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So Long, and Thanks for All the Dish

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With the dawning of a new era in Doctor Who comes the end of Confessions of a Neowhovian.

I will admit that the preceding sentence makes me a little verklempt. I’ve been writing this blog continuously for thirteen years—the first five of them weekly—and it has become a part of my identity. But as I explained elsewhere when asked why I was planning to retire the blog, I am Le Tired.

It takes a lot of mental energy to decide on a topic and write a blog post, and as the years drag on, I feel like I have less and less of interest (or at least new) to say. I find myself most interested, and seem to get the most engagement from readers here, when I can talk about a new episode that has just dropped, but especially these last few years, those have been relatively few and far between.

And I’ve covered all the (surviving) Classic episodes now, in one capacity or another. The only episodes I haven’t touched on are parts of Tennant’s Tenth Doctor era (notably, all of Martha’s run in Series Three; that’s rather an oversight on my part). I could keep limping along another year, finally doing Martha some justice and covering Ncuti Gatwa’s first series, but… it’s all become more of a chore than a joy.

So it’s time for me to stop.

There are other creative pursuits I’d like to give more of my attention (notably, my fiction writing; if you’re interested, I do have one published short (flash) story in Nature: Futures, under my pen name). As I’m sure you can imagine, fiction writing also takes a lot of mental energy. There were times this last year when I would’ve liked to spend what few spell slots I had working on my latest novel instead of on blogging, but I made a commitment to myself and my potential readers thirteen years ago, and I wasn’t going to break that commitment.

As my personal life evolves in 2024, with aging parents needing more care and maturing offspring heading off to college in the fall, I hope that my love for Doctor Who will also continue to evolve and grow. I look forward to continuing to share ideas and opinions with other fans, both in person (I will continue to attend Gallifrey One!) and online (I’ll leave the blog’s Facebook page open, at least for now). I’ll miss this space, where I could dish my own favorite little tidbits of fan theory, but the moment has been prepared for.

Thank you for joining me on this amazing journey over the last thirteen years.

Marcia Franklin
The Neowhovian

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Theme of the Year 2021: Highs and Lows

Welcome to another year of the blog!

Ten years ago this week, I published my first post ever, and somehow—although less frequently these past few years—I have managed to continue posting regularly for an entire decade. Although I know it’s not widely read, I truly appreciate everyone who stops by to read, comment, and/or vote in my reader polls. Thank you for joining me on this ride!

This year I will continue my recent tradition of reviewing Classic stories using a loose, overarching theme. For the first couple of years I used a theme, it was Bad Reputation. Last year I switched to Hidden Gems. To decide what to do this time around, I looked over the thirty-or-so unreviewed stories remaining in my spreadsheet, and started where I always do: which Doctors have the largest proportion of stories left?

Interestingly, the release of animated reconstructions for two more Troughton stories (The Faceless Ones and The Macra Terror) has changed the results of that calculation a fair bit from my previous pass. The resulting distribution is much more even than I’d anticipated; rather than five Fourth Doctor stories, I only have three, and none of the seven Classic Doctors is left out.

Once I’d determined how many stories from which Doctors I needed, I looked at the available stories’ ranking on that good ol’ six-year-old list from io9. That’s when I realized I still had several both highly-ranked and poorly-ranked stories yet to review. So this year, I’ll be exploring the extremes: the best and the worst, the highs and the lows. The sequence goes per Doctor, rather than per ranking, so there’s some back-and-forth, and come clustering, but hopefully we’ll still end up with an interesting mix.

Without further ado, then, here is the schedule for 2021. As ever, reviews will post on the fourth Wednesday of each month. I look forward to sharing the Highs and Lows of Classic Who with you all!

Highs and Lows
January: The Faceless Ones (io9 #244) Second Doctor
February: City of Death (io9 #3) Fourth Doctor
March: The Dominators (io9 #242) Second Doctor
April: Doctor Who and the Silurians (io9 #24) Third Doctor
May: Snakedance (io9 #57) Fifth Doctor
June: Pyramids of Mars (io9 #7) Fourth Doctor
July: The Twin Dilemma (io9 #222) Sixth Doctor
August: The Time Monster (io9 #238) Third Doctor
September: Delta and the Bannermen (io9 #246) Seventh Doctor
October: The Deadly Assassin (io9 #13) Fourth Doctor
November: The Edge of Destruction (io9 #30) First Doctor
December: Arc of Infinity (io9 #205) Fifth Doctor
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Theme of the Year: Hidden Gems

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Happy New Year, everyone! We made it to 2020!

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been doing reviews of Classic era stories under the Bad Reputation umbrella. That’s been a great deal of fun, and there are still a few stories that I haven’t reviewed that would fit well into that category. But I thought that it would be nice to change things up this year, and go a different direction.

Enter “Hidden Gems”! For 2020, I’ll be reviewing stories that are neither revered nor reviled, the workhorse stories of the second quartile. These adventures don’t show up in the standard “Best of” lists, nor in the “Worst of” ones, but are still generally decent stories. Using the same list from io9 as a reference, I wanted to look at stories that fall in that 25-50% range. With 254 titles from which to choose, that gives me stories ranking #63 to #127 to work with.

I also wanted to continue to keep my distribution of Doctors as even as possible. Using my handy-dandy spreadsheet, I chose order of Doctors by what would maintain the most even proportion of as-yet-unreviewed stories across all seven of them. I let that order take precedence over the 2nd-quartile requirement, so I’m fudging a bit on the Seventh Doctor, and stretching things utterly with the Third, using the stories that fit my criteria most closely within the bounds of those available.

So for those of you who might want to watch along, here’s the schedule for 2020. Reviews will post on the fourth Wednesday of each month.

Hidden Gems
January: Ghost Light (io9 #53) Seventh Doctor
February: Warriors’ Gate (io9 #87) Fourth Doctor
March: Planet of the Daleks (io9 #147) Third Doctor
April: Revelation of the Daleks (io9 #113) Sixth Doctor
May: The Sontaran Experiment (io9 #101) Fourth Doctor
June: The Daleks (io9 #76) First Doctor
July: Mawdryn Undead (io9 #63) Fifth Doctor
August: Survival (io9 #91) Seventh Doctor
September: The Curse of Peladon (io9 #153) Third Doctor
October: The Mind Robber (io9 #99) Second Doctor
November: The Brain of Morbius (io9 #110) Fourth Doctor
December: The Time Meddler (io9 #79) First Doctor
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Cosplay at CONsole Room

Thanks to staff photographer Larry Barthel, I can now share a few of the costumes from CONsole Room that didn’t get illustrated in my recap post because my own images were so poor.

Entries in the Masquerade are along the bottom edge (including the Monoid; 12th Doctor not pictured).

There are too many other awesome individuals pictured here—those who simply cosplayed the con—for me to single out; I’d either list them all, or miss someone I thought was worth an extra note. Instead, I’ll just ask for your input. Which ones are your favorites?

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New Stuff!

Just in time for Gally, the Neowhovian is pleased to announce the release of two new products!

The 2012 edition of The Neowhovian Experience is now available at CreateSpace or Amazon. This year the exclusive found-only-in-the-book content is a Quick-Start Guide of recommended stories to watch if you want to start getting to know the pre-Hiatus Doctors.

If you’re going to Gallifrey One 2013, you can find me there. I’ll have a few copies on hand to sell at a discount. I’ll even autograph them for free!

[Update: You can also get a free digital autograph from Authorgraph!]

The other item is a new set of products in the Neowhovian CafePress Shop. Available on T-shirts (white print on dark) or mugs (black on white), this design is being made available for the first time today. Again, if you’re at Gally, look for me at LobbyCon Thursday night in this shirt!

Thanks as always for reading, and for your support of the blog in general. I appreciate all of you!

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TLS Trivia Champion!

Wowza! I am absolutely stunned and honored to receive this trophy!

I started following the Time Lord Society on Twitter (@TimeLordSociety) a couple of months ago. Every now and then, they'd post trivia questions – sometimes pre-Hiatus, sometimes post-Hiatus. More often than not, I'd see the flurry of activity in my stream after the fact. Everyone who answered a question correctly got a point, and they kept a list of the rankings. Sometimes I knew the answers, and sometimes I didn't. On the occasions I did get in on the action, I was often beaten to the punch by other extremely knowledgable "Time Lords." Somehow, I managed to claw my way into the top 11 who would be allowed into the tournament.

Over the course of the last couple of weekends, I was fortunate enough to get more questions in my matches that I knew than ones that I didn't (or at least, often when I didn't know one, neither did my opponent). It was a brilliant tournament, and the competition was fierce. I count myself fortunate even to have been in the tournament, and this outcome is more than I could ever have anticipated.

Thank you to the Time Lord Society, to my opponents, and to all who played throughout the trivia season! I look forward to competing again next year!

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New Episode Reviews – Coming Soon!

Welcome to readers old and new!

If you're looking for a review of Asylum of the Daleks, never fear – it's on the way!

My regular posting schedule is every Wednesday. That gives me enough time to watch a new episode a couple of times and write (at least what I try to make) a thoughtful review. In the meantime, I'll post a reader poll for each new episode on Saturdays. Vote to share your opinion, and see what others are saying. And when those reviews roll around, please share your thoughts in the comments. I love conversing with readers!

Thanks for reading!

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I’ve Been Interviewed!

You may or may not have noticed my post on Twitter and Facebook about this, but recently a new pair of podcasters decided to make me their first victim interviewee! So last weekend I sat down to chat with "Time Siren" and "Mad Woman with a Box" about my fandom, the blog, my book (in case you hadn't realized I have one, I do, and you can buy it from CreateSpace here or from Amazon, though frankly I get a larger cut from CreateSpace), Gallifrey One, my first foray into cosplay, and more!

The podcast is now available in all its rambling glory (it's #1.3) at The Corsair's Closet. Go have a listen!

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I’m Off to Gally!

Tomorrow I’ll be heading to Gally (for those who aren’t in the loop, that’s the Gallifrey One 2012 Doctor Who convention in LA), and I’m getting a bit giddy. Partly I’m excited to meet some of these actors (and the photo ops! ~squee!~), partly I’m nervous about being on a panel. Yes, I know – I signed up for it! But as the reality draws nearer, I’m starting to wonder if I can actually pull it off. Will I freeze in front of an audience?

Logically, I’d have to say “no.” After all, if I can get up in front of a class of college students and blather on about astronomy for an hour or two once or twice a week for a whole term, then surely I can sit in front of a few hundred(?) folks with five other people to back me up and blather about my avocational obsession for an hour just once. Surely.

I think I’m more nervous about making a fool of myself in front of various celebrities. Yes, these people are used to being swarmed by rabid fans, so nothing I say or do will be all that remarkable. Then again, that’s a separate problem – who wants to be one of the crowd? Obviously, there’s not a lot I can do about that; it’s not like I have the best cosplay costume ever (read: none) to make me memorable. But deep down, I think every fan wishes he or she was the one that stood out, the one that so-and-so fondly remembers from this-or-that con. I can’t help it.

To take my mind off of the unpleasant realities of anonymity, I plan to post updates from the con here at the blog. (Eventually, there will be a new section under which I’ll post those and other such “unclassifiable” entries such as this one. It’ll be cool. Really. Also, your suggestions on what to call this new section are welcome. So far, I’m considering News, Reports, or Out and About, but none of those really grab me…) I doubt I’ll be able to post very often, but there should be something up before next week’s usual posts (reviews of The Sensorites and The Caves of Androzani:SE). At the very least, I’ll be posting pictures of me with Paul McGann and with William Russell in the IAN shirt.

So. Will the Neowhovian be able to navigate Gally without undue trauma? Stay tuned…

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