We're in a unique position here

The thing I really like about Doctor Who is that it differs so drastically from one story to the next. This is the reason I have been tuning in for so many years. People

That said, the best stories are the ones that cannot be told anywhere else. Stories that can only really be told in the setting of a time traveling alien mad-man and his charming little bit of tasty human biscuit. "Hide" is the most recent episode, and it is one of these stories. If you missed it, head over to the ABC's iview and give it a watch.

I enjoy this approach to writing for serialised fiction. It is a good way to go. When you think about 'the best' episodes of TV shows or 'the best' story-lines in comics are often the stories that can't be told anywhere else. I'll probably go into this in more detail at a later date, but anyone who is interested should think about how some sitcoms and science fiction shows are written to take advantage of their particular setting or format. Along with Doctor Who, The X-Files and Star Trek both distinguished themselves from the rest of what was going on on TV through this approach, as did Bewitched, I dream of Genie, The Wire and The West Wing.

Other stories of this ilk in the Doctor Who catalogue include "The Doctor's Wife", "Vincent and the Doctor", "The Girl in the Fireplace", "Blink" and  "City of Death", which are mostly available on DVD and/or through iTunes.

Some free Dick!

So, Philip K is pretty much the literary boss as far as I am concerned. In so many ways he poisoned the well, forcing the rest of us to have to make do drawing our muse-water from other less impressive wells. This hasn't stopped people from trying to drink from the well he frequented, but we see the stains at their lips and the wet coughing that belies the weakening beneath the surface, though still soft, has begun to interfere with the smooth delivery of the message. The message in this case revolved predominantly around paranoia, fear, death, war, morality, the divine and the boundaries of self. PKD excelled, because he wrote about things that were true for him.

His relationship with the human machine, with all its whirring parts, dark haired girls and representative governments, was predominantly based on the extreme opposite of trust. Not that his approach called for revolution, but came closer to the approach that one might have toward gravity if one were to live their entire life in some kind of floating castle. You would take precautions, and perhaps only spend as little time standing right on the edge as was required. This relationship caused Dick a number of problems involving both copyright registration and taxation throughout his life. Due in no small part to this seemingly abysmal aptitude for submitting correctly completed forms to the government a handful of his early short stories and novelettes are now in the public domain.

There are a couple of lists floating about that range from eleven or so stories to nearly thirty. From what I can make out, there are definitely about twenty. Just less than. These free stories mostly come from his first three years of publication ('52, '53 and '54), but some include stories from right up until 1957. For the most part these stories are obscur early works that never really gained much recognition, but "Second Variety", "Adjustment Team" and "The Golden Man" are amongst them, which were adapted into Screamers, The Adjustment Bureau and Next, respectively. None of these were particularly watchable films (with the disputable exception of Screamers), but the source material is in each case a far better exploration and realisation of the concepts presented.

More importantly the list of free Dicks also includes "Beyond Lies the Wub", "The Skull" and "Piper in the Woods", which are far better examples of both his early work and of early salvos into the concepts he would go full scale on later in his career.

If you teach English or creative writing and you want to talk to your class about points of view and perspective, you need "Beyond Lies the Wub" in your life. If you want to behold the first ever published story of a giant of a genre, you need "Beyond Lies the Wub" in your life. It is a clean and elegant short story that is structured like a joke.

"Piper in the Woods" is a pleasant mix of 1950s science fiction and European mythology that you might catch yourself thinking about whenever you wish you could just go outside for little while and sit on the grass.

"The Skull" is Philip K Dick's earliest story about religion (particularly Christianity) and self-determinism vs pre-determinism. This early on we see him start to take steps into the territory that would later yield all his religion-in-a-box themes during the sixties and seventies and finally become the VALIS trilogy. While those specific elements aren't present in "The Skull", it still represents an approach to the topic that would allow him to write the way he did.

If you are at all interested in the man behind the stories behind Blade Runner and Total Recall, some of his stories can be found in a number of formats on Project Gutenberg, Wikisource and strewn about the interwebs.



For 10 points:
What is the most common name given to Dick's religion-in-a-box?

Bad at maths, good at customer service? Work for Microsoft!

I have recently returned to university and I am meant to use Microsoft Visio Standard 2013 for a number of of my university assignments. We have the 'option' of using it on the computers at uni, as the software is prohibitively expensive. While looking online to see how prohibitive the pricing was I came across this:

$300 doesn't seem so unreasonable to me, not that I have $300 that I could spend on anything right now. I clicked 'Buy now' with the intention of getting as much information on it as I could, and found myself presented with this:

When I called the Microsoft Store and asked what additional features warranted the 83% price difference (based on the exchange rate at the time of writing), I was told that AU$539 was US$299 due to the current exchange rate. When I informed the diligent little Microsoft monkey that he was operating on bad information, and that AU$539 was actually closer to US$560, he apologised for not being able to explain the discrepancy and then offered me some actually useful advice. He suggested that I find a way to set up a US mailing address and then order the product, and as long as the process didn't cost me US$260 or more I would be getting a discount.

This 83% koalas on keyboards tax isn't unique to the Microsoft Store. Check out the price differences over at Adobe, the Apple Store, all computer game distributors and just about anyone else who distributes software. The problem is a long standing issue, and something that I have griped about for decades. In my formative years I would often read US computer game magazines, and was shocked by the price listings for games. That was Twenty years ago, and our dollar is a mightier thing than it once was (thank you Paul). In particular I thought that perhaps things would start to change in the wake of digital distribution, but in reality there are very few digital distribution services that do direct (or nearly direct) exchange rate conversions (Steam is the only one that comes to mind). The vast majority are happy to price us like it's 1984.

Anyway. Thank you Microsoft. Thank you for hiring people who actually want to help your koalstomers, even when you don't.

On the temporal horizon

It is that time of year agin.  Doctor Who is a moment away, and by 'moment' I actually mean countable days.  Our heroes will be gracing our screens on March 31.  I won't laden you with any of the spoilers that have come my way, but I will direct you to the minisode that acts as a lead in to the up coming episodes.

I should also mention that this is a special year for the show.  "Why?", I here you ask. "Tell us, oh glorious knower of things. What is it that separates this year from the rest?"  Is it that there will be yet another classic villain appearing this season?  Seeing that there has been at least one (sometimes two) villain(s) from the classic series reintroduced in all but one season of the revived series, that doesn't seem like it would be that special.  Is it that this year's Christmas special will be the 800th episode?  True, but no.  Is it that the fourth episode in* this block will be the 100th episode of the revived series?  Also true, but also no.  It is in fact because this year we mark the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who.  On 23rd November, 1963 William Hartnell appeared as The Doctor for the very first time, and with the astounding powers of mathematics we can mathematise that it will have been fifty calendar years on 23rd November, 2013, give or take nothing (because I'm that good).

While we are looking at score cards I would like to point out that with eight episodes left in series 7 and two specials airing later in the year Matt Smith will move up two spots into second place for appearances in the most televised stories, and up one into seventh for appearances in the most televised episodes.  Here are the current leader boards.

Televised Stories				Televised Episodes
Tom Baker	4th	41		Tom Baker	4th	172
David Tennant	10th	36		William Hartnell	1st	134
William Hartnell	1st	29		Jon Pertwee	3rd	128
Matt Smith	11th	29		Patrick Troughton	2nd	119
Jon Pertwee	3rd	24		Peter Davison	5th	69
Patrick Troughton	2nd	21		David Tennant	10th	47
Peter Davison	5th	20		Sylvestor McCoy	7th	42
Sylvestor McCoy	7th	12		Matt Smith	11th	34
Christopher Eccleston	9th	10		Colin Baker	6th	31
Colin Baker	6th	8		Christopher Eccleston	9th	13
Paul McGann	8th	1		Paul McGann	8th	1

50 years of time and space

I should also point out that the BBC will be actually celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who.  I will also be celebrating it, but I won't be producing two TV films to air later this year.  An Adventure in Time and Space will be about the inception and early production of the series, while the other, as yet unnamed, TV film will be a feature length adventure starring the current cast.  I will probably just make a cake.

An Adventure in Time and Space will be written by former Doctor Who villain, Mark Gatis, whose writing credits include Sherlock, The League of Gentlemen and of course Doctor Who, and the Doctor's 50th anniversary adventure will be penned by the current show runner of both Sherlock and Doctor Who, Steven Moffat.

And the future?

Matt Smith has also signed up for at least one more tour as the Doctor, with filming of series 8 to start later this year, and is likely to include the shows 250th televised story.

If you you are interested in the later Doctors from the classic series Big Finish Audio has three ongoing audio play series.  Doctor Who (starring the 5th, 6th and 7th incarnations), The Eighth Doctor Adventures and The Fourth Doctor Adventures.  All of these series see the original actors reprising their  role as the Doctor.

Edit: I stated above that the 100th episode of the revived series was going to be 'the fourth episode in this block' (Series 7, episode 9), which would have made it "Hide". I botched my maths, and it is actually "Crimson Horror", which is the sixth episode of this block (Series 7, Episode 11).

For 10 points:
During their long and tumultuous relationship, the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey has:
a) executed him
b) exiled him
c) elected him president
d) all of the above

For 20 points:
What are the the first and last purely historical episodes in which the only fantasy elements were the presence of the Doctor, his companions and the TARDIS?

For 50 points:
From what we have seen in Doctor Who what is the most obvious distinction between those characters who appear to have some control over their appearance during regeneration and those that appear to have none?

For 100 points:
The first series of the revived Doctor Who carried on a tradition of fulfilling two criteria for regular season stories that contain one of the classic series' monsters.  What are the monsters?  What are the two criteria?

Proteus

Proteus is a game that is only an aesthetic and a mechanic, and as such the goal of playing it is in the playing itself, rather than any achievable sense of completion.  It is the kind of game you play until you are done playing.

The style takes 8-bit (or even earlier) 2D video and audio assets and uses them to populate a world in 3D and high fidelity.  The pixels are large and crisp and the sounds are a generation above PC speaker played on new sound cards.  This throws back to a time when sounds and pixel lumps didn't mean anything until you interacted with them in context, then we would recognise them anywhere.

The mechanic is simple: You walk and you look and the world notices that you are there, and in just being there you play the island like a musical instrument.  This seemingly limited interaction ('just being there'), like in the real non-super-pixel 'nature' (aka 'The Environment', aka where snakes live), is enough to get a kick out of your surroundings.  And just like in that same real non-super-pixel 'nature', 'just being there' is also enough to harass the local wildlife.  Except the owls.  They don't seem to care.  It could be described as an interactive ambient sound generator presented through a game engine.  Actually, that is exactly what it is.

Is the game meant to be simultaneously reminding us of our impact on the natural world as it reminds us of a time in the medium when context was everything?  I don't know, but I can tell you that Proteus is an anagram for 'pot user'.