A little bonus for Inferno - some (good!) Inferno-related fanworks:


Fire (182 words) by UnpublishedWriter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Summary: The emotional toll of 'Inferno.' One-shot.


Concerning Multiverse Theory (1665 words) by StuntMuppet
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Third Doctor/Section Leader Shaw
Characters: Third Doctor, Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw
Additional Tags: Het, Episode Tag, Math, sex but not porn
Summary: He indulges, for a moment, in abstraction. Third Doctor/Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw (from Inferno), and the equations of possibility.


What the Thunder Said (4390 words) by eponymous_rose
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Third Doctor, Elizabeth Shaw, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, John Benton
Additional Tags: 1000-5000 Words, Alternate Universe, Canon Compliant, POV Third Person, Canon - TV, Angst, Drama, Humor, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Action/Adventure, Science Fiction, Apocalypse, Character Study
Summary: A doomed world, only slightly more lost than our own; through the eye of the Inferno and into the realm of memory. Time's end.


Namesake (3023 words) by JohnAmendAll
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Liz Ten, Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw
Additional Tags: Community: dw_straybunnies
Summary: A Royal audience for Section Leader Shaw.


Inferno (ART) (0 words) by OxideBlack
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Brigade Leader Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, Liz Shaw (Doctor Who), Third Doctor (Doctor Who), Petra Williams (Inferno Earth), Greg Sutton
Additional Tags: Mirror!Brigadier, Digital Art, Doctor Who Art

I've been thinking for a while of doing Fandom 50 or Fannish 50 and just doing posts on what some fandoms/parts of fandom I like are and why I like them, but then I felt too flaky to sign up. So this is me doing but not doing it. It gives me something to aim for, but not to worry if I don't make it - or if I want to continue. Also I don't have to decide which of those two is best to sign up for - it's very confusing!

I was thinking about doing something like this for ages, because I love manifestos, but there are so few of us left in these parts, it would be ridiculous to expect to get people into things, so they'd just be annoying. But it's always useful to explain exactly what things are again, and it means I can hopefully spend a bit more time chatting about things I love.

(Anything above any cut text should be safe from any major spoilers; if I feel the need to get spoilery in my love, that will always go under a cut).


Obviously, I had to start with Doctor Who, but since that would be a very big post as a whole, I shall probably mainly pick some serials/episodes in between other fandoms. This might be more useful anyway, because while DW, even in the older eras does have some continuity and context and development, it is nevertheless, even in modern eras, still the nearest thing to an anthology show the BBC have left, so if anyone gets curious, there's no reason not to just watch most individual installments.

So I thought I'd remind myself how much I love Doctor Who by talking about one of my absolute favourites, which is from my "least favourite"* Classic Who era - the Third Doctor's run, because DW is awesome generally.

Inferno (BBC 1970)

gifset (by timelordinaustralia)

What is it?

The seven-part** final serial of the Third Doctor's first season, written by Don Houghton & directed by Douglas Camfield (& producer Barry Letts for eps 5-7, as Camfield suffered a minor heart attack during recording) & guest starring Olaf Pooley, Derek Newark, Sheila Dunn & Christopher Benjamin. The show had lately been reinvented in a swither by the BBC between that and cancelling it, and so returned that season in colour, with a new Doctor (Jon Pertwee), now exiled to Earth and stripped of the ability to pilot the TARDIS,working for the military outfit, UNIT, aka the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and his handful of men, along with brilliant Cambridge scientist Dr. Liz Shaw (Caroline John).

Inferno finds UNIT safeguarding Professor Stahlman's project to drill through to the Earth's core in search of a new energy source he believes he will find there (Stahlman's Gas). The Doctor, meanwhile, is using Stahlman's reactor to power his experiments to get the TARDIS working again. But the project's computer is predicting catastrophe if the core is penetrated, Stahlman is refusing to listen, people are turning into monsters, and the Doctor's test TARDIS trip takes him sideways, leaving him trapped in a fascist parallel earth where Stahlman's project is hours ahead of the one in our world - and things are turning apocalyptic fast...


Why do I love it?

7 episodes is a hard length to pull off (see the rest of the season, even though I love it all), but Inferno does it beautifully - it gives the story sufficient time to allow us to understand and care about what's going in the 'real' world and the parallel Earth, the characters and their parallel world counterparts, and give the fates of both the weight needed, while tension is maintained by the constant hum of the drill - the mounting, unheeded sound of the world ending. The Doctor, the Brig and Liz are a really strong trio and this is not only another great story for them, but lets us see alternate versions of the latter two. Among the guest characters, Greg and Petra (particularly the parallel universe versions) are favourites.

It has that very UK 70s TV thing that always gets me so hard of being simultaneously one of the most bleak and optimistic DW serials ( Vaguely spoilery details ) ♥

On paper it's got a whole lot of would what become very typical Third Doctor era ingredients (unwise 70s scientific projects! green slime! HAVOC!***), but in practice, it truly is something special, and I love it.


ETA: An Inferno-related fannish recs-list.


* It's comparative. Like, yes, but also. It's DW. I love it anyway.
** Seven parts here = 7 x25 mins (although minus the intros/outros and 5 episode recaps and often with shorter runtimes - most given DW serials are about the same length as a regular/shortish film, the six-parters as a long film. It's just that some of them also feel like wading through porridge).
***HAVOC = stunt outfit run by Derek Ware. I think they were HAVOC officially by this point, but at any rate, they were definitely present and correct, pulling off the then record for highest UK TV stunt fall during the course of it, and in another case, getting accidentally actually run over by Pertwee in the course of duty). Also, of course, not that I am saying there is anything wrong with lots of green slime, dodgy scientific projects causing trouble and HAVOC. Obv all top notch ingredients!

Has Youtube been driving everyone else batty too with the auto-dubbed videos? At least you can manually switch the audio track to the original - but now it's auto-translating the video descriptions too, and I haven't yet found out how to get back to the original there.

It makes me want to scream. Who thinks that's a good idea?! Not anyone who speaks smore than one language, that's for sure - and even then! AAARGH.

I searched in hopes of finding some way to disable this nonsense, and found no way on Youtube itself, but there's a browser extension that gets you back to original audio and description!

Firefox version | Chrome version

It says it doesn't work on mobile, but I don't watch videos on mobile, so that doesn't matter to me much. And either way, better than nothing. *grumbles some more*

rarepairexchange author reveals happened this night! I wrote Word of Honor femslash. :D

It was great to revisit Word of Honor - I need to find time for a full rewatch at some point! It's still so good. And I'm still so delighted with the women of Ghost Valley and all the thematic depth the drama added just by including them. Also, Ghost Valley worldbuilding is a lot of fun to play with!

(I'm a bit bummed out that almost no one seems to have read the fic, in what definitely wasn't a ship of two the last time I checked. But my recipient liked it, so there's that!)

Anyway, here's some backstory about Liu Qianqiao's early days in Ghost Valley:

**

forgetting any other tie but this (5410 words)
Fandom: 山河令 | Word of Honor (TV 2021)
Rating: Mature
Relationship: Liu Qianqiao/Luo Fumeng
Content Tags: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Getting Together, Ghost Valley, Ghost Valley Politics, Department of the Unfaithful, Worldbuilding, cameos by Wen Kexing and Gu Xiang, and several original Ghost characters

Summary: Something was wrong with Xi Sang Gui, and Liu Qianqiao couldn't simply sit and wait.

First things first: the week wound up being unexpectedly tiring/ill-making but for good reasons if also stressful ones, so that made me erratic again. But at this point it would be erratic of me not to be erratic, I suppose.

Anyway, got a lovely yuletide assignment, so fingers crossed, but I was very happy not to be an initial pinch hit! Not in itself, because that can be very cool and the only time I was a fairly early (I don't think it was initial) pinch hit I got 3 treats, BUT I went all out for 4 super-obscure requests and I nevertheless matched with someone! There was a visible offer for Enigma which also made me happy, but that means nothing, as bucket offers are invisible & visible ones may well be offering/not offering characters that would prevent matchability. BUT STILL. Someone not me also looked at it and went, yes, there should be fic! XD


I'm determined to catch up a bit with my watching posts, and we now enter the point that it really did become the summer of the cosy detectives, and this is still not all of them, and I didn't even bother including s3 of Beyond Paradise which I also watched in this same stretch, or started, anyway:


* The Drama channel finally came through with s2 & 3 of Miss Scarlet & the Duke! They showed s1 in 2023, which I loved, and I've had to wait all that time for more & I thought they'd lost the rights to it or something. It felt like at least three years! Unfortunately, I did accidentally manage to miss the first two episodes, but overall, again a thoroughly engaging run & I enjoyed it a lot. My favourite ep was where she and her rival detective guy (not the Duke) got snowed in a hotel in France or somewhere and had to work together and against each other to solve it. Top notch, full marks for trapped together and rivals forced to work together tropes done v well.

Not technically a cosy though. It is a lot of fun and isn't especially dark but nevertheless nothing with this banger of an opening credit sequence can be counted as cosy. Only downmarks being for William and Eliza clearly never going to be getting together, although, tbf, they do have good reason for it. Anyway, excellent, would totally be fannish if I was writing much and could get hold of it properly.


* Ch5 then chimed in with Murder Most Puzzling, which was only 4 episodes long and my DVR bailed on recording two of them (there were a lot of things all on TV at the same time, it was difficult for it), but this was daft yet surprisingly good in many ways and starred Phyllis Logan, finally freed from Downton Abbey and allowed to swear and also solve crime as the famous Puzzle Lady, with the complication of her not in fact creating her own puzzles - her brilliant introverted niece with relationship issues actually did that. Is a bit hard to rate exactly due to missing half of a very short series.


* Drama's original series Outrageous, about the Mitfords, which I mentioned several times while I was watching it, and does remain one of the best new TV series I've seen in a while - lively, engaging, able to navigate the more serious aspects pretty well too & a great cast.


* Finally gave up on Ghosts (US) about two or three eps into s4, though, because while it can be fun and sweet itself too, there's just so much painfully formulaic writing in so many of the episodes, the scales tipped from fun-if-flawed to just not worth it any longer and I remembered that I can just tap out if I want to, so I did. (I mean, it does make me appreciate how damn good UK Ghosts was, but I can do that by rewatching it).

Then there were some films I watched upstairs (whether by iPlayer on my tablet, or managed to get to on the dvd despite summer) which I will write about and some I watched downstairs which I cannot write about because I watched them. They were good. I was extremely tired (ill). It was summer. It is ridiculous with the ME/CFS to note that, at the same time, with the same level of brain and (lack of) energy, I took in significantly more of the things I watched upstairs on a bed whereas things I had to watch downstairs sitting up, I'm just *shrug* I watched it. (I listed all these in a post once before, so I mentioned them already). But, yeah. It's ridiculous. It's no wonder people always just wind up thinking we're making it all up. (Please don't open the window, all my energy will depart and I need to be lying down to watch films, sorry. By myself. Quarter of an hour at a time. Very slowly.)

From all around my flist, last seen at facethestrange's:

How many letters of the alphabet have you used for starting a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'A' and 'T'.

I picked my favourite title for each letter, not necessarily my favourite fic:

A - Absent Heart (But My Body is Here)
B - A Bitter, Better Truth
C - A Cruelty of Harpies
D - Darkness Spilled Before Our Bed
E - Echoes Woven Into Light
F - Farshalah'kiah for the Modern Orion Woman
G - Glass on the Ground
H - Hindsight From the Dinner Table
I - In This Fading Hour
J - none
K - Kreisverkehr
L - Listen (it's late, it's late, but listen)
M - Make Answer to the Clock
N - Not To Be Repeated
O - Out of the Water
P - Pull/Recoil
Q - Quiet Bower
R - R'lyeh Is Not an Empty House
S - Summer's Turns
T - A Thread as Red as Blood
U - (un)forced, (un)happy
V - Volcano Day
W - Why Should You Linger
X - none
Y - none
Z - Zone F: Fandom Primer

You can tell I have a preference for a certain style of title, LOL!

The most represented fandom here is, unsurprisingly, Guardian (with 6 titles); second is Griimm with 3. My most-written fandom (Doctor Who) only has 2 on this list; either my title preferences have changed or Guardian inspires me for better titles. *g*

And the missing X and Y are probably not surprising, but I didn't expect J! I guess I'll have to do something about that at some point ... *g*

I just realised I never posted this here - written for gavilan in this year's guardian_wishlist:

scale to feather, skin to skin (997 words)
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Zhu Hong & Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Zhu Hong, Ya Qing
Content tags: Yashou transformation, non-human sex, Post-Canon, Post-Fix-It, Enemies to Lovers, background implied Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan

Summary: Ya Qing, half-transformed, had feathers down the side and back of her neck. They covered her shoulders and arms, curving along the sides of her bare breasts.

I see the last time I properly did some little write-ups of anything I'd been watching was about June, and that was a catch up one, so I'm forever out of date, but I'll see if I can do better now!


Suspected Person (1942) - a UK B-movie thriller, which I recorded off TPTV because it featured Clifford Evans, Patricia Roc and William Hartnell, and indeed, generally, the only thing worth saying about it was that I did enjoy watching Patricia Roc and Clifford Evans play brother and sister, and William Hartnell did his best to try and steal the film in his scenes, but everything else was very meh and run of the mill. Fine if you want a bonus bit of Hartnell! Or CE & PR, but not of any note for anything else, really. I only wrote this here, because it does prove I still have judgment and therefore my comments on the rest might be worth more.


Death Valley (BBC TV 2025) This was one of the many cosy detective shows I watched over the summer, and it was pretty good! A bit uneven, in that the two main characters were great & so was their odd friendship, but quite a few of the mysteries were very so-so, even for this kind of thing, although they did get better. Gwyneth Keyworth as Janie Mallowan, socially awkward detective with issues, and Timothy Spall as John Chapel, reclusive actor who used to play Maigret/Poirot her favourite TV detective Caesar, were very good together, though & I enjoyed them a lot.


Stephen Poliakoff's The Tribe (BBC 1998), only available via somebody's VHS recording on YT, unless you live in R1, where you might be able to snag a DVD, but the BBC somehow didn't even include it on their Poliakoff at the BBC set. (Why, yes, I AM annoyed that I cannot have a DVD of the Stephen Poliakoff that stars Jeremy Northam, even if it seems reasonable even on small acquaintance with Poliakoff to suggest that it is second tier Poliakoff. Is that not what completist DVD sets for significant playwrghts are for?) It stars Jeremy Northam, Joely Richardson, Anna Friel, Trevor Eve & Laura Fraser, plus Jonathan Rhys Meyers & Julian Rhind-Tutt & is all about a very 90s collection of concerns - creating different kinds of living spaces and the hypocrisy of those who grew up in the 60s having the sexual freedom of expression and creativity that they refuse to allow the 90s to have.

( More details about The Tribe ) Anyway, it and its themes still linger in my head, so I'm very grateful to the YT uploader.


The Halfway House (1944), starring Mervyn & Glynis Johns and Esmond Knight. This is another film I recorded off TPTV because it's summary was "a bunch of strangers get stranded together." ( For WWII moralising and ghosts )

Anyway, I have no regrets over every film I've recorded off TPTV because of the summary being "bunch of random mid-century Brits get stranded somewhere," and I will continue to snag any others I see - if there are any more!