Beyond the Roundels

Starfall Stories 53

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 20:29:43 GMT

Keep forgetting to crosspost my rainbowfic pieces & I'm still quite a bit behind, so have two:

Name: Watchdogs
Story: Starfall
Colors: Azul #15 (Through thick and thin)
Supplies and Styles: Novelty Beads (11 Years of Dreamwidth Space Month & Book of the Day Challenges - "Never alone.")
Word Count: 1794
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Mild illness.
Notes: 1313, Portcallan. Leion Valerno, Tana Veldiner, Iyana Valerno. Takes place straight after after Turn to Dust and a few days before Sweet Interlude. (Just a slight linking piece, but I wanted to post something.)
Summary: Leion recovers from Chiulder's work - with a little help.

Name: Missteps
Story: Starfall
Colors: Warm Heart #22 (Sorry); Azul #20 (Zest)
Supplies and Styles: Giftwrap + Silhouette + Novelty Beads (Oct Spooky Challenge 2020 - http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0g7cdJCp91r6aoq4o1_500.gif & September Secrets 11 Years of Rainbow fic - "It's in the palm of your hand now baby/It's a yes or no, no maybe" - Dark Horse, Katy Perry") + Pastels (allbingo square "Bouquet of Withered Flowers - Rejected Love").
Word Count: 2361
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None.
Notes: 1313, Portcallan. Leion Valerno/Viyony Eseray, Kettah Jadinor, Diyela Eseray, Aolla Gerro, Vin Lorras.
Summary: Leion and Viyony attend the first night of the Sea Festival. Nothing goes according to plan.

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Unofficial Fandom 50: Frontios [4/50]

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:08:36 GMT

[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 unlike 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 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.

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Ficlet: Live in Hope (Small Prophets)

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 20:54:05 GMT

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.)

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An actual up to date little post of nice things

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 19:19:42 GMT

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

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What I was watching... um... in summer?

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 20:54:59 GMT

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.)

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Starfall Stories 52

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:32:57 GMT

Still catching up on crossposting some rainbowfic:

Name: Sweet Interlude
Story: Starfall
Colors: Vert #11 (Marriage)
Supplies and Styles: Silhouette
Word Count: 2343
Rating: PG
Warnings: None?
Notes: Portcallan, 1313; Leion Valerno/Viyony Eseray. (A rather slight linking piece).
Summary: Leion and Viyony attend a wedding.

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Fic: Subdivisions (Discworld/Chronicles of St Marys)

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 21:09:51 GMT

I was planning to type up some older ficlets I'd found in my notebook, including one for no_true_pair, and when I opened the doc, found an all but complete one already typed up! So here's one I had mostly prepared much earlier but apparently gave up on for some reason.

For the Sept 2024 round of No True Pair, and also for 51pluscrossoverfandoms, 100fandoms & allbingo Crime Classics.

Subdivisions (1073 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, The Chronicles of St Mary's - Jodi Taylor
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Death (Discworld) & Madeleine "Lucy" Maxwell
Characters: Death (Discworld), Madeleine "Lucy" Maxwell, Leon Farrell
Additional Tags: Crossover, Alcohol, Drunkenness, Community: no_true_pair, Community: 51pluscrossoverfandoms, Community: 100fandoms, Community: allbingo, Max would like it to be known that none of this would happen if Peterson could drive straight, Death just wants to talk
Summary: Max continues trying to cheat Death, even when Death just wants to buy her a pint.

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Fic: when all the leaves are gold (The Winslow Boy)

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:37:45 GMT

In the midst of writing five ways Sir Robert and Catherine could have got together post-canon for yuletide, the inevitable result was also thinking about what if they were just married already. And I hadn't yet actually written them for 100ships or TWB for 100fandoms, so I scribbled this down somewhere in between or after the assignment, and here it is.

when all the leaves are gold (1497 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Winslow Boy (1999)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Morton/Catherine Winslow
Characters: Robert Morton (Winslow Boy), Catherine Winslow
Additional Tags: Community: 100ships, Community: 100fandoms, Community: allbingo, Post-Canon, Edwardian Period, Marriage, Suffragettes, World War I, (outbreak of), Vignette, Happily married Sir Robert and Catherine, Established Relationship, 1910s
Summary: Catherine and Sir Robert, making a marriage work.

(edwardianspinsteraunt, the second section centres around the imminent announcement of WWI and fears in that regard, but only discussions of it, and the first section is entirely war-free anyway, so you are definitely safe there.)

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Starfall Stories 51

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 20:11:40 GMT

I continue to make slow progress with recovering, which is very dull, but still generally in the right direction, however hard it is to be patient. I haven't been able to keep up much at all here, only in bits and pieces.

However, I realised I was behind with crossposting rainbowfic pieces, and I can do that:

Name: Turn To Dust
Story: Starfall
Colors: Warm Heart #25 (Spite); Azul #9 (Willpower); Colour of the Day - 30/10/2025 (Wheedle)
Supplies and Styles: Charcoal + Chiaroscuro + Graffiti (for October Challenge incl. bonus prompt "Psychological Horror") + Novelty Beads ("But I am alive. And I am not afraid." from bookblather for Birthday Prompts 2021).
Word Count: 3808
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Mental manipulation, threat, injury, death.
Notes: Portcallan, 1313. Leion Valerno, Donn Chiulder, Tana Veldiner. (This isn't Psychological Horror as a genre per se, but I thought taken as a prompt, it fitted too perfectly not to use for this).
Summary: Leion faces his worst nightmare.

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Sat, 24 Jan 2026 20:14:35 GMT

Some things that I have had stashed away for a little while:

1. sovay very kindly sent me a copy of Exit Through the Fireplace by Kate Dunn, which was waiting for me at the new house when I got here. It is about repertory theatre with lots of accounts on every aspect from actors and others involved, including a lot of people I have watched in old telly, so I enjoyed it a lot.

But having only recently before tried to make a post explaining what I loved about Terence Rattigan's plays, including floundering about trying to say how effective his dialogue is, I was v pleased to find this quote:

John Moffatt: (On being in rep, and the difficulty of remembering the lines, doing a new play every week): "You got to know who the good writers were. With Rattigan you barely had to learn it at all, even after just blocking it you almost knew it because it is so beautifully written. The only way to reply to something that has just been said is what he's written."

2. Talking of people being kind, swordznsorcery wrote me a lovely Sapphire & Steel story with a new Element and a stealth crossover very RTMI here, and if you also like S&S, I recommend taking a look, as it's great! <3

3. The book I was reading introduced me to the utterly untrue but very S&S like urban myth/ghost story of the Zanetti Train. Sounds like an Assignment to me, or a film I would watch, anyway. (It seems to have been taken from a Ukrainian work of fiction, most likely - certainly not one detail of it has any truth in it).

4. Making personalised bingo cards proved to be exactly in my wheelhouse right now, so I had fun with that. If anyone missed it the other day and would like one, feel free to still ask! (Here or there, whatever).

5. Random AO3 tag found while wrangling that is currently amusing me: It is literally just Twelfth Night but with Moomins.

Otherwise still slowly progressing and all that etc etc etc.

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Personalised bingo card offer

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 18:29:53 GMT

Hello, I am still recovering, etc. Quite nicely as these things go, but still not up to doing all my usual little things.

Anyway, thought of something fannish and fun I could do if anyone wanted it - I made a personalised bingo card for theseatheseatheopensea once, which was fun, and I do always love doing that kind of thing. So...

... if anyone else would find a custom-made bingo card (for writing/creating prompts) fun/useful/inspiring, comment here and I will have a go at making you one!

(I'll use the Bingo Generator, so it's very easy, and if I fail and include some rubbish prompts, a new card without such prompts can magically be re-generated with no trouble. Will do any size from 2x2 to 5x5.)

So just comment here if you'd like one & say what size card you'd prefer. You can also point me to/away from any fandoms/prompt types etc if you'd like, but no need. (If I'm really stuck for some reason, I'll just ask you for some pointers!)

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End of Year Writing Meme 2025

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 21:10:38 GMT

I continue recovering very slowly but at least pretty steadily - and my things are gradually getting out of boxes too. In the meantime, I thought I could probably manage to do the end of year meme, so here it is:

The usual writing meme for the year. (Last year's post is here.)

( Cut for length )

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Yuletide Reveals 2025

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:08:22 GMT

yuletide is now over for another year! I did, in fact, have the misfortune to turn up at the exact wrong moment to catch the reveals bug on the 24th, so I saw the identity of my gift-writer, although as they were someone that I only had the vaguest idea of having seen the name around AO3 somewhere before, it didn't really spoil anything, thankfully.

I had hoped to do some little treats, as I got on and got my fic done as soon as I could, but I moved instead. However, as I cut out one section from my assignment and posted it separately in Madness, I did technically still post a treat as well!

I wrote The Winslow Boy for edwardianspinsteraunt, so I was not super anonymous really, for anyone who actually looked that far, but I had a lovely time spending a month or so rewatching the film and coming up with different scenarios from their prompts and my head for a 5 + 1 Times fic. By the end, I decided, though, that the "+1" just increasingly didn't sit right with the rest, so I split it off, hence the Madness treat.

Passing Acquaintances (8985 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Winslow Boy (1999)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Morton/Catherine Winslow
Characters: Robert Morton (Winslow Boy), Catherine Winslow, Arthur Winslow, Grace Winslow, Desmond Curry
Additional Tags: 5 Times, Post-Canon, 1910s, World War I, Trains, London, Smoking, Politics, Cars, Suffragettes, Yuletide, Edwardian Period
Summary: Five ways Catherine and Sir Robert might have met again, after the trial.

( Some writerly blathering )

I wanted to include the Winslows lose the case AU if I could, as I knew edwardianspinsteraunt was keen on that idea - and as I thought would it might rather put paid to any Catherine/Robert, at least for quite some time, it fitted well into the format as the "one time they didn't" (meet again) (although never at any point was that categorical). It did work out well and was maybe the most Rattigan section in the end, I thought, so I had to post it even after I cut it. (Although had I realised sooner I was going to set it loose alone, I'd have found a way to make the start a little less in media res, although tbf, it's an unlikely one to appeal to anyone who doesn't know canon).

Anyway, here it is:

and watch the things you gave your life to broken (2799 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Winslow Boy (1999)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Morton/Catherine Winslow
Characters: Catherine Winslow, Desmond Curry, Arthur Winslow, Violet (Winslow Boy), Dickie Winslow, Robert Morton (Winslow Boy)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, 1910s, Edwardian Period, The Winslows lose the case, Yuletide Treat
Summary: The Winslows lose the case.

With the usual thanks to persiflage for the beta!! <3<3<3

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Yuletide Recs (Part 1)

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 20:20:47 GMT

Reading yuletide fic here and there suited my current state, and I've had a lot of fun with it so far, I actually have a whole batch of recs ready to go for once. (I still need to go back and pick up some fandoms, especially in the first half of the alphabet, and I've barely touched Madness).

( 22 recs in As You Like It, British Airways, Cabin Pressure, Cadfael, Dogsbody, Enigma, Flower Fairies, The Good Place, Georgette Heyer, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, Ludwig, The Prisoner, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Shakespeare & Hathaway, Time Master, Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully & Yes Minister )

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Yuletide

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 14:40:05 GMT

I've been having a lovely yuletide, in the right sort of place to do reading through it, if not much else! So much so, there should be a recs post to follow soon. But first of all, of course, my lovely gift!

It was for Enigma, which I was excited enough about just for that, but it is also excellent - a really well-done layered look at Tom & Hester running into Wigram a few years post-canon. Plus, my recip turned up to leave a comment on my assignment, so Yuletide 2025 is a win! \o/ (Even more so, as that other Enigma ficlet I mentioned? The author replied to my comment to say that they'd watched the film because of my promo post, so double yay and bonus outside-of-Yule ficlets!)

After the End (1472 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tom Jericho, Hester Wallace, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary: Summer 1949. An encounter in a Parisian park.

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Many Trailers

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 18:04:07 GMT

I went to town briefly last week, so of course, was ill for days afterwards, but am now back to usual level of general rubbishness anyway.

Here are some random TV/film things:

1. Outrageous, which I enjoyed very much in the summer on Drama, is now on the iPlayer, if you're in the UK and missed it. (Drama series about the Mitfords).

2. They did another minisode for the S21 trailer for Doctor Who - this time Five and Tegan together again, which was great. It's here.

3. I hadn't had any idea someone was doing a whole film of The Faraway Tree series till YT randomly threw this trailer my way the other day. I never expected that, and it looks like fun anyway.

4. Been enjoying watching Cooper & Fry on Ch5, which I watched mainly because it had DW's Mandip Gill in the lead, along with Downton's Rob James-Collier, and who doesn't always need yet more detectives in their lives? Anyway, it's been good so far - a bit more moodier than a cosy but nothing too grim, and I like the local folklore aspect that crops up (even if it's never real). Here's a trailer.

(I have been watching Ch5's The Forsytes, which is largely very pretty and easy and not much more, but I haven't watched the last 2 or 3 eps, because I went out and also I watched Cooper & Fry instead, because it was more interesting, lol).

Probably, as ever, also other things I am forgetting!

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Fly by rec

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 10:46:00 GMT

My wrangling got slightly derailed this morning, because I was scrolling down my bins and then suddenly a WILD TAG IN ENIGMA 2001!

And it wasn't me misreading, it wasn't some giant multi-fandom essay, or somehow ASOIAF, Harry Potter, Sherlock or Star Wars, it was real and pretty much perfect. Not particularly spoilery (the only thing this reveals is also evident pretty soon into the film):

de la lune (273 words) by misura
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Claire Romilly, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon
Summary: "I've always wanted to be a Claire." (pre-canon)

I got too flaily to wrangle.

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Unofficial Fandom 50: Terence Rattigan [3/50]

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 18:50:49 GMT

Since I've been trying to watch (or listen to) all of the Rattigans lately, this seems like a good topic for a post!

Who was Rattigan?

Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) was an English playwright and screenwriter, whose most famous works are The Browning Version (1948), The Winslow Boy (1946), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) & Separate Tables (1954). His works are usually sharply observed, low-key character pieces, mostly v middle-class background*, one of a combination of factors that caused him to fall from favour in the wake of Osborne's Look Back in Anger in the 50s. He wrote for (low-brow!) cinema, radio and TV too, another factor. Since the 90s in particular he's been recognised as one of the 20th C greats, via several major revivals of many of his works and you'd be hard pressed to find a year now when some major British theatre or other isn't putting on a Rattigan.

He was gay, which is evident in many of his plays, although usually more implicitly than explicitly - the most explicit use of a gay character, in Separate Tables, he censored himself prior to its Broadway performance. From 1998, though, happily, modern productions have usually restored the original version. The Browning Version isn't explicit, but is very much about queerness, too.

I came across him when my teacher gave us The Browning Version for A-Level, and instantly fell in love, even if it took me thirty-odd years to finally get up and try some of the rest of his plays. I think I was worried that they wouldn't be as good or would contain aspects that might spoil TBV for me - happily, as you can see, I needn't have worried!

What do I love about his works?

He's very much all about character pieces, especially small-scale, claustrophobic ones (which the theatre naturally tends towards), in a way that I really love.

His first success was the farce French Without Tears (1936), so between that and the screen-writing, he's a very easy watch, in the best sense - his dialogue says so much about character, and often still feels fresh, and he can do light comedy as well as the more serious pieces. You'll often find variations on mismatched marriages, moral choices, people from different positions finding understanding of each other, and trial by the media in one form or another. His characterisation is always well-rounded and complex.

The thing I love the most, though, is his characteristic trick of having so much of the mood or conclusion or character shift on a literal sixpence - one small item, or action, or change of point of view leads to an uplift of hope we didn't expect - and on rare occasions, the reverse, acting as the last spiteful straw. The gift of a book, the discovery of a letter, love of art - how big small things can be to us humans.

I'll talk about specific plays if I carry on with this meme, I'm sure, but I definitely think he's worth trying out if you haven't already. There are a range of adaptations around, new and old, (TV, film, Radio, some of which he wrote the screenplays for himself), as well as current theatre productions.

The National Theatre has a really nice little two-part intro to five of his major works (spoilery, though, as ever with these things) - I presume this means they have some Rattigans on their At Home service, too. If you wanted to try a live production, The Winslow Boy or The Browning Version are particularly good starting places.

(Warnings - not many! He's not a bleak writer at all as a rule, but suicide does crop up in various ways in After the Dance, The Deep Blue Sea, Cause Celebre, and Man and Boy; and In Praise of Love has a character with a terminal illness - leukaemia, which he had himself).

The last thing of his I watched was Heart to Heart, a 1962 BBC TV screenplay written to launch one of their anthologies - it deals again with mismatched marriages, trial by the media, and an attempt to do the right thing that isn't very successful, but at the end, the main character, learning that out of nearly 300 people who phoned into the TV station after a broadcast, 3 of them got the point: "That's something," he says. "They must be very interesting people."

How very Rattigan. ♥

* He attended Harrow, although wiki, if it is to be believed, says that while he was there, he was in its Officer Training Course and started a mutiny, which is brilliant if it's true. <3

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Unofficial Fandom 50: Doctor Who Primer [2/50]

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 15:01:20 GMT

When I first thought about doing a Fandom/Fannish 50, as I said, the aim was not to do manifestos, and obviously Doctor Who is too big to cover in only one post anyway.

Naturally, I then immediately drafted out a manifesto for the whole of DW on the theme of "it's not THAT intimidating, I promise!", and it has been sitting complete in my posts in progress since January.

I wasn't going to post it - I think my flist is now comprised of DW fans, people who have left thanks to the Timeless Child, and people who don't want DW in their lives - but my intended Post #2 is not quite done (blame Yuletide ficcing), this one was, and I didn't want to have a long gap between posts - and it is the 23rd of November, after all. (I'll maybe see about linking it to tumblr or something, and that might give it more usefulness.)

So, have a chirpy DW primer I prepared earlier! Forgive me if it's annoying. And -

Happy 62nd birthday, Doctor Who! ♥

As most people around here probably have at least a vague idea of it already, this is mainly addressing the idea that it can be seen as too overwhelming and large and wanky.

It's true there is a lot of it, but the nature of DW is that it's all optional and rather than 40+ series of 100s of episodes you have to work your way through it's just... enough joy just waiting out there for a lifetime, with no need or hurry to catch it all. And the fandom can be wanky at times, but no more than any other, and a lot less than some. I've had more fun and made more friends hanging around in odd little corners of DW than any other fandom.

What is it?

It's a UK science fiction family-aimed show about a mysterious alien known as the Doctor who travels about in a time and space ship (known as the TARDIS).

The ship's exterior is stuck in the shape of a 1950s police box. It's bigger on the inside than the outside, like the show.

It all started in 1963, when two schoolteachers followed a mysterious Doctor's granddaughter Susan home to find out what was up with her weird knowledge, fake address and grandfather who didn't like strangers. In a panic, the Doctor abducted them and took them to the stone age. This worked out so well that the Doctor has continued to travel about with (mostly) human friends ever since. (Not all via kidnapping, though. Just a few of them.)

Together they explore all of space and time and fight monsters and alien invasions, plus many other even weirder things. And then it all ends, and starts again.

It was off-air from 1989-1995 & 1997-2004 and in that time several officially sanctioned runs of comic strips, novels and audios were made. There are also some spin-offs, both on TV and in other media. You can pick up any of these that you want to or not as you please. Or just watch the spin-offs and not watch Doctor Who. If anyone screams, ignore them.

There are also many unofficial fan productions, but you can worry about that later, if you want to.

Who is Doctor Who?

A mysterious traveller in Time and Space known only as the Doctor. Some fans will get very annoyed if you call them "Doctor Who," so you should do that.

The Doctor is a bit of a mix of wizard, wise mentor, or trickster character who's usually a side-character in things, but in this neverending story, they're the hero.

What we know is: They aren't from this planet or time period and they aren't human. They have a granddaughter. They are on the run from someone or something.

Later on, we learn they are probably a Time Lord from the planet of Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterberous. The co-ordinates for it are the same as the DW production office's extension line in the 1970s. In 21st Century Who and some of the Extended Universe (EU), Gallifrey may or may not exist, you may not be able to find it, and/or it may not stay around for long. Maybe none of this is true anyway. We don't know. These are the reasons why people say we have no canon. (This is nice, but not precisely true: all the broadcast episodes are canon. It's just very a flexible, inconsistent and wibbly-wobbly canon, plus you can add or remove any bits of the EU you choose. It doesn't exactly retcon, it embraces the "everything happened somewhere somewhen anyway in a different timeline" approach.)

When the Doctor gets close to death, they can cheat it by means of "regeneration," a process which renews them into a new body with a different personality and dress sense, but they're always the same person deep down. That's why we have lots of different Doctors but they're all still the Doctor. Regeneration is always sad because the old Doctor is dying and you don't want them to go, but two seconds later you are confronted with a shiny new Doctor to learn to love, which is exciting. This conflicting experience is our one staple, other than the TARDIS.

Why are you telling me this giant 60 year old show with hundreds of episodes, novels, audios, comics, whatever, is easy to get into?

Because Doctor Who eternally soft-reboots itself. It started in an era where anthology shows were the norm, and while there is continuity between episodes/stories, each one is set in a different location with new guest characters. You didn't like last week's alien planet? Welcome to Victorian England. Next week: aliens are invading Cardiff or London.

Plus, there's the concept of regeneration. It's always understood that every new Doctor's era will be a fresh start with new fans arriving while some old ones depart grumbling for good, or for a season. Companions arriving or leaving are also a good place to stop and start, and each producer/showrunner's era has a different feel, and those may divide a Doctor's era, or cross more than one Doctor.

So if I want to pick up any individual story in any medium but I don't care about the rest, I can?

Yes!

There are exceptions - some EU material occasionally has some complicated arcs, and from 2005 the TV show has (often 2-3 part) season finales that you might want to get some context on first (or not spoil yourself for if you think you might watch the rest later), but absolutely, yes. In any medium.

If you are curious about one installment for any reason (actor, writer, it just sounds intriguing, whatever) and that's it, go for it! Have fun. Never worry about DW again. \o/

Look, what if I do want to get into it? Where do I start? There are 800+ episodes out there and you've just told me there are hundreds of audios and books as well!

Start anywhere you like! Most of us did. Story that sounds cool, companion you like the look of, Doctor you're most curious about. Start from the beginning. Start at the end.

The only rule is if someone starts wildly insisting you absolutely have to start at any given point or else oh noes, ignore them. There is no reason to be linear about DW unless you want to be.

And, like I said, each individual story and era and Doctor and companion have their ending, so you're not signed up for good unless you want to be.

But I want to do the thing! Where DO I start?

In reverse broadcast order, from 2024 to 1963, here are some stories that are generally recognised as decent jumping in points, where the show changes showrunner or Doctor or has some other significant element of soft-reboot. As I said, though: you really can start anywhere.

( Story starting point details )

* Watch every story in chronological order by the date the story is set in rather than broadcast. There are lists around to allow you to do this and a whole book. I am reliably informed (by someone on tumblr who attempted it with the New Who list) that this is the worst way to watch Doctor Who. Perfect for the rebellious/unconventional viewer/listener/reader and very much in the spirit of the show.

I mean, caveat: it IS the worst way to do it and I'm not serious, but it would be very funny. If you attempt this, please liveblog.

* Put every story in a randomiser and watch it that way. Time-wimey, wibbly-wobbly, amiright? Pretty much the method every hiatus fan had to do it in anyway, the randomiser in that case being "which novelisations are in my library," "in which order will BBC release the VHS/DVDs," and "what the BBC feels like repeating every once in a while" or "what gets shown on [insert local appropriate random TV channel here]." Call it being traditional. Also in the spirit of the show. So much so, there actually is a website designed to let you do just that.

Basically, DW can be everything and anything and has been by turns, and therefore absolutely all of it is for no one but equally there's almost certainly at least one tiny bit of it that is for you. Canon, such as it is, very flexible. Settle in for life and have fun, or pick up one era or medium or spin-off or episode/serial or book or audio or whatever and never come back again, and everything in between.

(Obviously, for any fellow fans who are about to scream at me - there are arcs and continuity and character growth, right from the very beginning, and, of course, context adds a lot to everything, once you've got it. I'm only saying that the newbie can worry about all that later. Unless they want to worry about it now).

This post is just to say - if you think you would like to try it or whichever individual installment of it you're curious about, then don't be put off solely by the fandom or the size of canon or the confusing nature of it.

Doctor Who is a joyful thing to have in your life and beyond that there are no rules. ♥

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Ao3 Meme

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 20:37:58 GMT

Picked up from a few people a little while ago, but then I was ill(er) again. I'm pretty sure I have done this once before, but not for years, so...

From your AO3 Works page, look at the tags and find the answers to these questions.

Current number of works on AO3: 711

1. Under what rating do you write most?

Ratings break down like this:

General Audiences (563)
Teen And Up Audiences (147)
Mature (Mature)

(I was curious for a minute as to what the mature one was and then remembered it had to be the EatD one with the German Generalmajor and the English Major General, and that's mainly for the suicide warning, but, er, the whole thing really.)

2. What are your top 3 fandoms?

Doctor Who (1963) (231)
Doctor Who (2005) (98) --> obv as this is all DW, plus also some BFA, and take away any tagged with both, so I got up the meta tag results within works and came up with DW = 293

Sapphire & Steel (88)
Blake's 7 (62)

I like my old time Brit TV SF? XD I need to get back to my B7 rewatch soon. I miss it when it's been so long since I've watched it or written it. Which explains a lot about the tags.

3. Which character do you write about most?

Silver (Sapphire & Steel) (55)

Followed closely by Sapphire (44) & Steel (42). That's what you get when your most prolific fandom has umpty million characters across 60+ years and various spin-offs and different media and my second has 4 main canonical characters, only 3 of whom turn up more than once in canon. (Kenny Phillips still shows up disproportionately at (29), which is because I once claimed him for 30ficlets. Claims are hard. Even if I love a character, after about 10 pieces in a row, I want to write about somebody else!)

4. What are the 3 top pairings you've written?

The top is actually OFC/OMC, which is not fandom-specific, so have the top four.

Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s) (11)
Elizabeth of York Queen of England/Henry VII of England (11)
Ruth Evershed/Harry Pearce (9)
Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart/Liz Shaw (9)

I suppose this could be correct. It doesn't feel correct, but I think that's because I always have a crisis when tagging Sapphire/Silver/Steel, because I know full well my definition of it mostly would count as gen for many people so I panic and wildly select either & or / or both or something. Otherwise I feel like that would beat 11. Although it could just be AO3's counting, which definitely used to be very off in these side-bars.

I didn't know I'd done that much Ruth/Harry, but there have been a few little ficlets over the years and I suppose they added up! I had a very intense Brig/Liz period ages ago, so that's no shocker at any rate. Most of my shipping is very much one or two and move on, with a few exceptions. *points*

5. What are the top 3 additional tags?

Ficlet (214)
Crossover (143)
Humor (126)

Not accurate at all, lol. /o\ I mean, I feel like I've been a lot less funny lately, and written a lot less prompt ficlets and a lot less crossovers, but me writing crossover crack ficlets played straight for prompts from the flist is a lot of my fannish life, it's true. No regrets. Even the Steed/Baldrick one. XD

The rest are:

Alternate Universe (68)
Meme (65)
Drabble (46)
Post-Canon (45)
Community: hc_bingo (42)
Fluff (30)
Flash Fic (30)

Which, yeah. The AU is largely the AU meme - I have done a lot of that one over the years! It's fun, though. Not done drabbles so much lately, though. And hc_bingo has closed down, alas. I'm really surprised Hurt/Comfort didn't make it in. Er, HOW did I write 42 works for hc_bingo but not then 42 works tagged Hurt/Comfort? AO3 counting or my failure to make it properly h/c enough to tag, but just enough to count? Tbf, that did happen a lot with that one, but... surely, given lots of Hurt/Comfort written outside the bingo, it should even out? I suspect foul play here...

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Update + (Half) a Watching Post

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 18:28:22 GMT

I've not been around so much again, because I had to go out and have a filling amongst other things, and ME/CFS and anaesthetic do not play well together. The rest of the time, when I had energy, in fannish things, I have been mainly focused on making sure I get my yuletide fic typed up. Anyway, as of yesterday, I have a first draft and am not too far off a bus pass version even (\o/), so I shall try and be a bit less faily at keeping up around here again.

I had half a watching post done, and it was already quite long actually, so I will just post that here:

Some more summer watching! This isn't the order I watched them in, but I made my way through two more cosy crime series, and some of Jeremy Northam's remaining CV.

The two BBC cosies were Ludwig starring David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin, which was very good although an odd mix of tone that is exactly encapsulated by the two leads. Some parts of Ludwig felt like the kind of tense, proper crime drama with bent coppers and the like in which you might expect to find AMM and others were more of an outright comedy than most, as seems only right with David Mitchell. It was a strong entry, though! David Mitchell is a reclusive puzzle-setter ("Ludwig"), John, whose identical twin brother James is a police detective who has vanished. His sister-in-law Lucy manages to prise John out of his house to come and help - by pretending to John. Cue John getting a) extremely stressed by all of this and b) distracted by the need to solve the murders that he's sent to deal with, all the while trying to find out why James has disappeared and help out Lucy and his nephew.

Anyway, there should be a s2, with hopefully less stress for John helping the police as a consultant now, rather than trying to pretend to be his twin brother and panicking a lot. I look forward to seeing how that goes.

Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders have been on my radar for a while because people kept mentioning them, so nearing the end of the summer of the cosies, I thought, why not go for broke, and watched it too. These were really great! They were one serialised mystery per series, rather than case of the week, but Lesley Manville is crime editor Susan Ryeland, whose star crime writer gets murdered. In the course of trying to find the missing chapter of his otherwise complete last manuscript, she inadvertantly winds up on the trail of his killer. The really fun/clever thing about this series is that as she reads the last novel, we follow the fictional detective Atticus Pünd in his investigations, which parallel hers and which are a pastiche of a golden age detective series. Occasionally, she imagines discussing the murder with him, so they meet in dreamlike sequences. Tim McMullan as Pünd is really great - I hadn't come across him before, and it's a lovely performance. Conleth Hill is also fun as the late Alan Conway. Moonflower Murders follows the same pattern, as someone else has noted Alan Conway's spiteful tendency to put real things he oughtn't into his books and pays Susan to investigate the parallels between an earlier book in the series and a death at their hotel.

There's supposed to be a third series to come, so I'll look forward to it, although I understand that it's supposed to have a different writer (as in not Alan Conway in-narrative, not irl - they're all adapted by Anthony Horowitz who wrote the original books), and we'll see how that goes. But it was really unusual and fun.

Creation (2009) Biopic about Charles Darwin, starring Paul Bettany. ( This got quite long )

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Unofficial Fandom 50: Inferno recs [1b/50]

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:42:11 GMT

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

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Unofficial Fandom 50: Inferno [1/50]

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 21:02:20 GMT

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!

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Watching the Detectives

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:06:49 GMT

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.)

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A very belated watching post

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 18:40:02 GMT

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!

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