Christopher H Bidmead on Entropy & Rebirth

The Doctor and Adric stand on a dock
on a cold winter day on the River Thames,
while the iconic smokestacks of Battersea Power Station
puff along in the background.

In the Doctor Who story "Logopolis," written by Christopher H Bidmead, the Doctor grows convinced that the TARDIS isn't operating properly. Like many of us with our cars, he's taken his time machine all over time and space, and rarely stopped to perform preventative maintenance. Suddenly, he's worried that his trusty old TARDIS is breaking down. At one point, he even asks his companion Adric to help him measure it, as he wonders if it might be shrinking. 

Logopolis is an interesting story for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was Tom Baker's final story playing the Doctor. While the Doctor is concerned that the systems on his TARDIS are breaking down, Tom Baker was contemplating a major life change. After being a national celebrity in England, he was stepping out of the limelight to take on other roles. After seven years of constant employment, it was back to the hustle of auditioning again, and wondering what roles he might be offered. And then there were the worries: he might have gotten tired of playing the Doctor, but he had nearly given up on acting before he got the role. Nothing in life is certain, and for all he knew, he might end up working on a construction crew again. At least that's where he had been working, when Barry Letts, the then-producer of Doctor Who, asked him to audition for the role. Now, several producers later, he was working with John Nathan Turner, and the two weren't getting along. As if all that weren't enough, he was contemplating marrying actress Lalla Ward, who had portrayed his former companion Romana. Lalla was a beautiful, dynamic woman, much younger than Tom. Although they were very much in love, the two continually quarreled during their time in the TARDIS, often to the point where Tom Baker refused to look at her when they were filming a scene together. So it's understandable that the Doctor looks so introspective in this episode, more like an absent-minded professor than the take-charge man he usually is.

I enjoyed walking along the River Thames last November, and touring the nearby Battersea Park. Sure, it would have been nice to have seen the plants and the trees in spring, when everything was in bloom and bursting with vitality, but change is an inevitable part of life. Everything has its proper time and place, and all things in life go in cycles. A few years ago, author (and SFWA Grand Master) Robert Silverberg told a crowd at Condor that he had stopped attending science fiction conventions for several years in the 1970s, when fans lost interest in discussing ideas, science, and literature, and conventions became more about games, dressing up, and media fiction. Recently, I've learned that Condor, which formerly styled itself as a literary convention, is deemphasizing the science and literature to concentrate more on what the fans seem to want, which is Cosplay (dressing up as comic book or movie characters, and acting out those roles), Steampunk (which is dressing up in Victorian-styled costumes, and having tea parties), and Sci-fi and Fantasy movies and TV shows. So, we move with the times, and change with the cycles. We die to one thing, and are reborn to another. When Entropy comes, what had cared about and loved no longer seems important, so we gravitate to what works for us now. Or at least, what we feel we need.

Of course, it's unfair to dismiss Cosplay, Steampunk, and Media Sci-Fi, as if they are inferior creations to literature. All are deeply rooted in literature, and merely finding expression in a new medium. (I should point out that, while I'm writing this blog about a climate shift within popular culture, I am in fact writing about a Sci-fi TV show, and not a book). Still, a few years from now, fans in San Diego may be looking back, and wondering why they're not discussing SF literature any more. Say, whatever happened to all those authors that used to attend science fiction conventions?

It's kind of like Tom Baker and Lalla Ward's marriage. It didn't last for very long, certainly not as long as either would have liked, but then they recognized they weren't right for each other, and parted on amicable terms. Five years later, he was to marry former Doctor Who assistant editor Sue Jerrard, and this marriage would be one that would endure. 

The Doctor and Adric no longer stand on that dock,
but it still serves passengers and ships along the River Thames.

I enjoyed my visit to Battersea Park last November, and seeing the little dock on which the TARDIS landed in "Logopolis." It may have been cold, and the pathways littered with leaves, but Fall possesses its own radiant beauty. Now we're enduring the heat of summer, but soon it will be Fall again, with declining temperatures and falling leaves. Now I'm sweating, but all too soon I'll be shivering again, and looking forward to summer. Oh yes, and wishing once again that, this year, I had finally gotten around to installing insulation in my house. 

Yeah, that would have been smart.

How are the forces of entropy currently affecting your life? What changes are you most looking forward to, and how are you preparing to harness them?

Dragon Dave

A Monthly Update to My Top Ten Posts

As it's the beginning of a new month, I thought I'd update the Page "My Ten Most Popular Posts" (located to your right).  You'll notice a lot can happen in a couple weeks.  I've also listed the current number of "page views" on the page so you can better appreciate future changes).  I plan on updating this page monthly from now on, to reflect ongoing changes in viewer interest.

My Most Popular Posts                              
(as of June 13, 2013)
1.   Steven Brust: The Complete Package
2.   Steven Brust: My Ultimate Weapon
3.   Everyone Wants to See Stan Lee
4.   The Windmills of Mojave
5.   Catching a Glimpse of Norman Clegg’s House
6.   Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moestra: 
      Consummate Professionals
7.   Pocket Dalek Knitting Pattern
8.   Daleks Love Jammie Dodgers: A Cookie-Making Tutorial
9.   Those Immortal Catalogs
10. The Cybercraft Orbiting Laboratory

As you'll see from my updated page, the biggest change is due to a sudden surge of interest is a post about James Herriot.  When I wrote it a year ago, it received no special interest.  (In actual page views, I believe it was slightly below-average).  But it's caught on in the last month or two, and as one person shares it with another, and that person presumably shares it with someone else, its readership has grown.  I'm glad it's become popular, and dare to hope that people have found it beneficial to their lives.  

Sometimes, our best efforts seem to go unnoticed.  It's nice to be occasionally reminded that what we do for others has not necessarily been forgotten.  It also gives me hope that, should my novels ever be published, and, as all too often happens, they not prove immediately popular, that the stories may eventually find readers who love them.  

That's a good feeling.

Dragon Dave

Rolling With The Changes

Supreme Dalek: What?  That's all you can cough up?
Come on, you can do better than that!

For a while now, I've been wondering how my Pages can best serve my readers.  Unlike Posts, which appear in the Blog Archive under the current month, and then disappear when the next month begins, Pages remain until they are taken down.  It seems to me that the Pages (located on the top right-hand side) should summarize the ongoing life of the blog, and help the reader find Posts most suited to his or her interest.  While my blog is constantly evolving, from time to time I have focused on series or themes that have taken a number of Posts to cover.  So I decided to begin this update with three themes close to my heart: my journey through James Herriot's world last summer, my visit to Stan Lee's Comikaze last fall, and the recent renewal of my love for comic books.

My visit to Yorkshire provided welcome insight into the area where James Herriot lived and worked, and enhanced my understanding of the veterinarian and author.  Some posts have touched people more than others.  Several entries in my series on Ritz Cinema in Thirsk, where he and Helen spent their second date, proved initially popular, and resided on my Top Ten Posts for a long time.  Others, such as "The Famous Woodworker of Kilburn," have recently been discovered by readers.  I'm currently watching season three of "All Creatures Great and Small" on DVD, and each episode brings back pleasant memories of our visit to that region of England.  I never touched upon all the aspects of what I saw and learned there, or explored the intersection between the author and his stories as much as I had intended, but the Page "James Herriot's World" contains a representative sampling of that series.  If you've been considering a trip to England, and are looking for meaningful places to visit, perhaps this Page will be of some benefit to you.  And if you live in England, love James Herriot's stories, and have never visited these areas, well, now's your chance!

Stan Lee's Comikaze was a special convention, one outside my normal experience.  It opened my eyes to other ways in which people interact with the Fiction (particularly Science Fiction and Fantasy) they love.  Perhaps you'll find a new avenue to explore in my new Page "Stan Lee's Comikaze."  At the very least, you'll get an idea of what the convention has to offer, should you decide to attend this year's event in Los Angeles.  

Finally, I've renamed my "Comics" Page "Comics Old & New."  It contains links to most, if not all, of my Posts on comics that I've found thought-provoking.  Check this page from time to time, as I plan on updating it extensively in the coming months, particularly when it come to new (or at least fairly recent) comics.

I'm still uncertain what to do with some of the other Pages, particularly the one devoted to "Authors."  (That one in particular is why I started this blog, and literature is still my first and best love when it comes to Fiction).   I'm considering dropping some Pages, and adding others.  If you have any suggestions on Pages you would like to see, or would find helpful, please let me know, either as a comment or an email.  Lacking feedback, I'll continue as best I can, following the Supreme Dalek's admonition.  Yes, I can do more with my Pages section.  Yes, I can keep them up-to-date and relevant.  Yes, I can do better than I've done in the past.  And I will!

Dragon Dave

DTM Racing & The Fantastic Four

This weekend, I watched a DTM race for the first time.  That's not to say that I've never seen a DTM race, as I've followed the series (known as the German Touring Car Masters) on and off since the early 1990s. The format of these highlight shows remained fairly consistent over the past two decades.  The opening minutes would summarize qualifying, a discussion of the season thus far, and interviews.  The middle third of the hour-long broadcast would show edited portions of the race.  Each show would end with wrapping-up interviews, and a little of the podium celebrations.  Thus, after commercials, what I actually saw of the race was probably little more than twenty minutes of the cars speeding around the track.  Even if I had to endure this brief glimpse of the series, I longed to watch the highlight shows during the year, rather than several months after the entire series had ended.

A few months ago, discussions with a friend led me to investigate the history of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four.  I discovered that Roger Corman helped produce a low-budget movie in 1994 based on their origin story, and their first meeting with the villainous Doctor Doom.  Although the movie was never officially released, either direct-to-video or in cinemas, it demonstrated that the people who had purchased the movie rights from Marvel understood the characters, and desperately wanted to do them justice with a big budget motion picture.  I discovered that the movie was available on Youtube, and watched it one afternoon.  While it was hard to evaluate the film's merits, watching it as I did on a small rectangle on my laptop, I found it highly enjoyable.

I've realized for some time now that the DTM races were available on Youtube, so the desire to watch complete races, and follow the series throughout the season, beckoned.  That, plus my interest in watching Roger Corman's "The Fantastic Four" on my TV, led my wife to investigate the possibilities of doing so.  She discovered that we could access the Internet through our Playstation 3 game console, and found an app that made it possible to see content with the entire TV screen.  I worried about excessive pixelation during the movie, but it played so nicely that my wife forgot at times that she wasn't watching a DVD.  I worried about the feed halting at times, but everything played smoothly, and the video and sound quality were both excellent (in the case of the races, sometimes even better than the usual broadcasts).  

While we're happy with our cable Internet access, we've been wondering lately if we really need Cable TV.  Has the time arrived when I stop thinking of television in terms of channels and times, and start thinking of it as a database I can access at my leisure?  I'm not sure that we've answered that question yet, but I know this.  I loved watching "The Fantastic Four," and wish they would release the film on DVD, along with bonus material about the production.  We also enjoyed watching the DTM races from Spielberg (Germany) and Brands Hatch, complete and uncut, and each with a length of approximately one hour-and-forty minutes.  I'm wonder what else we'll discover--and grow to love--as we investigate how technology is revolutionizing our (apparently) outdated concept of home entertainment.

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links
The DTM Racing Series
The 1994 Fantastic Four movie

My Ten Most Popular Posts Have Changed

Look at all this change!

Sometimes a post will skyrocket in popularity on the day it's published, perhaps even within a few hours of being posted.  Other times, someone will discover an entry I wrote several months back, or even a year ago, and I'll watch as, day by day, the number of page views rises.  It's been awhile since I wrote up My Ten Most Popular Posts page for you, and I figured I should update it.  So if you're interested in seeing what has captured readers' interest recently on The Dragon's Cache, or has proven extraordinarily popular, check out my new Top Ten Posts page, located on the top right hand side of my home page, above the archive links section.  

Below is the old page, so you can compare the differences, or reacquaint yourself with a former favorite.

My (Former) Most Popular Posts 

1.   Steven Brust: The Complete Package

2.   Steven Brust: My Ultimate Weapon

3.   Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moestra: 
      Consummate Professionals

4.   Those Immortal Catalogs

5.   Catching a Glimpse of Norman Clegg’s House

6.   An Evening at Ritz Cinema: Part 2

7.   An Evening at Ritz Cinema: Part 3

8.   Envying Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber

9.   An Evening at Ritz Cinema: Part 5

10. An Evening at Ritz Cinema: Part 4

Farewell, old list.  It was nice knowing you.

Dragon Dave

P.S.  A Note on Site Navigation
While each day's Post is located to your left, the permanent Pages are located above them.  The latter are located directly below the Home link.  So if you click on a Page (such as My Ten Most Popular Posts or Dalek Digressions), then wish to return to today's Post, simply click the Home link.  

The Power of a Beloved Name

During our recent vacation, we stayed in St. Pete Beach, a resort town on Florida’s gulf coast.  In order to get anywhere, we had to drive through a number of towns.  The one we passed through most was South Pasadena.  Now, this name is evocative for me, as my grandparents attended a church in South Pasadena, California when I was growing up, and it was a special place, filled with great people.  In my time there, I gained friendships that lasted for years, and a few that still stand today. 

As we drove along, I noticed that most of the signs for streets, hospitals, schools, and businesses had Pasadena in the title, not South Pasadena.  I found this even more evocative, as my grandparents lived in Pasadena while I was growing up, and I remember their house as a place of warmth, contentment, and love.  Despite everything else that changed during my childhood, their home remained my special place, and spending time with my grandparents during the summer the best vacation I could imagine. 

Suddenly, with so many signs proclaiming Pasadena, I thought, “I should take a few photographs to share with my mother.”  Soon I was hunting down any example of Pasadena-this-or-that that didn’t flash past too quickly for my camera’s shutter.  I was smiling as I hunted down any building or signage containing Pasadena.  So what if most of the pictures didn’t turn out: I was having a blast!  Later on, I realized that my mother probably had little interest in seeing these photographs: really, I had taken them for the pleasure of doing so.  While it would be easy to dismiss my actions as temporary insanity (or an indication of a permanently unbalanced mind), I have to think that what really prompted my actions was the tremendous power of a familiar, beloved name.

Like Nicholas Meyer (in yesterday’s blog), I sometimes wonder why TV or movies portray a cherished fictional character in a particular manner.  Occasionally, the portrayal veers so far from the original conception, or my favorite adaptation, that watching this new version makes me depressed or angry.  In the instances that the latter incarnation proves popular, this makes me feel alone and unwanted. Yet, even if the character or story portrayal is the opposite of the way I believe it should be, I try to be tolerant of those adaptations.  For one of the signs that a given character or story is important to humanity is its ability to survive so many reinterpretations, and emerge just as vibrant and popular as the original portrayal.  To quote Zach Snyder, the director of this year’s upcoming movie “Man of Steel:” “Superman is still the greatest superhero, no doubt.  Our job is to make him even greater by finding the version of him that we want and need now.”  (Entertainment Weekly Issue #1242, January 18, 2013)  Or, as Nicholas Meyer said in his article for the Los Angeles Review of Books, each portrayal of a fictional character “is informed by the form and pressure of the age in which he lives, what society values or condemns or overlooks.”

All of us are individuals, and our tastes will occasionally diverge from the norm.  When it comes to a character or story we really care about it, it’s easy to cry, “Please, don’t change it.  Keep adhere to the portrayal I like the best!”  But forms and archetypes don’t exist solely to serve individuals.  They serve societies as well.  As painful as it may be, we sometimes need to step back, look around us, and say, “If that’s what others need to make it through the day, and to empower them to benefit their world, then fine.  Best of luck to them.”

Otherwise, the relentless tide of life will roll over us, crushing and shattering us like statues made of glass. 

Dragon Dave

Imprisoned By The Apes

Where Charlton Heston, and his fellow humans,
were once caged in Malibu Creek State Park.

In the original film version of "Planet of the Apes," as the astronauts flee with the primitive humans through the cornfield, the apes capture many in their nets, while shooting others.  One of the astronauts, Dodge dies from a bullet wound.  In Taylor’s case, a bullet damages his throat.  After their capture, the survivors are taken to Ape City, where they will be put to a variety of purposes.  Taylor ends up under the scrutiny of Zira, an animal psychologist.  He sometimes shares a cell with Nova, a primitive girl.

Not only do the apes keep the humans indoors, but they also bring them outside into a large cage, presumably so they can exercise.  When Zira visits Taylor there, his injured throat prevents him from speaking, so he tries to communicate with her by writing in the dirt.  Then the community leader, Dr. Zaius, arrives.  Taylor keeps hoping Zira will turn around to see what he’s written, as primitive humans have no language skills.  But by the time she turns around, Taylor realizes that Nova has brushed away his words.

The humans are led up these steps from Ape City
 to get their exercise in the cage.

It seems ironic that the concrete pad upon which the large cage was erected still stands, when no sign of the more impressive Ape City exists.  But perhaps this is fitting, as the mere idea of humans being imprisoned by apes must have seemed threatening to 1960s society.  How else can one explain that the image of the humans’ cage takes up the majority of one of the studio posters? 

The staircase leading to the humans' cage.

A chief concern of the film regards to what extent society should be protected from any knowledge that might harm it.  Living in the Information Age, such an idea may seem inconceivable at present, but in earlier eras, any ideas, thoughts, historic documents, or scientific observations that might weaken a given community’s stability were labeled heresy.  Now, facts and ideas ripple through society faster than anyone can control.  Questions as to what type of information might injure a given community have grown largely irrelevant.  The leadership of every group, organization, and nation therefore dedicates a large portion of its energies to limiting the damage such changes might cause. 

A cage with a view.

The point of the movie was never that the apes were needlessly cruel to the humans.  Zira rejoices when she learns that Taylor is as intelligent as herself.  When Dr. Zaius realizes the danger Taylor represents to his society, his first thought is to geld him (prevent him from reproducing), not to kill him.  In many ways, ape society seems more humane than our own.  After all, when they take their captives out for exercise, at least they give the humans a cage with a terrific view.

Dragon Dave