Alden Bates' Weblog

On Monday, the latest issues of RTP and TSV both popped through my letterbox. Yesterday I was sick as a dog (don't ask) so I had the opportunity to read both from cover to cover.

RTP celebrates 10 years and 25 issues! Roughly half the issue is taken up by the last of the series of articles on Tardis Tales (including a reprint of the TSV 34 edition of Dr Hoo), and much of the rest is taken up by the end of Peter Adamson's comic strip masterpiece Cydonia. The latter was the highlight of the issue for me. Is there going to be an issue with Cydonia collected? The other major item being an interview with Kelly Buchanan of Random Static, a Wellington publishing firm who have taken over publishing the Faction Paradox line.

The only problem I had with this issue was an unfortunate choice of fonts. In the font used, the space under the tittle on the lower-case 'i' is very narrow, making it difficult to tell the difference between the 'i' and 'l'. As a result, the name "Billis" on the last page looks like a series of vertical lines with 'B' and 's' at opposite ends.

TSV, meanwhile, is celebrating 20 years and 75 issues with a slick and glossy full-colour cover. Oh, if only all the covers from now on could be colour!

One of the highlights of TSV for me, was Amy Mebberson's artwork for the Series 3 reviews, with a mixture of serious art and extremely funny cartoons. Some interesting view in the reviews themselves - I agreed with a lot of what was said, and it seems pretty much everyone agreed that the season ended on a bit of a duff note. The in-depth commentary on TSV 1 was fascinating, as was the screening history of Doctor Who in Singapore, though I suspect a more interesting question would be "Where did the tapes of the missing episodes go after Singapore screened them?!" (Jon addresses this a bit in the article).

In Doctor's Dilemma, Jon Preddle takes on the claim that Sylvester McCoy is the longest running Doctor, ad he technically held the title from 1987 to 1996, but Jon comes up with a different result. I think Jon's wrong though - Peter Davison has been playing the Doctor from 1981 to 2007 (last appearing onscreen in Time Crash this November, but also in the Big Finish audios) so, although he hasn't been the current Doctor all that time, technically he's still been the Doctor for the last 26 years!

I have two items in TSV 75 - two drabbles in fact, which were entered in the Drabble Who Challenge. If you want to read them, you'll have to get the issue. :)

You can preview the TSV 75 contents listing and cover on the NZDWFC site.