1. When did you start watching and why?

It was so long ago that I was too young to remember. I became a regular viewer during McCoy’s penultimate season.

2. What was your first serial/episode?

I have vague memories of being terrified by Peter Davison fighting his way through the TARDIS in Castrovalva.

3. Which serials/episodes have you seen?

All of them except for Marco Polo, Sensorites, Reign of Terror, Planet of Giants, Rescue, Romans, Web Planet, Crusade, Space Museum, Galaxy 4, Mission to the Unknown, Myth Makers, Daleks’ Master Plan, Massacre, Celestial Toymaker, Gunfighters, Savages, War Machines, Smugglers, Tenth Planet, Power of the Daleks, Highlanders, Underwater Menace, Moonbase, Macra Terror, Faceless Ones, Evil of the Daleks, Abominable Snowmen, Ice Warriors, Enemy of the World, Web of Fear, Fury from the Deep, Wheel In Space, Dominators, Krotons, Space Pirates, War Games, Colony In Space, Underworld, Creature from the Pit, Shada (the original), Twin Dilemma, Paradise Towers, and Delta And the Bannermen.

3a. Favourite?

The Curse of Fenric

4. Are your friends/family interested in the show?

Most of my friends are to some degree of another. Most of my family can take it or leave it.

5. Which Doctor is your favourite?

McCoy, despite some of the awful scripts he had to face.

6. Which Doctor is your least favourite?

Tough one. Purely from a characterisation point of view, I’d say David Tennant - but that comes mostly from scripts that portray him as a hypocrite.

7. Which TV companion is your favourite?

How could it be anyone but Adric?

OK, I’m kidding. Ace, or Romana II, or maybe Zoe.

8. Which TV companion is your least favourite?

Adric, with Tegan as a close run second.

9. Do you listen to the Big Finish audios?

Ooooh, yes.

9a. If so, which is your favourite?

Bang-Bang-A-Boom

9b. Also: which Big Finish companion is your favourite?

Charlotte Elspeth ‘Charley’ Pollard

10. Have you listened to any non-Big Finish audios?

Yup

10a. If so, which is your favourite?

The Faction Paradox series. Don’t make me pick a specific one, they are all really good.

11. Have you read any of the novels or short stories?

Most of them.

11a. Have you written any of the novels or short stories?

There might be a couple of unofficial drabbles out on Usenet somewhere, but they don’t count.

11b. Which is your favourite?

It used to be The Eight Doctors, I was young, its a jolly romp. Now? Blood Harvest, there’s just something special about the 7th Doctor running a speakeasy.

12. Have you read any of the comics?

A few

12a. You guessed it–which is your favourite?

None were memorable enough to leave an impression on me.

13. Do you watch any of the spinoffs (e.g. Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures)?

Of course.

13a. Which is your favourite?

The Sarah Jane Adventures … it tends to have the most mature plots.

14. Is there any particular episode/book/audio/comic you desperately want to watch/listen to/read?

The Daleks’ Master Plan. It sounds fun.

15. Do you write fanfic for Doctor Who?

I’ll wrote an occasional drabble, but that was many years ago.

15a. If so, post a snippet of a work-in-progress (or several)!

No works in progress, Usenet might turn up some of my old material.

16. Do you create Doctor Who icons?

The world doesn’t need Doctor Who icons.

16a. Let’s see a sample!

shudder

17. Recommend a fanfic/icon/fanvid/fancomic/fancreation!

I’ve been out of touch with fan created material for years.

18. Have you been to any Doctor Who conventions?

Nope.

19. Have you ever dressed up as a Doctor Who character?

Nope.

20. Do you own any Doctor Who merchandise?

There is a TARDIS shaped USB hub set up to let leads reach from my PC to my printer, and I have a copy of Battle For The Universe around somewhere.

21. Are you a fan of Russell T. Davies?

I like a lot of what he does (Midnight was very good), and it’s great that he got Who back on our screens … but he can’t write science fiction and Journey’s End was utterly dreadful.

21a. Steven Moffat?

He can do no wrong.

21b. Paul Cornell?

The man who gave us Benny Summerfield. He isn’t Steven Moffat, but he’s the next best thing.

22. What say you to Season 6b?

Works for me.

23. The UNIT dating controversy?

A side effect of the Time War.

24. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect?

A very silly idea.

25. Multi-Doctor episodes?

Let’s just ignore The Two Doctors and focus on the fun ones. Hopefully we’ll get to see an 8th Doctor appearance in the next few years.

26. What’s your favourite Doctor Who technobabble?

“So, if you could keep that box over there and bring it over here, that [bigger] box would fit inside this [smaller] one.”

27. Have you watched other TV shows exclusively because of the presence of Doctor Who actors?

No. I might have given shows a chance that I wouldn’t have otherwise though.

28. Have you met any of the actors?

Nope.

28a. Travelled to any filming locations?

Yes. The Blue Boar in Aldbourne is a nice pub about a mile away from one of my previous homes. It was also The Cloven Hoof in The Daemons

29. What do you think of “The Curse of Fatal Death”?

Utterly fantastic except for the fart jokes.

30. Do you have any fannish opinions that you think are fairly unpopular?

Nothing springs to mind

31. What’s your favourite pairing?

Vicki / Steven

32. What pairing(s) won’t you touch with a really long pole?

Adric / Tegan

Copies are selling on eBay for quite insane prices, so I’m probably not going to be able to relive that particular part of my childhood through that channel.

Happily, Games Workshop have produced some rules that are supposed to recreate the feel of the original game. So, despite my intentions to aid the Green Tide in conquering the galaxy, I might just have to invest in a couple of squads of Terminators and some of those nasty Genestealers in order to build myself a pseudo-Space Hulk set.

Hopefully, it will prove to be a good system for quick games that don’t require much in the way of set up, and keep the measuring down to a minimum. I have quite a few friends who like board games, and this might turn out to be something that will appeal to them.

The introductory session involved rather a lot of combat. As usual with D&D, combat took up most of the session. It was, however, rather more interesting then first level combat in 3.5. Everybody got to do something active each round so there was none of the old “I hide (having expended by one offensive spell of the day)”, and given a choice of attacks the fighter got to do something slightly more interesting than “I hit him with an axe”.

So, combat is, in my opinion, rather better at low levels.

Roleplaying? No problems there, the system didn’t get in the way (or appear to cover it for that matter, skill checks were limited to knowledge rolls).

The one bit that I’m really iffy with is dealing with challenges posed by the environment or traps. I’m sure they could still be dealt with by ingenious use of mundane items, but my impression so far is that magic and skills won’t help matters at all. This, however, is still based on theories formed from glancing through the rules. We’ll have to see what happens when we get actual problems to solve (and I’ll hopefully be able to have a proper look through the rulebook at some point).

So when people suggest a game of Arkham Horror, Order of the Stick or Shadows over Camelot, I’m last to say “yes”, and in the case of SoC I’m usually crying “Oh no, please not Shadows over Camelot”. This weekend, however, I bowed to the will of the group and gave it another try.

It turns out that this game is much better when you aren’t playing as the traitor (the possible random player who works against the group while trying not to look like they are an enemy) during your first go at the game when you are still learning how to play.

It also turns out that if you play after you’ve had a few drinks it rapidly descents into an exchange of pseudo-Arthurian speeches designed to identify which cards have been drawn by the other players.

It would be simple to say “I drew a grail card” or “I’m putting a one point card on the Black Knight attack spaces”, but that is against the rules. Instead we get “Verily, My Lord, I hath news of the Grail!” and “My Leige! The Black Knight hath caught his foot in his stirrup.” Bewards to imbibing too greatly though, else phrases such as “My-th Leige! Thine Blacketh Knight hath caughteth his foot inth hith stirrupth” might start arriving at the table. (Maybe we shouldn’t go to Camelot - it is a very silly place.)

Anyway, we roundly defeated the forces of evil that surrounded Camelot and I was left with a much better opinion of the game.

I’m still not fond of collaborative board games in general, but this is better than most - just so long as you aren’t struck trying to learn it without helping the other players win, as the traitor must.

The latest from Wizards is minions, a concept that worried me when I came across it. In a nutshell, minions are foes who are a decent threat to the PCs but whom only have a single hit point. Once you hit one, it is dead.

My initial reaction was “Oh no. Ogres that die with one hit. That’s rubbish. So much for Willing Suspension of Disbelief.”

Wizards can’t be that insane though, can they? Well, yes, they can, but not in this instance. While killing Ogres with one hit seems silly, it becomes less so when characters get to very high levels and going up against mature dragons and nasty demonic princes. At low levels, I would assume that the minions would be goblins, and it isn’t unreasonable to expect a low level character to have no trouble dispatching a mere goblin. 

The concept works in other games, Spirit of the Century springs to mind. So I’m cautiously optimistic about this particular change for D&D 4e. 

It might make the fireball spell interesting though.

I don’t know if this is an entirely bad thing. From time to time, I rather enjoy tactical skirmish games (and I like grids as they solve all the questions about facing and distance — you get edge cases in 360° tape measure games). 

That said, I’m fairly happy with 3.5 for tactical skirmish, and I’m delighted with Exalted for the high powered style of game, so I’m doubting that I’m going to get much out of 4e.

I’m after something with a bit of grit, plenty of sword work, and a distinct lack of magic items and spells being the answer to every question. This has led me to take a look at alternatives, and RuneQuest is looking increasingly like it might be the answer. 

A ladder consists of a pair of ten foot poles with a number of rungs between them, but this costs less than a pair of ten foot poles. It is feasible that an enterprising merchant, given a large enough supply of nearby adventures, could make a living chopping ladders in half and selling the pieces to passing adventurers while having the rungs left over for firewood!

The Wizards of the Coast website is previewing 4e, and I’ve been keeping half an eye on it. I was pleasently surprised when I read:

Be sure to return Wednesday for a look at the economy!

What is this? Could they be making the economy sane?

No, of course not.

It seems that treasure is going to be made available to Dungeon Masters in preprepared baskets to hand out to monsters and NPCs. I wonder if they will be gift wrapped?

I’ve given in and bought a Wii. I could be sensible and hold off writing about it until I have a bit more to say (and am a bit less tired when I’m trying to write it), but I’ve been neglecting this blog of late so I’ll … stop talking meta.

In brief though:

• It is a lot of fun
• Super Mario Galaxy is well deserving of its Gamespot score of 9.5, and an excellent single player game that challenges the Wii’s reputation as a party game machine
• Mario Kart is seven shades of awesome for multiplayer racing, but the battle mode is a let down when compared to the GameCube version. I’ll write more on this later.
• Mario and Sonic Olympics is quite fun, but mostly revolves around waving the sticks in various ways. It does result in good videos being filmed though.
• The downloadable games are fun, and I’m sure I’ll get a lot more entertainment out of Bomberman ‘93 and Bubble Bobble

So that is a quick summary of first impressions, I’ll probably go into more detail later, but it is approaching 0130 and I need some shut eye.

I’m going to have a go at writing a campaign manager for Mongoose Publishing’s Babylon 5 war game - A Call To Arms. I spent some time this evening going over the rules with Jim and working out what data needed storing. This entity relationship diagram is the result.

Complicated system, isn’t it?