[I wrote this with about 0 brain something like 2 months ago. But I was feeling like posting one of my drafts and I just realised belatedly that Chris Bidmead had died in August. Or possibly just found out and was shocked for a second time, who knows, it's terrible how much I forget. But I do love his DW era very much and while he lived to a good age, I am still sorry to hear it - he brought so much to the show & was a rare DW script editor who was genuinely interested in SFF* as a genre, which showed in a whole bunch of scripts commissioned by him, which are like any of the other eras - even if a whole set of them then had the misfortunate to be made by the next script editor who Did Not Get Them at all. This serial is actually one he wrote later for his successor's rather more action/dark orientated era (and said successor, Eric Saward, Did Not Get this one either), but - I had prepared it earlier! And also: I love Frontios!]


I haven't much brain so I thought for this edition of the Unofficial Fandom 50 I would once again burble about a favourite classic Who serial, this time...

Frontios

tumblr gifset for pictures

What is it?

It is a four part Fifth Doctor serial (4x 25 mins; c. 1hr 25 minutes in total) from Season 21 (1984). Yes, it has Giant Woodlice.

The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) accidentally stray into the far future - so far that the Time Lords are forbidden to go there. They arrive at a tiny, struggling colony of survivors from Earth, who are under bombardment from an unknown enemy from space - except there's also something beneath them: the earth on Frontios is hungry...


Sometimes, as a DW fan, you love the unloved serial; sometimes you adore the fan favourite - and sometimes you just love a decent one more than you can properly justify or exactly explain, but we've all been there. I have a few of these, and Frontios is one, although honestly I think it's belongs in the circle just outside of the all time greats personally, which is why I'm going to babble about it. (I mean, I realise, like everything, it does depend on a) taste and b) how people feel about lumbering giant woodlice).

(It's also the only DW serial where a member of the main guest cast had to be replaced at the last minute because the original actor, Peter Arne, had been murdered. This has no bearing on anything, other than the replacement being the excellent William Lucas, but I felt the need to mention it anyway). (All my DW classic faves do not involve someone dying or nearly dying irl, I promise).




What do I love about it?

It's about confronting buried/unspoken terrors & what you can do with gravity in SFF if you have some giant woodlice to hand, plus it's one of those forsaken, almost Shakespearean colonies classic Who loves to do (the youthful leader with his fragile hold on it is even called Plantagenet) and I am a sucker for such things. The guest cast is great - William Lucas, Lesley Dunlop, Peter Gilmore & Jeff Rawle, pre-Drop the Dead Donkey.

Penned by Five's original script editor, Chris Bidmead, Peter Davison shines here, and gets to pull out his brainy specs for the first time since Bidmead left; Tegan and Turlough are both really well used, with Turlough's buried race trauma demonstrating that having alien companions as well as earthlings on the TARDIS can lead to interesting options for storytelling.

It's dark and weird, fascinating and quotable, with excellent team!TARDIS banter. The hatstand gets a moment of glory. The TARDIS is disintegrated. The Doctor saves Tegan's life by being really insulting to her. "Frontios buries its own dead."

Basically, I love weird colonies, I love strange ideas, I love this TARDIS team, I love the hatstand, I'm not at all put off by giant woodlice and: "Just tell them I came and went like a summer cloud." (Oh, Five. <3)


* Classic Who script editors (and producers) were assigned to the show by the BBC and did not always have a huge amount of choice about being offered the post and then being removed from it - it was just how the BBC worked at the time.

Just wrote a little snippet for Small Prophets, for 100fandoms, because I felt like it and also I thought there should be something for it, so:

Live in Hope (266 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Small Prophets (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kacey & Michael Sleep
Characters: Kacey (Small Prophets), Michael Sleep
Summary: Michael and Kacey have nothing to do but wait.

(I need to rewatch it - I think this must be set c. late ep4 or sometime in ep5? I mean, I need to rewatch anyway, because it hasn't stopped living in my head yet.)

Dear highadrenalineexchange writer,

thank you so much for writing a story for me! I've requested and received most of these fandoms before - some for many, many years, and often with the same prompts, because when I really enjoy something, I immediately want fifty more takes on the same thing. *g* So if that's what we matched on, don't worry about repeating things! I'll be absolutely thrilled about anything you can create about the relationships I requested.

Everything important is in the requests themselves, but if you'd like even more info, general likes etc., here you go.

My AO3 account is Trobadora, and it's set to welcome treats.

General Preferences

( Likes & Dislikes/DNWs )

Fandoms and relationships

In somewhat alphabetical order - note that some sections are expanded compared to the sign-up form:

Jump directly to:

• Christabel/Grimm crossover: Christabel & Geraldine & Grimm Worldbuilding
• 绅探 | Detective L: Huo Wensi/Luo Fei
• Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette
• 镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing
• Grimm/镇魂 | Guardian (TV) crossovers: Nick Burkhardt & Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Ya Qing, Sean Renard/Ya Qing
• Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha
• 长公主在上 | Eldest Princess On Top: Li Yunzhen/Gu Xuanqing

( Christabel/Grimm crossover: Christabel & Geraldine & Grimm Worldbuilding )

( 绅探 | Detective L: Huo Wensi/Luo Fei, )

( Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette )

( 镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing )

( Grimm/Guardian crossovers: Nick Burkhardt & Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Ya Qing, Sean Renard/Ya Qing )

( Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha )

( 长公主在上 | Eldest Princess On Top: Li Yunzhen/Gu Xuanqing )

• Exchanges:
  
  fffx is having a delay, and meanwhile highadrenalineexchange is in sign-ups. As things currently stand, FFFX should reveal right at the HA deadline, which isn't optimal, and if there's another delay, it will be even less optimal. Two 10k exchanges, overlapping - oops?
  
  And yet somehow I'm still signing up for HA! Because I want to be writing, and I know it will reliably make me write. So far this year hasn't gone great writing-wise, and I need it to get better because I always feel better when I'm writing ...
  
  Of course it may turn out that no one else signs up who wants anything I can write, and the whole thing will be moot anyway. *g* Fingers crossed!


• Comments:
  
  Over at the Guardian Slo-Mo Rewatch, things have gone a little more quiet in the comments than I'd like, but I can't exactly complain because I've been so busy I've fallen behind myself a few times. Including right now. And I'm also a bit behind on AO3 comments - on older stuff, that is; I'm caught up on my most recent fic, including the spam comment I got today. (It's so frustrating when there's so few comments to begin with, and then one of them is spam! *grumbles*) I'm going to see if I can catch up at least on some of it tonight.

In conclusion, still in desperate need of a TARDIS. *g*

How's everyone else doing? Anyone else doing HA?

Can you please keep my family in your thoughts and prayers?

We need it now.  Thanks. 

candyheartsex author reveals have happened! And here's the fic I wrote for facethestrange:

**

Title: in the darkness with you
Word count: 4,233
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Pairing: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Rating: Mature
Content tags: Blind Zhao Yunlan, First time, Hand-Feeding, Finger-Sucking, Clothed Sex, Zhao Yunlan's oral fixation, Episode Related, Episode 21, Missing Scene, Blindness Arc
A/N: Many thanks to china_shop for beta-reading.

Summary:

Zhao Yunlan woke to the smell of citrus, sweet and strong in the air. Without fully turning his face out of the pillow, he slitted open a sleep-heavy eye - to complete, unchanged darkness. Reality came crashing down like a landslide. Right: still blind.

I thought it might make a change to write something here and post it straight away, instead of in two weeks or three or four months, idk, shocking but still. (I continue as before, getting a little more useful with every few days.) In the meantime, here are some fannish things that made me happy in this last week:

1. Another Enigma fic! \o/ 0_o

All Tapped Out (665 words) by misura
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tom Jericho/Hester Wallace
Characters: Tom Jericho, Hester Wallace, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Vignette, Missions Gone Wrong
Summary: “What the bloody hell was that?”


2. Sesskasays, whose Classic Who reactions I have enjoyed so much... is going to be doing Blake's 7! I did not dare really hope, but yay. I cannot wait for her to meet Servalan.


3. Small Prophets, on the iPlayer, a 6-part comedy from Mackenzie Crook, who did The Detectorists. It has all the mix of slow build, appreciation of small things & being v down to earth of the former, with actual supernatural ingredient in shape of six humunculi that Michael Sleep (Pearce Quigley) grows in his garden shed, for reasons. I haven't watched most of ep6 yet, but cannot imagine it producing any reason in the last 27 minutes for me not to rec it warmly here.


4. Another magnitude of miraculous on from Enigma-fic - a Rufus/Adam vidlet for A Fatal Inversion (Jeremy Northam & Douglas Hodge in 1991/2) from someone on YT:



Like. This is why I wrote Rufus/Adam fic that nobody wanted! And this doesn't even have the shots with the dinner party and the make up, but, lol, I feel like it is a much more compelling argument for watching it than me saying it's very good. XD


Anyway, creative people continue to be a Good Thing is all. <3

I've had this post stashed away since late November, meaning to come back to it and write something more sensible about The Stone Tape that wasn't how much I wanted to icon Jane Asher's face. The reviews were already at least a couple months out of date, I think. Then life intervened and alas, I have even less brain now than then, so I should get on and post it anyway.

---

Eye in the Sky (2015)

This was one of the later things I pulled off Jeremy Northam's CV. The JN tumblrs reckoned it was a good one - and it was.

It's about an international military and political operation to capture the three top leaders of an Islamist extremist group in Somalia, with various layers of people involved via video conference - the UK Colonel in charge (Helen Mirren), the US soldiers running the 'eye in the sky' (Aaron Paul, Phoebe Fox), the Somali agents on the ground (esp. Barkhad Abdi), and a small group overseeing it from a meeting room in Whitehall (Alan Rickman as General Benson, Jeremy Northam as the Minister in charge, Monica Dolan as PR), plus various others who need to be consulted, including Iain Glen as the Foreign Secretary. And right there in the middle of it all, is Alia (Aisha Takow), a child who lives close to the target house.

( Cut for more details )

Smartly made modern film, but also exactly the kind of knotty moral problem and intelligent writing you'd have got in a Play of the Month.

Talking of which...


Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape (BBC 1972)

I this via Talking Pictures, after having heard of it forever, and it was great! I really loved it. The creepy concept, the scientific approach - I really wished I had screencaps so I could icon Jane Asher in it (she was wonderful generally, not just icon-able) and everything. The way that the misogyny was used was also great, and took me by surprise because I had felt my one other Nigel Kneale did give way to a 1960s/70s misogynistic trope that I had seen too often by that point, but perhaps the "seen too often" part was more of the problem, because this just made me sit up and do the, "Oh. oh" moment for real. Highly recommended if you like any brand of creepy UK 70s TV. (It IS creepy/disturbing, though. This is not a chirpy watch that will end well, please do note). It starred some other people who weren't Jane Asher, too, like Iain Cutherbertson and they were all also good, I just didn't want to icon them and their face and their red hair in quite the same way. XD

So glad I finally watched it & I enjoyed it even in summer, when I so often can't manage TV downstairs.


Official Secrets (2019)

EitS having been so good, when I realised that this one (featuring one of the 2 brief cameos that are all JN has done since 2016) was also directed by Gavin Hood, I checked for a cheap copy & obtained it poste haste. I really liked this too, and watching them close together made me think even more highly of both - this is the story of a real incident from 2002, while EitS is a theoretical piece behind its tension, but underneath, they're both smartly done morality plays with excellent casts. (Incidentally, there are 3 actors who feature in both - Monica Dolan, John Heffernan and Jeremy Northam).

When I looked up both films online the first description is always "underrated" and the Guardian apparently ran a piece for Keira Knightley's 40th earlier this year recommending a top list of her films to watch, and put Official Secrets at no. 1.

Official Secrets isn't as tightly contained as EitS, as it's based on a real UK whistleblower incident from 2002, but which ended up not having much effect, so it's a really unusual thing to tackle (& as faithfully as this - they had a lot of the real people involved in the production in some way or other). As before, it's a large but excellent cast (Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Adam Bakri, Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma & more).

( More under here, although not really spoilery )


Anyway, after watching both, I got excited by clearly liking a director's stuff, so I looked up what Gavin Hood had done since - and the answer was nothing, dammit! (Before that he did Wolverine and Ender's Game, which are not tightly done morality plays. I mean, I assume not?? But I might need to investigate the first half of his CV more closely sometime. He has something upcoming lurking on imdb, which sounds more similar, but I'm not sure if that's real, or just a production hell mythical something or other.)

Happy Lunar New Year!

Time keeps slipping away from me again, and I keep thinking of things I want to post about, but when I finally sit get to down and open DW, I've forgotten all about it.

But I remembered the New Year, at least! *g*