 for a Saturday registration at the door.

Then I remembered, not for the first time, an act of kindness that Justin performed for me about seven years ago. And, being utterly incapable of having a thought without immediately sharing it on social media, I tweeted about it. I won’t repost the tweets here, they’re easy to find, but the tl;dr is that at a time when I was a much younger, angrier man than I am now, at a time in my life when I was regularly shitting on Justin and Griffin for doing their jobs, Justin helped me – unexpectedly and unprompted – during a time when I needed help.

Those tweets gained some traction overnight – hundreds of likes, dozens of retweets, and a quote tweet from Justin that has been itself liked and retweeted hundreds upon hundreds of times. 

A big part of that story, however, of that exchange, is who I was in 2011 at the time it takes place. And so what follows is a very long post about growth, anger, and shame.

I don’t expect everyone to know my backstory, but from 2010-2013 I ran a blog with the rather aggressive title of Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits – often called GJAIF or GameJournos for short. There, I picked at what I perceived to be errors in reporting, judgment and focus by game journalists.

I was angry, but not for the right reasons, and certainly it had nothing to do with video game journalists, but they were my chosen target. They were where I had focused my ire. I said a lot of callous, cruel things about a lot of people I didn’t know for largely inconsequential reasons. Typos. Grammatical errors. Mentioning something only tangentially relevant to the story. Not mentioning something only tangentially relevant to the story. My focus, my anger, was directed at whatever slight I could pick on that particular day. If something didn’t immediately leap out at me in my RSS reader that morning, I would actively go looking for something. Anything.

At my mildest, I called people names. At my worst, I wished them dead. Over typos. 

Naturally, I upset people. Of course I did. I was an arrogant, self-righteous shit, pompously claiming to be a “building inspector” for a field in which my only experience was limited to weekly op-eds on a website that hadn’t existed for almost a decade at that point. I was a nobody, with nothing to back me up, firing blanks into a crowd of people who didn’t deserve it for reasons that, over eight years after I first started, no longer make rational sense to me. I don’t think they made sense to me then, if I’m being honest.

But those words affected people. They hurt people. Some were able to brush off the presence of the blog, but I know my actions, my words, deeply affected some. They affected peoples’ confidence. Some people stopped writing altogether. Scott Kurtz once said that if criticism stops someone from pursuing something they want then they can’t have wanted it all that badly, but I think that’s the lie that bad people tell themselves to justify being “brutally honest,” to make it easier to pretend that they’re doing anything other than crushing someone’s dreams. It’s bullshit. I was bullshit, and knowing that what I did hurt people, that is affected people the way that it is, leaves me filled with shame, regret, and remorse.

I never hid that the blog was me. I never once thought I needed to hide behind anonymity or a pseudonym. That was probably more foolish than brave, and I don’t doubt that doing that made it harder for me to find work during the times I needed it. Times like now, in fact. If there is any justice, it is in there – I am the architect of my own failures, and I need to own that. I need to own what I have done, and how what I have done has affected real, actual people in the world. I cannot and will not walk away from that. 

To anyone and everyone that blog ever hurt, to anybody who stopped writing because of me, who cried because a young idiot on the internet wished them dead for getting a minor fact wrong, who took any kind of emotional hit because of the words I wrote – I am deeply, truly sorry. I am. It’s too little too late, I know. I don’t expect forgiveness neither do I particularly feel I deserve it. I made my own bed.

I’ve learned a lot over the last five years. The lesson I learned from Justin, and one that I have continued to have reinforced by friends and family – particularly in the wake of my parents’ death – is to choose joy. I don’t want to be a negative force in the world. I don’t want to give anybody reason or cause to cry. I know I have in the past. The world is already so chaotic, so deeply unpleasant; I cannot imagine why any person would wish to add to that. I can’t. I refuse to.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not think of myself as a good person. That is why I try so hard, now, to be one; to do good, to be a force for good, for positivity, for joy. I have wasted so much of my limited life being cruel. That isn’t who I want to be.

I do not believe that the world is a better place for having me in it, but I do believe I have the rest of my life to prove myself wrong.

Going to Gallifrey One next week? Then join Joseph Scrimshaw, Christopher Jones, Dan Peck, Lauren Peck and I for an hour and a half of tabletop wossnamery as the Doctor and his (or her!) companions attempt to stop whatever it is I end up throwing at them! Guaranteed laughs, hopefully. Learn more on the Gallifrey One 2017 Schedule.

More details, including the full list of who’s playing, once the full Gally schedule has been revealed. In the meantime, here’s what they’ve said in their latest site update:

Plus as a special treat this year: “The Game of Rassilon”… it’s Dungeons & Dragons but a little more timey-wimey, and we’ve gathered four very funny people to play the game for your amusement! What misadventure will the Doctor and his (or her!) companions find themselves in this time, and how will they get out? It all depends on the dice…

Gallifrey One takes place at the LAX Marriott Hotel from February 17th-19th. Tickets have already sold out.

That’s right, despite having never appeared in a single episode of Doctor Who I will be a Guest at the first ever San Diego Who Con at the Town and Country Resort & Convention Center in San Diego, CA.

Interested in attending? You can purchase tickets here! It’s $60 for the whole weekend, $30 for the Friday, or $20 for the Sunday (Saturday-only passes are, sadly, all sold out). Or you can just attend the London Blitz Dance Party for $15! You can also book a room at the Town and Country Resort, where the convention is taking place.

This is a first-year Doctor Who con. Purchasing tickets and booking a room at the hotel helps to support the convention, and makes a second one next year much more likely.

Here’s my schedule, just in case you can’t see the image above:

FRIDAY

[PANEL] “You May Also Enjoy…” – Council Room – Friday @ 1pm
Exploring British scifi/fantasy beyond Doctor Who.

[PANEL] Headcanon Accepted – Council Room – Friday @ 3pm
Discussing “fanon” within Doctor Who.

SATURDAY

[EVENT] Eric Roberts – Council Room – Saturday @ 10am

[EVENT] Daphne Ashbrook – Council Room – Saturday @ 12pm

[PANEL] The Game of Rassilon – Saturday @ 1pm
The Doctor Who Tabletop RPG Live!

[EVENT] “The London Blitz” Dance Party – Saturday @ 8pm
Featuring musical performance by The Velveteen Band

SUNDAY

[EVENT] Q&A with Eric Roberts and Daphne Ashbrook – Council Room – Sunday @ 10am

If you’ve been wanting to see me perform stand-up but haven’t wanted to do things like pay for it, you’re in luck! I’m performing at the Starving Artist’s Variety Show at the Bar ONE Tap Room in North Hollywood on April 3rd!

From the Facebook event page:

This is a VARIETY SHOW and anything goes! Come out and support the artist in your neighborhood.

Yes there will be a tip jar for the artists so bring that coffee money! Spare change! Support local talent!!

They’re also looking for additional performers for the night, so if you’re interested head over to the Facebook event and shoot them a message.

The brand-new Jump Leads audioplay series launches at the beginning of September. This is a reboot of the critically-acclaimed scifi-comedy webcomic of the same name, and stars the voice talents of Dino Andrade (Batman: Arkham Asylum, World of Warcraft, Hellsing Ultimate),Chris Dorman (8.13, The Meme), Marissa Meizel (Capsized, Rosie Dale) and… well, me! (Dalek Gary, Boomer’s Day Off, PortsCenter)

There’s already an exclusive teaser scene up on the Jump Leads website! The first episode goes up very early in September. You can be among the first to be notified by subscribing at one of these outlets:

• iTunes
  
• RSS
• RSS for Android devices
• Twitter
• Facebook

You can also support the show by becoming a patron on Patreon! Any and all money collected from the Jump Leads Patreon is divided up among the cast and crew equally, and allows us to continue working on this ambitious project. If you’re interested in supporting the show, do please consider pledging. You can also help us by sharing and reblogging this post!

Thanks for taking the time to read this! See you in a couple of weeks!

I loved working with JjAR on Jump Leads, and I loved, and continue to love, those characters and that universe (or multiverse). The story ended on a cliffhanger in the comic, mostly because that’s how that particular story was supposed to end, but even when JjAR stepped away and Mr. Phillby filled his somewhat sizable shoes to help finish that final story, I didn’t want to change the ending. Changing the ending would have been admitting that Jump Leads was over, and I wasn’t ready for it to be over.

In hindsight, I regret not changing the ending. I regret not giving our readers closure. Those who had stuck with the comic for five years deserved a proper ending, not what we gave them.

I want to bring Jump Leads back. I do. I’ve struggled with what form. If it were novels, I’d have written them by now. I struggle with writing longform stories. The words don’t form in my head when I sit to write. I have tried – there are unfinished drafts on my hard drive. I wonder why I don’t have the patience for it?

I keep thinking of doing audioplays. I could do that. In my head, Meaney and Llewellyn are British, but everyone else is up for grabs. It shouldn’t be too difficult to cast, right? Oh, but then there’s that whole “money” thing. Studio time, paying the artists, mixing, sound design… how do I cover all that? a Kickstarter?

In a perfect world I’d like to write comics again. But that has the same logistical problems. Time, payment, what have you. It’s a quagmire whichever way you look at it.

I did write a sort-of “Writer’s Bible” for a potential revival, though. Maybe one day I’ll be able to put it to use.

That moment sticks in the mind, bu perhaps not as much as today’s conversation will. I won’t ruin it for you, but I will say it’s not mean-spirited.

• Here’s Mike’s opening post, and
• here’s Jerry’s response.

Read them, top the bottom, in order. Fantastic.

That is all.

Gallifrey One runs from February 14th-16th this year at the LAX Marriott Hotel, and this year includes guests Colin Baker, Paul McGann, Billie Piper and Arthur Darvill. Yeah, I know. Blimey. Shame tickets have already sold out, eh?

Here are the details for the panels I’m appearing in.

Sex and the Single Time Lord – Friday, 10:30pm, Program E

Though it wasn’t about the Doctor when he wrote it, Douglas Adams may have put it best.  ”What is he, man or mouse?  Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life?  Has he no spirit?  Has he no passion?  Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, f—?”  A late-night discussion topic about how the Doctor gets on without copping off.

Appearing with Bridget Bowes, Rod Hedrick, and Eric Hoffman.

—-

The Non-Violent Solution – Saturday, 2:00pm, Program D

We live in a world of violent video games, slasher movies and car chases on television… and yet, somehow, Doctor Who endures.  He’s never cruel or cowardly, and he never raises a weapon to solve a problem.  What is the appeal of a character who lives boldly and espouses virtue above all things?

Appearing with Kyle Anderson, Lindsay Mayers and Kathy Sullivan.

More information about the convention as well as a full schedule of the weekend’s events can be found at GallifreyOne.com.

I need to get more organized with my post-production process. Shooting the couch segments of an episode only takes, at most, two hours, which includes setting up and tearing down the lights. Post, however, takes the better part of a day. I have to:

• Record the voiceover,
• prepare overlays for things like game captions, credits, etc.,
• capture any game footage I might not have yet,
• get the bones of the edit in – voiceover and shot material,
• curate game footage and drop it in,
• realize I’ve forgotten to capture footage of some other game I mention within the episode, so set up to do that,
• add the background blur effect so it’s not just game footage on a black background,
• select my music,
• rebalance the audio tracks,
• prepare the end credits, including game footage and footage from last week’s episode and footage from the next episode
• (which usually involves capturing about 30 seconds worth of gameplay of next week’s game, unless I can’t be bothered like last week),
• give it a watch-through, tweak any parts I think need tweaking,
• re-record any voiceover I think needs to be redone or rewritten,
• watch it again,
• render the video,
• prepare web assets such as YouTube thumbnails, featured images for PortsCenter.TV and Retrowaretv.com,
• watch an episode of Futurama while the rest of the episode renders,
• upload the episode,
• prepare posts for PortsCenter.TV, Retrowaretv.com, and the PortsCenter Tumblr,
• add annotations once the upload is complete,
• and update the annotations for the previous episode.

That’s a lot of work. Today it took me ten hours to get it all done. If I did color correction or any particularly intensive visual effects I’d probably never get any sleep. Is it any wonder I haven’t had time to do much behind-the-scenes stuff?

Still, I am exceptionally proud of all 22 episodes so far. There’s two left to do, then I’m taking January off to rest, recuperate, and get ready for season 2 in February.

Two years later, I’m in the final stretch of the first season. 2013 has seen PortsCenter join Retroware TV as a featured show and signed with Screenwave Media, a YouTube network that has been incredibly kind and supportive of the show. But most importantly, we’ve nearly completed our first full year of production on the series, with twenty completed episodes and a further four left to produce before the new year.

Over the last year I’ve learned a lot, a lot, about producing content for the internet. I’ve learned a lot about what I need to do to make PortsCenter work. I’ve no idea how much of what I’ve learned is going to be applicable to others, but what the Hell, I’m going to write it down anyway.

#1: Keep your mouth shut.

It’s a fool who tells the world what he’s going to do before he’s actually done any of the doing of it. Don’t tell the world you’re going to climb Everest before you’ve bought your gear. Or before you know how to climb a mountain, for that matter. Do your research. Study. Figure out what you need to do in order to do the thing you want to do. Then, once you’ve done that, keep your fucking mouth shut until you have something to show the world. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

I’ve made this mistake often over the last fifteen years as I’ve hopped aimlessly from one pipe-dream creative endeavor to another. I still made that mistake with PortsCenter, by posting the complete list of games I intended to look at for the first season. You’ll notice games on that list that I sadly didn’t get to this season – Perfect Dark, Street Fighter II, Gears of War: The Board Game. The Gears episode is my biggest disappointment, because I’d announced plans to look at it before I’d figured out the logistics of filming four people playing a board game.

For season 2, I’ll be keeping my planned titles close to the chest. No list, no episode list complete with intended release date that I have to keep editing to shift stuff around. Just the show, and the episodes I release.

#2: Tell the world.

You may think this contradicts my previous point, but it doesn’t. You’ve got to plug. You’ve got to be on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, everywhere talking about the video you’re filming, the song you’re recording, the comic you’re drawing. Then you’ve got to do it again when it’s released. Then you’ve got to do it again so you catch the people who didn’t catch it the first time ’round. Then you’ve got to do it a third time. Then you have to do it all over again when you’re getting ready to release your next video, or song, or comic, or whatever. If you don’t tell people what you’ve released, how is anybody going to find it?

The trick is not to be obnoxious with it. I try very hard not to drown people with “WATCH PORTSCENTER!” messages on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook every five bloody minutes. I use a rule of three – the day the video drops, the night the video drops, and then later in the week as I’m working on the following episode. This may seem excessive, but remember for every person who saw your first post, there’s probably someone who missed it who’ll catch it in one of the later posts. This is the internet. It’s global, and not everybody is going to be online or even awake at the time you make your initial post.

Occasionally I’ll post something from an episode currently in-production – a photo of my monitor showing part of a script, or a voiceover outtake. Something fun, so it’s not all promotional. I mean yes, ultimately this sort of stuff is promotional, but it’s fun too. There’s a world of difference between a tweet that says “Episode 21 drops tomorrow!” and another that says “Wow, Ben can’t even get his lines out of his mouth without accidentally beatboxing.” Again, the key difference here is that I’m not stating an intent to do a thing. I’m showing you the doing of it.

#3: Give a shit.

If you’re talking about a topic, be it for a podcast or a video series, or just for your Tumblr blog, make sure it’s something you genuinely care about. I’ve seen people, occasionally friends, make videos solely to attract an audience, often about a topic they have no genuine heartfelt interest in. It shows in the work, and people will see through it, whether you’re making a simple YouTube video, or a blockbuster movie.

On the flipside of this: If you have a genuine, heartfelt love of the project you’re working on, don’t phone it in. A “That’ll do” attitude isn’t going to result in a fun game, or a decent video, or a song worth listening to. It’ll be crap, nobody will give it the time of day, and you’ll wonder why you bothered.

The point is, a labor of love has got to be exactly that. It’s got to be hard work, and it’s got to be something you care about. Forget just one of these ingredients, and it’ll just be a thing you did.

This may sound silly, but I care deeply about video game ports. I’m fascinated by them. Almost obsessed. The version of myself I portray on the show is a little more aggressive about his fascination with ports than I am in real life, but the passion is still there. Ultimately, without that passion, PortsCenter wouldn’t be what it is. If I were just making this show because there aren’t other shows about game conversions on YouTube, it’d feel hollow. I think that’s an important distinction to make.

#4: Push your limits, but know your limitations.

Plan to make stuff outside of your comfort zone, outside of your knowledge level, because in doing so you’ll learn new tricks and techniques which will make your work better. You may fail, but you’ll still learn something and you can use that knowledge in the future. Or, as Thomas Edison allegedly put it, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

That being said, keep in mind your resources, talent pool and technical ability. It’s one thing to write:

A giant robotic spider lurches over the city, firing lasers from its eyes and swatting down aircraft like flies.

It’s another thing entirely to actually film it. If you know you can, do it. If you think you can, go for it anyway. If you know you can’t, or think you won’t be able to, scale it down to something more manageable and realistic. Remember to push yourself, but don’t overdo it and don’t try to run before you can walk.

That, ultimately, is what bit me in the arse with the Gears of War: The Board Game episode. I have no bloody clue how to film it. I still don’t. I want to include the episode in the second season, and I’m working on how to make it happen, but it’s nowhere near as simple as pointing a camera at my couch and making jokes about it. Mind you, two of my webseries projects for next year are going to be… well, not exactly simple. Yikes.

And finally…

#5: Make the sort of content you want to see.

This is an extension of sorts of Point #3. If you want to see a webcomic about a sentient cheeseburger trying to make it in a world populated by anthropomorphic geometrical shapes, start drawing it. If you want to watch a webseries about a guy with rabbit ears applying for a business loan, get writing. Write, draw, film and record the sort of stuff you wish existed, because either you’ll spend the rest of your life waiting, or someone else will beat you to the punch and you’ll regret not acting sooner.

PortsCenter exists because nobody else was making a show about video game ports, nobody else was making a video game show with this kind of sense of humor, and the one person I secretly hoped would make one, Charlie Brooker, seemingly had no plans plans on following up his single Gameswipe special, although in a few days his next gaming project, “How Video Games Changed the World”, airs on Channel Four in the UK.

So that’s it. That’s what I’ve learned. Except that I’m lying, of course – I already knew all of this. The trick is remembering it, and acting upon it. Here’s hoping that next year, be it PortsCenter, Dalek Gary or the other projects I have in the works, I’m able to keep a firm grip on these words.

Unfortunately I’m noticing a growing trend with webcomics of keeping the comic strip out of their RSS feed, replacing it with a tiny, unreadable thumbnail or, in some cases, a simple link.

If your webcomic’s RSS feed does this, I’m probably not reading your webcomic anymore.

My morning ritual is simple. I wake up, get out of bed, drag a comb across my head and jump onto my RSS reader to check the sites I follow. It’s nice, simple and convenient – I can read blog posts, news articles and, yes, webcomics without having to have a hundred different tabs open, without having to browse over to each site individually. My RSS reader allows me to quickly digest the online content I want to digest. It’s brilliant, and I’m able to read more blogs, get caught up with more news and read far more webcomics now than I could a decade ago.

But now that some cartoonists are opting not to include their strip in the feed, I’m simply not reading the comic anymore. It’s easier for me to hit K on my keyboard and skip to the next one than it is to open a tab and check out the comic. I’m not unsubscribed from the feed, so I find myself skipping past a bunch of comics that even as recently as a few short months ago I was reading voraciously, but I am reminded that, yeah, I don’t read that much anymore.

I don’t begrudge the decision to omit their comics from their RSS feeds. Ultimately they need to get eyeballs on their website so people can see and possibly even click on the ads they’re running, and this won’t adversely impact a comic with a large fanbase like PvP and Least I Could Do because there are enough readers who will click through and read on the website. And yeah, I’ll admit that there are a small handful webcomics that I will click through to read – Penny Arcade, Wasted Talent, and the aforementioned Girls with Slingshots are the ones that come to mind.

But when your time is limited, when your morning routine is locked to this narrow band of time like mine, eventually you’re just going to stop reading these webcomics because you’re not going to click those links. There is a very small list of people who will click the link to every comic they follow on their RSS reader. Most will be forced to pick and choose what they read. That’s when webcomicry becomes a competition, and it really shouldn’t be.

One of the last things you want is for someone to stop reading your comic, because that’s one less person who could be buying merchandise, going to book signings, and sharing your work with their friends. But worse than that is having someone stop reading your comic, and realizing they don’t miss it.

Because if they don’t miss it, they’re never coming back.

LaserFrog tweeted back at me that actually the piece of music was lifted from a Konami game called Comic Bakery for the Commodore 64. BEHOLD:

The answer, as it turns out, is on the Amiga. See, we didn’t buy most of the games we had when I was a kid. We copied friend’s games, and we had an extensive library of pirated titles. Most of these titles’d had their copy protection circumvented (or cracked, for some reason) by cracking groups like Fairlight, Paradox and Skid Row, and they’d often slap a fancy intro onto the disk which would appear before the game itself loaded. I got very used to seeing these intros as a kid, and some of them featured some very snazzy animation and catchy music.

It turns out that much of the music was catchy for a reason – it had been lifted wholesale from other games. Check out this crack intro for Crystal’s release of the Team17 platformer Superfrog:

I don’t remember ever watching that intro all the way through, but I must have done because that tune was lodged in my head for a long time, resurfacing earlier this year. Then there’s the weird chain that led to my discovering where this piece came from – hearing it in Jurassic Park, learning it originated in Comic Bakery, then realizing I’d heard it in Superfrog, where you’d not hear it at all if you owned a legit copy of the game (as I now do, of course).

That absolutely fascinates me. This goes beyond my love of video game ports – I wonder if there is other brilliant video game music I’ve heard in cracking intros like this?

Anyway, I just launched a new blog called British Candy Authority wherein I review American candy and talk about how terrible it is. Here’s the first episode:

I haven’t been posting the show here on the blog because it’s so much easier to disseminate stuff on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter et al. but in case you wanted to see the five episodes we’ve produced so far here’s a handy-dandy playlist. It’ll auto-update with new episodes too, so that’s nice.

We all know it’s coming… some day, whether next year or a few down the road, Matt Smith is going to leave the show. So, who would be the best actor to take his place? Should it be another youngster, or is an older actor worth looking at? What sorts of companions would be a bonus for these actors? And, let’s just face the question: should it, in fact, be a woman? What does the future of Doctor Who really hold?

This panel takes place in the Program D room on Sunday from 11:30am-12:30pm, and it should be a blast. See you there!

Oh, and this weekend we’re shooting a top secret Dalek Gary project. Don’t tell anybody!

Subject 5 Con is part anime/horror/scifi/animation/anime/entertainment convention, part launch part for the webseries Subject 5. The event will also feature an anime panel and at least two horror panels. They’ll also be raising funds for charity, I’m told. Which is nice.

Other attendees include voice actors Richard Epcar (Legend of Korra, Ghost in the Shell, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe), Dino Andrade (Hellsing Ultimate, Batman: Arkham Asylum, World of Warcraft), and JB Blanc (Beware the Batman, Bleach, Marvel Anime).

Admission to Subject 5 Con is only $10 online, or $15 at the door. Head over to the Subject 5 website for more details and to purchase a ticket.

I want to get out of some bad habits, which means I need to let go of some things. This includes webcomics. I’ve been webcomicing since 2003. My first webcomic, Fried, ran for three years and updated sporadically – even moreso once I realized I actually hated drawing. The second webcomic, Jump Leads, has come to an unceremonious end in part due to troubled art schedules, and Deadlong is on hiatus for similar reasons (though we’re filling the hiatus hole with some new material starting later this month). Other attempts to start webcomics, including a project with my friend Ray, have not been particularly successful.

It’s taken me a while, but I’ve realized webcomics isn’t where I want to be and it’s not what I want to do. Not to say I don’t enjoy webcomics, but I’ve been focusing my energy in the wrong place, and it’s time to reassess. Once Deadlong is finished, I’m done. Out of the game. Deadlong will be my webcomic swansong.

I think, truthfully, that I’d prefer to pour my energy into video content, and I want 2013 to be the start of that. I plan on trying to produce original video content throughout the year, starting with PortsCenter , then moving on to other projects. I’m developing a webseries with Mac Beauvais that should be a lot of fun, and I’ll be working with Michelle Osorio on new projects for Kill9 including Dalek Gary and at least one other thing that’s still sort-of in the woiks.

Another thing I want to do that’s important to me is to the stand-up into a proper paying gig. I need to do that, which means I need to get serious about it. I need to hone my craft, I need to get better at working off-book, and I need to actually book some actual gigs. In addition to this, I want to develop an hour of material over the course of the year which I’d like to debut at GMX Vol. 5, assuming they want me back.

Time to stop being passive. Time to stop expecting the new year to be a better one, and time to start making it so. Here’s to making things, and here’s to you. Happy New Year.

At a time in my life when I’m questioning every action I’ve taken, every decision I’ve made, that has led me to this point, and when I find myself wanting more out of life, Wreck-It Ralph speaks to me.

About two weeks ago I was with some friends discussing what a possible sequel to Wreck-It Ralph might be about. Director Rich Moore has all but confirmed that they’re doing one, and he’s suggested he’d want the follow-up to explore console gaming and online gaming. That got me thinking: How exactly would they do that?

As I was talking, the story I’d write for a Wreck-It Ralph follow-up basically fell out of my mouth. It was, I thought, basically perfect, though not strictly speaking accessible. Literally no one at Disney would want to make my idea. Nevertheless, I’m going to share it with you now. Mild spoilers for Wreck-It Ralph follow.

2012 was the 30th anniversary of Fix-It Felix Jr. It was also a bad year to own a Fix-It Felix Jr. machine – like clockwork, on the night of the game’s 30th anniversary, almost every machine broke down. The problem commonly reported was that Ralph wasn’t appearing anymore. Most arcades chalked it up to an aging ROM board, and put their machines out to pasture.

The truth, of course, is that almost every single version of Wreck-It Ralph that existed within those Fix-it Felix Jr. machines’d had the same identity crisis that the Ralph in the machine at Litwak’s Arcade, but without the same experiences to guide them they’d either gone missing or died in other games, or had simply not wanted to return to their machines without a Medal.

The worldwide failure of almost every Fix-It Felix Jr. machine causes a commotion. It’s reported on gaming news sites everywhere – Kotaku, Destructoid, Joystiq, IGN, you name it. They all pick up on the weird simultaneous failure of the game.People are talking about Fix-It Felix Jr. again, and the company who now holds the rights to the game takes notice.

They decide to do two things. Firstly, they’re going to develop a modernized reboot of the game. Secondly, they want to release the original arcade classic as a multi-platform digital download. But there’s a problem – even their Fix-It Felix Jr. machine has died. Where to source a working machine?

Well, Litwak’s arcade has one, don’t they? And they wouldn’t need to keep the machine. They’d just need to go to the arcade and make a ROM dump.

Fix-It Felix Jr. is released for downloadable platforms, and Felix, Ralph and the Nicelanders find themselves existing not in an arcade but on a console hard drive alongside characters from games like Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, Left 4 Dead and Silent Hill. The console world is much more scary than the arcade ever was. And it’s about to get scarier.

The same week, the Fix-It Felix Jr. modernized remake is released. It’s a much grittier reboot that isn’t even remotely faithful to the source material (think Bomberman: Act Zero). The rebooted version of Felix is cold, rude, aggressive and unpleasant, but he’s nothing compared to the Reboot Ralph. What’s more, Reboot Ralph loves being the bad guy – he wants to dominate not just the Fix-It Felix Jr. reboot, but the entire console, endangering everybody on the Hard Drive.

It would be up to the “classic” Ralph and Felix, with some assistance from Reboot Felix, to stop Reboot Ralph from taking down the Hard Drive altogether.

It’s got problems, I know. It’s flawed, it’s unfinished, and it’s heavy on technical detail and low on plot. But it’s a great groundwork, and from a story perspective it’s perhaps the best way to get the important characters from the first film into a console so the second can explore those ideas.

GMX is the first convention I’ve attended in which I have been asked to attend as a featured guest. It’s the first time a con has paid for my flight, put me up in a hotel room, kept be fed and watered, and generally treated me like royalty. It’s the first time I’ve been presented onto a stage in front of an audience and had them applaud, and hoot, and holler. It’s the first time, honestly, that I’ve felt like what I was doing mattered to someone other than myself.

What a feeling.

I was ostensibly there to promote PortsCenter, but that was just a fraction of what I did there. On the Friday, immediately after the opening ceremonies, I was rushed into another room where I spent an hour and a half in the company of the delightful Ellen McLain, voice of GLaDOS, for the Portal Party, where she and I spent an hour and a half berating players as they approached an Xbox 360 to play Portal 2 – her in-character as GLaDOS, and me “filling in” as an emergency back-up Wheatley.

I knew this was coming, and I’d spent much of the week trying very hard to sound as much like Stephen Merchant (the voice of Wheatley) as possible. Unfortunately I’m not a voice actor, and I’m not a mimic, but I tried my best to capture the same energy and attitude that Merchant infused Wheatley with. So many people came up to me after the party to tell me how great I was. So many people seemed to think I sounded just like Merchant. That was… wow. I even had people coming up to me to ask if I’d voiced the character in the game itself. Thankfully nobody seemed too crushed when I told them that no, I hadn’t.

But the highlight of that party was getting to sing “Still Alive” and “Want You Gone” on stage with Ellen. Oh boy. I had no idea that was on my bucket list until I was crossing it off. What a night. What an experience. I really hope someone out there got video of that.

Saturday was exhausting, but a very good kind of exhausting. On the strength of my improvisational skills in the Portal Party Ellen and I were invited to join University of Georgia improv troupe Laugh Out Loud for their two shows on Saturday, along with Doug Walker of That Guy With The Glasses fame. Doug and I hit it off almost immediately, and we had an absolute blast participating in the troupe’s Whose Line-esque game session. I spent time on stage being attacked by zombies (and subsequently attacking the audience myself as one), getting counselling from a ninja therapist, licking my own genitals, and being accused of Australianism. Hopefully the Laugh Out Loud team will post video of that too.

The second improv event, which Ellen unfortunately wasn’t able to attend but which Doug was, was more of a Beginner’s Guide to improv. It was a ton of fun teaching the audience about improv, having them come up on stage themselves to join in, and generally just buggering about. The whole experience had me wanting to do even more improv – maybe I can find a group in or around the LA area who’d be willing to take on a 6′ 4″ British redhaired goon.

Saturday evening was the Web Comics 101 Panel. Unfortunately Ethan Nicolle and Brian Patterson were unable to attend due to other commitments (Ethan ended up having to leave the con early on Saturday while Brian had to cancel entirely) , but we still had Scott Christian Sava, Johnathon Brock and Betsy Brock, all of whom offered far better advice and suggestions than I ever could have. I might have accidentally offended Betsy at the top of the panel… I still feel really bad about that. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry!

Saturday night was party night, which meant only one thing: sitting in a darkened room playing Cards Against Humanity with a group of sick-minded problem-causers including, but not limited to, Doug Walker, Brandt “Professor ShyGuy” Cooley, the Marble Hornets, Dennis Upkins, Lorelai Perrin, Ali Spagnola, and too many other wonderful, terrible people to name. Also Leonard.

But before that was dinner, and blimey, that was a treat. Well, sort of – the food was an overpriced Caesar salad that tasted like it had been previously digested by a fish – but it was the company that made dinner so much fun. Spread out across two huge tables were myself, Chris Pope, the Marble Hornets, the Two Guys From Andromeda, Garrett Wang, Rob Paulsen (who I’ll come back to in a couple of paragraphs), Veronica Belmont, Professor ShyGuy… at this point my memory is starting to fail me, because there were so many people there. If I’ve left you out, I apologize.

Sunday really was the Big Day. The PortsCenter Presentation was at noon which, despite a minor technical hiccup where video footage of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the NES didn’t play correctly, was a resounding success. I only wish I’d had the foresight to film the bloody thing.

I then pinballed from there straight to a Doctor Who panel – “One Brit, Many Doctors”, which was originally going to be me and a couple of other Brits talking about Doctor Who but which instead became basically me. I talked about the show for a full hour to a packed room. A packed room, who hung on my every word, who laughed at my jokes and nodded at my thoughts and insights into the show itself.

How, I ask you, is that even a thing? How does that happen? Who am I? I’m nobody. But they loved me there. All weekend, they loved me. People asked me to sign things, they asked me to record messages into their phones, they wanted to talk to me about games, and comics, and TV shows.

Even the other special guests treated me as an equal. Not just people like Doug Walker and the Ellen McLain, but guys like Billy West and Rob Paulsen. I had the very special honor of sitting next to Rob on the flights to and from Nashville, and what a delight he is. Such a nice guy. He was humble and kind, and he treated me like a colleague and a friend for the entire weekend. We had lengthy chats about cartoons, about British comedy, about his career and the work he’s done, and there is not a trace of ego about the guy. He considers himself to be very lucky. I contend that we are the lucky ones.

Billy West was a joy, too. We met at the airport – our flights from LA arrived in Nashville at more or less the same time – and rode in the car to the hotel together along with The Hunger Games actor Dayo Okeniyi. The four of us were chatting away for the entire ride. Again, what absolute gentlemen. So kind, so welcoming, so inclusive.

Just like everyone else at GMX. Just like the staff, who drove us and manned tables, and kept an eye on panels. Just like the attendees, who came out to see a bunch of really awesome people, saw me, and decided I was just as awesome as everyone else there. Just like the people selling their wares in the Dealer’s Room, who were enthusiastic and proud and happy. The whole event felt more personal, more welcoming and friendly than any other con I’ve had the fortune to attend. I didn’t have a single bad encounter, didn’t speak to a single douchebag or arsehole just trying to dick their way around a convention for a weekend. Nobody – not the guests, not the staff, not the organizers and not the attendees – were difficult. Nobody caused problems.

GMX is, without a doubt, the single greatest fan convention I’ve ever attended in the US. It was an honor and a privilege to have been invited to attend, and if I never appear at another con ever again I’ll be happy for having appeared there. I sincerely hope they ask me back for next year. Thank you, Nashville, for having me, and thank you for giving me such an amazing weekend.

Portal Party 2.0
Friday, October 26th  8:00pm – 9:30pm, Palomino + Quarter Horse + Mustang rooms
Last year, we both said a lot of things that you’re going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster. Why don’t you just keep testing with GLaDOS? Ellen McLain, voice of GLaDOS from the Portal series returns to berate Portal players just trying to survive, and maybe cake? Better gaming, better decorations, better batteries, and an awesome hangout for Portal enthusiasts.

Web Comics 101
Saturday, October 27th  7:00pm – 8:00pm, Arabian Room
Learn the ins and outs of the webcomic business with a Q&A from the industry pros. Featuring Ben Paddon, Scott Sava, Brian Patterson and Ethan Nicolle.

PortsCenter – A One-Hour Look at Video Game Ports
Sunday, October 28th  12:00pm – 1:00pm, Franklin Room
British writer and geek humorist Ben Paddon talks about unique video game ports; games that have been converted for different systems. A blend of stand-up comedy and PowerPoint presentation.

One Brit, Many Doctors
Sunday, October 28th  1:00pm – 2:00pm, Quarter Horse Room
Doctor Who discussion with British expatriate and geek humorist Ben Paddon. What qualifies Ben to speak with authority on this topic? He has the right accent.

Please note that this schedule is entirely subject to change based on factors such as GMX shifting things around, or me dying. See you in Nashville!

But anyway. it’s taking place on Sunday at 12pm in the Franklin Room. If you’re going to be at GMX, you’ll want to be there. Oh, and here’s the rest of the schedule in case you’re interested.

See you there!

There’s no doubt about it – Doctor Who‘s popularity has soared since its move to BBC America in 2009. The network has been pushing and promoting the show with vigor, giving it the star treatment and prime-time advertising that SyFy never afforded it. They’ve been pushing the show on social networks – the official Doctor Who Tumblr page is a little annoying at times but there’s no doubt they have a winning social media strategy. BBC America are amazing and are undoubtedly one of the key reasons for the show’s current popularity here in the States.

BBC Worldwide, on the other hand, appears to be staffed by incompetent morons who don’t really seem to understand what they’re sitting on.

The international sales arm of the BBC are the cause of a number of issues for the show – just speak to anyone working for a company licensed to make Doctor Who merchandise – but nowhere is this more apparent than the show’s, frankly, appalling presence on Netflix. Since the show was added to Netflix in 2008 it has consistently been mishandled, mislabeled and mismanaged, and nobody at BBC Worldwide seems to have any interest in remedying any of the problems viewers may encounter when watching the show.

Let’s list those problems now, shall we?

There are a number of issues with Netflix’s presentation of the revived series. When the show was first added only the first two series were available, and they’d been cropped to a 4:3 aspect ratio. Other widescreen BBC shows such as The Office also got the same treatment, though while they were fixed during 2010-2011, Doctor Who‘s first two series remained cropped and incomplete until early 2012 when they were updated with their correct, widescreen episodes.

It’s not the only time the show hasn’t looked its best on the streaming service, either. Series 4 suffers from serious aspect ratio issues that occur when the stream quality changes. It’s most noticable when watching “The Unicorn and the Wasp” on a slightly dodgy connection – as the quality rises and falls, the aspect ratio changes from 16:9 to 4:3 letterbox. Series 5 also looked incredibly dodgy when it was first uploaded, with severe artifacting throughout, and missing effects scattered throughout the series, though this has mostly been fixed. Some Series 5 episodes, including “The Vampires of Venice” and “The Big Bang”, weren’t even available in HD until relatively recently – arguably two of the show’s best-looking episodes, and they weren’t even given the best possible presentation. Shameful.

Perhaps the worst problem, though, is the fact that the 2009 Specials – “Planet of the Dead”, “The Waters of Mars” and “The End of Time” – are listed as separate items on Netflix as opposed to part of the show itself, meaning it’s entirely possible for an uninformed viewer to jump from “The Next Doctor” straight into “The Eleventh Hour” with no idea why or how the Doctor regenerated. Presentation of “The End of Time” is inconsistent as well, with part one available in HD and part two only available in standard def.

“The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe” is similarly listed separately, though it didn’t used to be – it was listed as the fourteenth episode of Series 6, and titled “2011 Christmas Episode”. It’s since been split from the core show listing, though it hasn’t been renamed and it doesn’t have any cover artwork. Still, that’s better than “A Christmas Carol” gets – the 2010 Christmas special doesn’t appear on Netflix at all.

This is terrible, appalling treatment for a show that is not only beloved by millions worldwide, but is also generating BBC Worldwide a preposterous amount of money. It’s their single biggest money-maker right now, with Top Gear a somewhat distant second place. You’d think they’d spend a little time making sure it’s all watchable, in order, in the best possible manner. Is this a ploy to get people to buy more DVDs? Possibly, but if one discovers the show on Netflix and has no idea the 2009 specials exist how on Earth can one go out and buy the ruddy box set? If they can’t even be bothered to give David Tennant’s send-off proper pride of place in the show’s listing, why the Hell do they deserve my money in the first place?

Netflix isn’t the only place BBC Worldwide’s mishandling of the show can be seen. In October 2011, almost two years after Tennant’s swansong, BBC Video released Doctor Who: The David Tennant Years, a very fancy-looking DVD boxset containing everything from the second series right up to “The End of Time Part Two”. Ignore for a moment the obvious stupidity in releasing a boxset that ignores the show’s first series, and take a moment to look at the reviews from the time the product was released – because they’d opted to slot the discs into cardboard sleeves, customers ended up with scratched discs that, in some cases, customers couldn’t even take out of the packaging. This is apparently no longer an issue with the box set if recent reviews are anything to go by, but the existing reviews have left this box set with something of a stigma. Glod knows I won’t be buying it in a bloody hurry.

You may wonder, isn’t Netflix responsible for the listings? Isn’t Warner Home Video responsible for the DVD packaging? The answer to the former is, actually, no. The answer to the latter is… well, maybe, but this shit has to be approved first. Someone at BBC Worldwide has to look at this stuff and give it a thumbs up.

Someone at BBC Worldwide authorized and approved of both of these things, and that’s a serious problem.

I don’t feel compelled to give my money to an organization – BBC Worldwide – that seems to have no interest in putting out the best possible product, in giving their star show the best possible presentation. Who’s in charge of the Doctor Who brand at BBCW? What the bloody Hell are they thinking? I can’t possibly believe that the creative team in Cardiff are anywhere near happy with the way they’ve handled the show.

They need to course correct, because these problems, and other problems like them, only serve to ultimately harm the brand that’s helping keep their business afloat.

Galaxy of Comics, my local comic book store and the same store which plays host to the Soulgeek Singles Nights every month, will be holding their 24-Hour Comics Day event from 10am on Saturday October 20th right the way through to the following morning and, despite having almost no artistic talents whatever, they’ve asked me to participate. And I can’t say no. No, really, I can’t – Warren has photos.

Here ae Galaxy of Comics’ details:

Galaxy of Comics
17306 Saticoy St
Van Nuys, CA 91406
Phone: 818-578-8559
Event Date & Start Time: Our event starts October 20, 2012 at 10 AM sharp

 It’ll be a laff! I mean, statistically speaking. I don’t handle sleep deprivation well.

It takes a lot, a lot, to get me watching a new TV show these days. It’s not because I’m a hipster who doesn’t want to watch the same thing everyone else is watching (though I will confess that in my teens I avoided the Harry Potter novels and films specifically because all of my friends were obsessed with the bloody things), but because most current shows have been thoroughly, utterly ruined for me by everybody on the internet everywhere ever before I’ve even had a chance to read a series synopsis.

Everybody is talking about Breaking Bad at the moment. Everybody. It’s the show’s final season – or, as is my understanding, the first half of its final season, the rest of which will be shown in the new year – and the internet is ablaze. People are nattering about it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and all those other social networks I’m not hip enough to know about yet. Also Google+. Tumblr in particular is rather boisterous, with people posting quotes, clips of the show in subtitled GIF format, and reams of fanart based on episodes that aired less than 24 hours prior.

Breaking Bad isn’t the only show that suffers this problem, either. The pilot for CBS’ Elementary, their attempt to modernize Sherlock Holmes following the BBC’s rather successful go of it, recently leaked, and within minutes people on Tumblr were posting quotes, breakdowns and, of course, GIFs. Doctor Who‘s seventh series also started this Saturday in the UK, and Tumblr had already thoroughly ruined the show long before the east coast premiere rolled along later that night.

When Game of Thrones is running on HBO, damn near everybody on the internet knows what happened in the latest episode whether they’re watching it or not. When a new episode of Community airs, Tumblr almost immediately becomes a Dan Harmon fansite, and remains that way for the following 48 hours.

Tumblr cannot help but build its nest out of screengrabs, spoilers and snippets like a demented pop culture magpie. Amidst it all, the by now familiar cries of “ALL THE FEELS”, “DEAD” and “ASDFJGFGJKSDJK”, punctuated by reaction GIFs that inexplicably also spoil other shows and films you haven’t managed to get around to seeing yet.

For someone who spends a lot of time on Tumblr, this represents an enormous problem – seeing a TV show you want to watch becomes not just entertainment but a social obligation; something you have to do to avoid being behind the curve. This means torrenting the show before it comes up on Hulu the next day (or, in the case of Doctor Who, after it airs on the BBC but before its North American premiere on BBC America or SPACE), or, if you’re one of those people who still inexplicably has cable, actually sitting down to watch the show as it goes out live.

Imagine that for a moment – having to actually schedule your life around a television show. What is this, the Dark Ages?

But to anybody who is active on a social network like Tumblr, that freedom is countered by the desire not to have your favourite show utterly and irrevokably ruined by some well-meaning fan who absolutely has to draw a picture of that new character in the latest episode right fucking now, utterly ruining the plot twist for the episode in the process.

Even webseries like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are chewed up and spat out by social network users – why sit down to watch the show when it’s already splattered all over my dashboard in GIF form?

There are, of course, ways of avoiding this flurry of spoilers. You could install Tumblr Savior, a plugin that allows you to block posts including certain words or hashtags (such as, for instance, #doctor who or #breaking bad). It’s not an ideal solution, however – for a start, it’s predicated on the person posting about the show actually tagging the post, or even including the words you’re blocking. Not ideal if that person you’re following for their exceptional fanart doesn’t tag any of their posts or even post text in their image posts.

I could avoid Tumblr and Twitter entirely, but that feels like not going to a bar simply because you don’t like the house ale, or deciding not to visit an art gallery because you know they’re currently running an exhibit of paintings by an artist you don’t like. It’s like throwing your iPod out the window because you might hear an Alanis Morissette song, and you’re just not in the mood to listen to “Head Over Feet” right now.

While these two solutions might keep me safe from the shows I’m actively watching, like Community and Doctor Who, it doesn’t save the shows I haven’t started watching yet, like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. I’ve seen neither show yet, not even so much as a pilot, because while Tumblr has convinced me that I absolutely have to see them, it’s also ruined every single fucking plot point in every episode that’s broadcast. There’s no point in ordering any box sets, no real sense in adding a show to my Netflix queue, when I already know what’s going to happen. These shows have, in a very real sense, been spoiled.

So my answer, when people nag me about why I haven’t started watching obviously brilliant TV shows yet, is that I simply can’t anymore. I crave new experiences, new stories and new media, but social networking is actively preventing me from receiving those things. Short of stepping away from these platforms and declaring myself a digital hermit, I don’t really know what else to do.

Y’know, other than just watching the shows to watch them. Which is obviously madness.

I’ve already ordered almost all the equipment needed to produce all 13 episodes, and this weekend I’ll be moseying into my local “Holy Shit, They Sell Everything” store to buy pretty much all of the games and hardware.

The last year has been building up to this moment. I am preposterously nervous, but very excited to finally be working on the show. I’ll probably post occasional updates here, but for more news and announcements regarding PortsCenter keep an eye on PortsCenter.tv. PortsCenter is also on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

I’ve already tweeted a fuckton of Thank Yous, but… thank you to everybody who pledged for the show. You have no idea how incredible grateful I am for the opportunity to make this happen. I hope you won’t be disappointed with the end result.

Incidentally if you weren’t able to pledge to the Kickstarter, consider pledging to this one instead. Joe Walker is trying to raise $700 to produce a webseries about underrated and inexpensive gaming gems called “The Backlog”. It’s a marvelous idea, and he isn’t asking for much money, so do pledge if you’re able.

Head on over to the Kickstarter and make your pledge, or whatever!

This year the fourth GMX takes place in Nashville, Tennessee. There are a number of cool guests with a ton of geek cred, including voice actors like Rob Paulsen and Billy West, actors such as Star Trek: Voyager‘s Garrett Wang and Marilyn Ghigliotti of Clerks fame, and internet personalities such as “That Guy With the Glasses” Doug Walker.

Oh, and me. No, really.

Not only will I be at GMX this year, but I’ll also be hosting a one-hour presentation on videogame ports, looking at a few specific titles as well as going into a bit of the history of how, and why, some ports are so radically different from others. It’ll be a sort-of kitbash of PortsCenter, a stand-up comedy show, and a PowerPoint presentation.

I’ll also, in theory, be participating in a couple of Doctor Who panels as well.

GMX haven’t announced their schedule yet, but keep an eye on their programming page for updates. I’ll also be updating this post with details once they’re available.

See you in Nashville!

Once a year, every year, I re-read The Writer’s Tale. According to Russell T Davies’ foreword to the book, Steven Moffat said of this book, “If you still want to be a writer after reading this, you probably will be.” I always, without fail, finish my re-read creatively charged and itching, itching to write. No, not even when I’ve finished reading it. Before that. Long before that. Less than 100 pages into the book, and I’m yearning to be at my computer, tap-tap-tapping out a script, or a short story, or some other manner of thing.

The Writer’s Tale is responsible for a good chunk of writing. It’s responsible for dozens of Ficlys, for huge swathes of Jump Leads story. The last time I re-read the book I knocked out two Jump Leads scripts that, owing to current artist-related circumstances (JjAR had to step away from the comic due to freelance commitments, leaving stand-in artist Mr Phillby to finish what will in all likelihood be the last Jump Leads comic story ever), will probably never be seen.

This year, re-reading that book for, what, the fourth time?, I find myself wanting to return to those characters, to revisit them and give them new adventures. But I can’t. The comic is done. Jump Leads is no more.

…Or is it?

See, last year I wrote an audiplay adaptation of the first Jump Leads story, “Training Day”, with a few to recording it and using it as a jumping-off point for a series of brand spanking new audio-exclusive Jump Leads adventures. I talked to Dino about recording it, I spoke to Adam about playing Llewellyn. I spoke to rather a lot of very excited people about the prospect of giving Jump Leads a soft reboot and continuing the adventures as monthly audioplays… or maybe weekly serialized ones, like old-school Doctor Who.

But those plans fell by the wayside. Whatever happened to them? It wasn’t so long ago – January, as I recall – that I was frantically emailing people about making those audio adventures. What happened in January that–

Oh yes. I got a job. I got a job working for a wonderful company – Quantum Mechanix – working with people I loved spending time with, and serving as a cog in a machine that made the shiniest, most wonderful geek candy.

Except this month – July, nearly three weeks ago now – I left QMx. Not by choice, mind, but a necessary decision. Since then I’ve been remarkably busy, launching and continually writing Deadlong, relaunching the PortsCenter Kickstarter (it’s at 22% right now, if you can believe it!), preparing for my appearance at GMX in Tennessee, and working on another incredibly secret but tremendously awesome project I can’t really talk about yet… and that’s all before the other two webseries I’d like to develop if PortsCenter gets funded.

But there are still a few hours left in the day, and I really want to write for these characters again. Surely I can squeeze another project into my schedule. I can feel Jump Leads stories pressing at the temples of my head – stories I wanted to write, but didn’t, or couldn’t. Don’t they deserve a second chance? Don’t I owe it to myself to write them?

Or am I just being self-indulgent? Should I take that creative energy and channel it instead into Deadlong, a project that deserves my full attention? It’s a dilemma.

Perhaps this blog post is a load of old wank. I don’t know. It does feel good to get it out of my system, though. And I still have that itch…

I’m really excited about this project, as I’ve been since we first tried to raise money last October. This is something I’d love to be able to make more of (if you haven’t watched the pilot yet, head over to the Kickstarter to check it out). I’m fascinated by the way so many people remember playing so many games, seemingly unaware of the minor (or, in some cases, major) differences between the same game on multiple platform. All of those memories coalesce into a collective stored databank of what made a game what it was. That stuff fascinates me.

But anyway. Do check out the Kickstarter, and if you’re in a position to pledge a few dollars please consider doing so. At the very least, spread the link around. Let other people know this is going on. I’d love, love to be able to get this project going.

It’s not the first time I’ve been in this situation and it likely won’t be the last. It’s easy to look at the comparative emptiness of one’s wallet and conclude that, yeah, money is bullshit, but the more I think about it the more I’m glad money exists, as a premise. If we had an old-fashioned bartering system, such as might have been employed in medieval England, I’d be fucked. I have no skills to offer, no trade to ply. I’d end up giving out blowjobs.

You might imagine that, were we to return to a simpler means of keeping a roof over one’s head and food in one’s belly, I might actually do well. I’m a writer, after all. Well, guess again – in this day and age, everybody can write. It’s not like ancient Egypt where you had to walk to the local writing pyramid and ask a guy to write your shopping list for you. People can get that shit done themselves these days. What’s more, people are talented liars. They don’t need the likes of me to make shit up and write it down for them.

So, regrettably, I’d have to make my way through life by sucking cock. I acknowledge this, and I’ve made peace with it. Fortunately we haven’t arrived at that point as a society, and we’re unlikely to reinstate such a barter system unless something catastrophic were to happen, such as a Fallout-style nuclear apocalypse. But I know my value as a person. I know how much I contribute to society.

You always hear about people “failing upwards” – people who are woefully inept at their jobs, but who inexplicably get promoted into executive-level jobs. I always wanted to be one of those people. I worked tirelessly to become the sort of person who does just enough to keep him from getting fired, but not enough to actively contribute to a work environment. When I was made Project Coordinator at Disney I thought, “Yes, Ben. This is where the dream will come true.” It was fitting, in a way. Then the 2008 market crash happened, and suddenly I’m out on the street again. Back to square one, where I’ve been ever since.

I still believe people can fail upwards. Mitt Romney is living proof of that – a man with the business sense of a meringue, who is now a Presidential nominee. If he can become a viable candidate for the most powerful position in the world, then surely I can become an ineffectual executive for a large multi-national corporation. Surely I can hold the sort of job with an important-sounding title, but in which nobody actually knows what, if anything, I actually do (which is nothing).

That is the American dream. It’s what brought me to this country. It’s what’s kept me afloat during these rocky times. Some day, I will make my dream come true.