They are not children, they are monsters

I remember when working bank holidays meant time and a half. Not any more.

On Thursday and Friday I was ensconced in a recording studio watching my Blake's 7 audio plays come together. The fantastic cast (which will get announced shortly) battled with a script full of physics and Lagrangian points, and I couldn't be more delighted.

Having done a fair bit of audio stuff for rival company Big Finish, it's odd seeing how another company does it. There were more of us in the room behind the mixing desk, and there were generally more takes per scene. Both days we were pushing the six p.m. deadline.

Also, at one point I read in a few lines and saw how it felt from the other side of the glass. You play the scene, try not to stumble over the words, and then wait in weird silence while the masters deliberate. There's a particular skill in a director being able to articulate clearly how they want the scene done differently next time.

After finishing on Friday, there was a party to go to, where I saw a whole bunch of chums I'd not seen in ages and the Dr was delighted to be chatted up by someone who thought she could only be 28. Hooray!

Saturday and Sunday I was working at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, as a resident "Doctor Who expert" (their words) getting kids to invent scary monsters. The Observatory had plenty of information on weird planets, moons and space stuff, so the kids chose a place, then tried to think what sort of creature would live there. On an ice planet the monsters might be covered in fur, or have to eat lots just to keep warm...

It was good fun if a little exhausting. And I think generally the girls came up with the bloodier, grislier monsters. I hope their parents don't have nightmares.

Today I have been catching up on the writing - I've got a couple of pressing deadlines at the moment so scribbled lots in my notebook while in the studio. Now trying to make sense of my terrible handwriting, Frank telling the journalists to let him grieve in peace. And I've also got the washing up to do.

1 in 100

Had my picture taken yesterday morning by George Bamford, as part of his “Young Guns” project. The wheeze is he'll snap 100 “young, influential people” for an exhibition and book – more on that when it happens. Of course, my job is to throw their youth and influence into sharp relief. One of these kids is not like the others...

I'm not exactly brilliant at having my picture taken. When we got our wedding photos back all those years ago, the Dr complained I was pulling daft faces. I, um, wasn't. So now I tend to. But I've also been snapped by a few professionals – ones who make you close your eyes tight and scrunch up your face the moment before they snap you, and one nice lady who made me sit in a hedge.

George, though, just asked me about Doctor Who – how do the books work, what did I know about next year, have I visited the set... As I answered he snapped away, and then we looked at what he'd got. All very easy, really. Apparently I've got an animated face with good cheekbones, which is nice to know. And he must be a professional because I don't look like an orang-utan.

Scary, but not an orang-utan.


Me, yesterday morning. Portrait by George Bamford.

Songonyms

I don't usually write about music. The whole point of music is that it's different from writing. Like a joke, the moment you start explaining it the thing doesn't work. And yet...

Some songs are very like other songs. Famously, the Hammond organ bit of Procul Harum's “A Whiter Shader of Pale” was inspired by J.S. Bach (see this archived page for much learned discussion on what and to what extent).

“La Bamba” by Richie Valens is pretty much the same tune as “Twist and Shout”, while there's more than a little of “My Way” in Bowie's “Life on Mars” – as this superb version shows. (See The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain website for more splendiditude.)

I also keep hearing TV themes in pop tunes. The NME has spotted that Muse's “Uprising” is a lot like Doctor Who. But S Club 7's “Reach for the Sky” is the theme tune to Duck Tales and Alexander O'Neal's “Criticize” is the theme tune to Duckula.

And then there are the lyrics. Ronan Keating's “When You Say Nothing At All” has the same message for the ladies as Joe Dolce's “Shaddap You Face”.

Any more?

The Wire

Watched episode 5.10 of The Wire earlier, and so have finished the series. It's a justly lauded, extraordinary show 'pon which many finer minds have commented. I have some non-spoiler thoughts for those who haven't seen it, and then will leave a gap before blowing the surprises.

It took a while to go into. Episode 1.1 just felt like an okay, adequate cop show. Some cops trying to stop some drug dealers, who eventually set up a wire-tap to listen in on their phone calls. They drink and swear and are caught up in the bureaucracy. And often they're not very bright. Murders happen less because of motives than from accident, stupidity or bitter pragmatism.

At first that means it can seem more cynical than smart. Scott's not got to the end of it because he really doesn't like one particular sweary scene - and it doesn't exactly make the "good guys" look good. Other mates have suggested watching it with subtitles to pick up the slang and detail. But stick with it. Pay attention. And it will reward you.

In fact, it's a lot like In The Night Garden - a kids' show from them that did Teletubbies and narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi (I'm appearing on the same bill as him next month). Like In The Night Garden, you're first reaction might well be "meh". But once you've seen a few episodes you get how it works, and then you are monstrously hooked.

For me it was a scene in about episode four or five, with two cops discussing a murder. And we - the audience - saw other characters discuss the same events in an earlier episode. There's no acknowledgment of that - no flashback, no "previously", no concession to having missed an episode or detail. But just knowing what those other guys said a couple of weeks back changes this later scene, and the episode and the whole of the case.

And The Wire is full of such details. It's got a huge cast, with intricate connections between them. There are good and bad cops, there are good and bad drug dealers, there are those caught up in between. A few people have said that it's more like a novel than a TV show - and I don't think that's being dismissive of TV. Rather The Wire takes its time laying down the plot and building character, and trusts us to keep up with it all (and flick back if we need to).

It's rich and dense and detailed. Though there are exciting bits, it's generally rather gently paced, teasing us with false leads and scenes that go nowhere, in amongst them the crucial clues.

But I've also some specific thoughts for those who have seen it.

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There's a fair bit I don't think works. The end of Bubble's apprentice at the end of Season 4 is too melodramatic - like something out of a soap opera. And the Bad Thing McNulty does in Series 5 didn't ring true, either.

Yet on the whole it is brilliant. There's the way each series focuses on some next aspect of the city - the docks, the roped-off area, the schools and the papers. There's the brilliant characters, lovable and exasperating and real. My favourite is Bunk Moreland, the cigar-chomping dour crusader played by the superb Wendell Pierce. And Idris Elba would still make an awesome Doctor Who.

On top of that, there's the rich character development - the clash between Avon and Stringer Bell, the maturing of Prezbo, McNulty trying not to crash. I love that characters keep coming back with no explanation who they are - the dockers, the lawyers, the guy trying to get Bubble clean.

I love how much it depends on smart, professional people with insight born from experience. I love that they've then got the balls to show these people being very smart in a long scene where the only word spoken is "fuck". I love how it teases us with almost-revelations: us knowing the connection between two characters but the watching cop missing it because of a pee break.

I also love the ruthlessness of it; the sudden, unexpected deaths of major characters which completely change the focus of the series. The scattering of random, mad incident within the tightly plotted stuff. No one is safe, anything can happen...

Baltimore is a brutal place with little mercy. But what makes the struggles of this vast dramatis personae so compelling is the promise of some small hope. The hoodlum might escape the cycle of violence, the addict the addiction, the cop might succeed in getting his man despite the paperwork and politics - or at least not lose his home-life in the process. It's not the acts of crassnass, stupidity and cruelty that make the show work, but the constant, exhausting battle to defeat them.

Nights out

For one reason and another, I've not really been out much over the last few months. But I've been making up for lost time.

On Tuesday, I was a guest at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, where you can choose from 300 different anonymous drams, based only on location of distillery and some sumptuous descriptions. I've a particular love for Islay malts from when I worked in the wine trade, so tried three splendid samples of those - including one listed as an "explosion of coal-dust and flying saucers". (My phone's predictive text favoured "anal" and "cock" before "coal", the electric scamp.)On Wednesday, I was in Bristol for work - although it felt more like play. I love Bristol - it's pretty and busy and vibrant, with all kinds of cool stuff happening there. You might like to know that I based the Starship Brilliant in The Pirate Loop on a trip to the SS Great Britain.

After the "work" there was drinking, first in the Watershed, then Brown's, then some gay club with very bad karaoke and a kid offering us coffee beans (no, not a euphemism), and finally till 3 in the morning at our hotel. Ow. And on a school night.Wretched the next day, we toured Clifton's cafes and bookshops and bridge, where I hooked up with O. for a few glasses of soda before making the long journey home. Think Nick Park walked past us at one point, but the glorious, surprise sunshine was kicking well into my hangover so I might have been dreaming.

Took the Dr to the Dolphin for fish and wine, while out in the garden they had a live performance of what seemed to be Sherlock Holmes versus the Nazis.

Spent the day writing up, catching up and up to mischief. And off to the pub again tonight.

pp. 50-51

The Inside Story of Benny is beginning to push its way through people's letterboxes - hooray! And the fellows at Kasterborous have an exclusive PDF of pages 50 and 51.

The excerpt covers Human Nature, a 1995 novel by Paul Cornell featuring the seventh Doctor and Benny - adapted into two TV episodes in 2007 featuring the tenth Doctor and Martha Jones.

It lives!

To my amazement, and some four years after I started work on it, The Inside Story of Bernice Summerfield exists. For those who've not been paying attention, it's a 320-page, 300,000 word history of the character created by Paul Cornell in 1991 as a friend for Doctor Who in some books, who's been having adventures in novels, audio plays, short stories and comic strips ever since.

Benny herself - Lisa Bowerman - and I spent the day in a top secret location in darkest Maidenhead signing hundreds of pre-ordered copies, which people ought to receive next week.

It's just so thrilling to actually see the thing real, after all the false starts and delays. It looks absolutely gorgeous - thanks to the amazing work of designer Alex Mallinson, whom every one of you reading this should buy some Lego. It's huge, it's heavy and the writing is sort of okay.

I'd not been to the Big Finish warehouse before, and it's sort of like the one at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, only with cardboard boxes not crates. They're stacked tight and to the ceiling, crammed into every nook, every available inch filled with books and CDs. My face ached from gleeful grinning. Just so much lovely *stuff*. I wanted to build a nest and live there.

Guardian of this treasure trove was Gary Atterton, who showed us round, gave us our contributor copies and generally looked after us, while also running round fulfilling orders, answering queries and making it all work. The team have been run off his feet recently 'cos of the various offers and deals, and we watched the system working in awe. Though the only coffee they had was de-caff.

To celebrate the launch of the book, I bribed the astoundingly clever Red Scharlach with CDs and pancake, and she's created a world of Benny icons.

Hmm... Now having thoughts of badges...

Loved you not

The spanking new issue (#260) of Vector magazine includes my review of Bob Fischer's Wiffle Lever to Full. Which reminds me I meant to post an earlier review, from back in #257 last year:

Dalek I Loved You
Nick Griffiths, Orion Books 2008

Nick Griffiths writes about Doctor Who for the Radio Times. As well as covering the current series, he wrote features marking the show’s 40th birthday back in 2003 and interviewed former Doctors to coincide with the TV movie in 1996. But he’s been a fan of the show since early 1970. Dalek I Loved You is his memoir.

There’s a lot of this about. Toby Hadoke’s one-man show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf got nominated for a Sony Award. In a regular column for Doctor Who Magazine, Neil Harris describes what it used to be like as fan – back when you apologised for rather than celebrated.

There’s little in Griffiths’ book a Doctor Who fan won’t already know, yet part of nostalgia’s appeal is that it’s so familiar. And this book is less for Doctor Who fans as those who lived through the 1970s. It’s a fun, lively account of that decade and of then being a grown-up. But, like a Channel 4 clips show, it’s often a sequence of “Do you remember X? They were rubbish!” followed by “And what about Y? Weren’t they brilliant?!?”

It’s told in broadly chronological order it. Griffiths himself has not had the most exciting of lives. He quotes from diaries in which nothing very exciting occurs. He goes to a poshish school where some of the teachers have nicknames. We learn he was an unexceptional student who’s then unexceptional with girls and work. There’s a divorce, a job he both likes and despises, and then a girl who might just understand him…

But he’s certainly a fan. He can describe the plots of old stories without having to look them up – well, most of them. The book is peppered with lists – things he remembers, likes or dislikes. He even times himself compiling his Doctor Who top ten. He’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of top facts, a hunger for obscure details and a paralysing sense of embarrassment. This all suggests he has what Doctor Who Magazine once described as the “fan gene”.

Even his vocabulary is infused with fannishness. “Garb” and “arrant” are rarely used outside the Target Doctor Who books of the 1970s, and “see it in my mind’s eye” is how Mary Whitehouse decried a particular Tom Baker cliffhanger. (The book also features a lot of the script of Withnail & I.)

So what kind of fan is he? For all his nervousness, Griffiths has fiercely held opinions. He either loves something – an episode, a Doctor, a moment in his life – or he really hates it. He heckles bands and celebrities with delicious glee, and says himself that this attitude serves him well as a TV critic. Of course it’s okay for him to be less than excellent and have rubbish hair. He sees the world in black and white – either “brilliant!” or “rubbish!” – yet extremists are in his list of things that give him “the fear”.

As well as not being very self aware, many of his jokes feel too easy – received wisdom rather than thoughts he’s had himself. He swipes, for example, at Mary Whitehouse and Colin Baker. But now Griffiths is himself a father, does he not think Whitehouse could have had a point that the Doctor being drowned isn’t ideal teatime viewing? And Baker had no say in his scripts or costume or the direction the series was taking. He was just the visible one and so the obvious scapegoat.

This is the problem with what is otherwise a fun book: there are few original insights. Griffiths admits he’s not the most incisive reporter – Richard Dawkins even hung up on him in the midst of an interview. Rather this is about what Griffiths already remembers – and what he can google on the way. Even then, there are easily googlable errors: The author of Dalek is Rob Shearman, not Colin; it’s Arnold T Blumberg not Blomberg; the Doctor’s home constellation is Kasterborous, with a K not a C. As a result the book feels a little dashed off; just as Griffiths himself dashes off mid-paragraph to search a cupboard or rewatch a particular video.

It reminds me a lot of the kind of article in old fanzines about what the writer was doing when he (almost always a he) watched a particular episode. So a review of Terror of the Zygons will be as much about a family holiday in Cornwall that coincided with part three, where it rained too hard to go to the beach. Why do we need to know about the beach? Griffiths frets about his parents and son reading his shyly recounted sexual experiences – without ever explaining why he’s telling us about them in the first place.

Perhaps this grown-up stuff helps explain why he distanced himself from the series – The Five Doctors special in 1983 was, he says, like saying goodbye. For a long period – more than a third of the book – Doctor Who doesn’t even warrant a mention. Or perhaps the show hasn’t been quite as important to him as he makes out.

Until the very end, there’s little on why the show appealed to him, or has won him over anew. As a child, he says, it was just so unlike anything else – he lists the other shows he’d seen. He likes, he says, Doctor Who’s imagination, the Daleks, the escapism, the humour, the quarries. But his 12 year-old son Dylan describes something far more involved and emotional than this list suggests:

“I feel a bit embarrassed watching the New Doctor Who with my Dad because he’s more childish than I am, shouting at the TV to not look around or don’t look there and being scared when something jumps out at the Doctor. But it’s always a good laugh watching him because he is the best Dad in the world.”

Nick Griffiths, Dalek I Loved You, p. 279.

A friend also reminds him of a trip to a Doctor Who exhibition in the early 1990s. Griffiths had to wait until there was no one else around before gleefully trying the Dalek voice-changer. It’s telling that he doesn’t remember this himself.

The book ends oddly, with Griffiths conducting an interview he’s not very interested in and then knocking off early for a beer. You’re left wondering what he’s learnt from writing the book. Has Doctor Who shaped who he is? Has the book changed his view of himself or the show? Has it helped his parents finally understand their awkward, dorky son? Do his original props and David Tennant’s email address give him a sense of ownership of a show now so popular with everyone?

Griffiths skimps on this awkward, embarrassing stuff. Sadly that means that for all this is fun, it feels like he spent his life doing his own thing, with Doctor Who on in the background.

Internet Guerrier database

Codename Moose points out that he's now on the IMDB, and straight in to the Guerrier Top 29 at # 7. The sister is at #3, the uncle at #20. And, because Hollywood clearly disrespects the writers, man, I'm at #29.

Khaaaaaan!

There's a new interview with me at the Gallifrey Vortex, discussing Dr Who books. Also, I made the Dr watch Star Trek II last night.

I'd remembered it as a fast and all-action thriller. But that's not the film at all. It takes a long, long time for there to be any fighting. And then it's two rooms (or the same room redressed) of people watching a TV screen with bad reception. There's a lot of that thing I hate with Star Trek; people walking down corridors or sitting in their rooms discussing portentous morality.

Besides the large regular cast (for whom it's always a struggle to find things to do), there's a relatively small number of speaking roles and sets. Though the model shots and mattes and nascent computer graphics are all rather breathtaking, it struck me as quite a cheap movie.

So why did I remember it as so big and exciting? Because it's brilliantly written and directed, using its limited resources to best advantage. Rather than zippy dogfights in space like Star Wars (whose shadow it's clearly trying to escape), this is more old-skool naval warfare, like Master and Commander. The first engagement between the Enterprise and Reliant is all to do with the protocols of signaling not being observed - they might as well be using flags.

There's lots of manoeuvres and fleet regulations, and the ending sees the wounded Enterprise sailing into the fog to even things up with the less-wounded enemy. The tension comes from anticipation, and the Enterprise being outgunned. Kirk's enemy is better than he is. While Kirk is feeling old and needs glasses and a command, Khan is looking good for his 200 years, and showing off his pecs.

The multi-racial Federation fights Khan's Aryan gang who are all into eugenics (a modern nod; in the original TV episode Khan had black hair). While the only aliens I spotted where Vulcans and them things in people's ears, there's evidence of Star Fleet being an equal opportunities employer. There's a black starship captain and the young female lieutenant Saavik also gets command of the Enterprise. But when McCoy mutters about Spock's green blood, his colleagues just roll their eyes indulgently. He also gets away with smuggling illegal booze.

Also, this is the first time I've heard Star Fleet referred to as "the military", and David's angry reaction to Star Fleet interference suggests they already have a reputation for muscling in on science. Star Trek is not brilliant at engaging in arguments against its shiny utopia, but the weaponised potential of the Genesis torpedo made us think of debates over the Star Wars programme, though President Reagan only announced the strategic defence initiative a year after Khan was released.

There are a lot of "gosh wow" moments, but they're not at the awe of space. Kirk's mouth drops open when he sees the Enterprise again and when he sees the Genesis cave. The amazement is at man-made achievement, not at the vast, empty and dangerous frontier. The nebula, the moon and the planet we visit are all inimical to life - which makes the creation of the Genesis planet all the more of an achievement.

Space is difficult enough without a madman hell-bent on killing you. The wounds on the casualties - the burnt flesh and blood - are the most visceral I can think of in Star Trek. This continually reinforces how hard this adventure is, upping the stakes and engaging us. And then, to win victory, Star Fleet expects every man to do his duty...

Spock's logic that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one nicely sets up his death. It's also the logic of service - of a navy in space. And it's a little bit fascist (when they're fighting Aryan supremacists).

The Dr, though, was left cold by Spock's death - assuming he'd get better using his alien powers. Which is odd; I think I saw Star Trek III first and still get itchy-eyed as Spock says he has been and ever shall be Kirk's friend.

It's still, I think, the best of the Trek movies, followed by VI and XI. Which the Dr admitted she'd like to see.

Soon you'll grow so take a chance

TV's James Moran is evangelising that you - YOU! - should go and see Moon. But the Dr and I were going anyway, and have just returned. Screen 3 at the Ritzy in Brixton was full, if not very big in the first place (and the dimming lights weren't working so we watched trailers in the gaudy glare of the "cleaning lights").

Anyhow, what a splendid film. It's difficult to speak of without spoiling it's many delights - you really should go see it. The plot is old-skool sci-fi clever but with an emotional wossname that got the Dr hooked. She feared tedious physics for too long (what she wearily refers to as "moon porn"), but I caught her snuffling at the end. Hah. Tomorrow, she's being made to watch The Wrath of Khan on Blue-Ray as part of my ongoing Professor Higginsing.

I loved the tactile weight of the old-skool model shots and the sly setting-up of the revelations. I loved the warm logic of the small role played by Kevin Spacey, and the familiarity / claustrophobia of the small set. It had jokes and intelligence and awe in the face of the vast, dead grey rock. And, my cleverer colleagues inform me, the physics is pretty good, too if you can forgive the central conceit.

All that, and this review doesn't mention the director's kook parents. Think that must be a first.

No cheese cauldron

The Dr took me to see Harry Potter VI last night - the second time she'd seen it. What a lifetime it's been since I read the book. The film boils the plot down to the bare necessities, dumping all the stuff set in the Ministry and focusing in on the teen snogging. While the last film, I thought, was better than the book, this one is good but not as good.

Jonny's right about the over-grading. Changing the colour and tone of each frame also makes the film grainy. As Cathode Blue Ray and Mos-Def television give way to ever more pin-sharp home cinema, I wonder how the evolved beings of tomorrow will look back on the murky gravel of our age.

I also think they got the tone wrong. Those memories of freak-boy Young Voldemort are all in graded blue-grey to suggest coldness and evil. But the whole blimmin' point is that no one saw he was a wrong 'un until it was too late. In the book, Dumbledore - and so we - sympathise with the bullied kid who magics things from his tormentors, just as Harry did with Dudley Dursley in book one. Dumbledore chides Tom Riddle for stealing but still takes him under his wing.

Likewise, Riddle charms Professor Slughorn, showing interest in his lessons and buying his favourite sweets. Before he went Obviously Bad, Tom Riddle was liked, the teachers almost indulging his breaking of rules and small magic revenges on those bullies who deserved it.

Young Riddle is all too like young Harry Potter. As Harry grows up, and the 'parental' adults around him take a step back, his future is down to the choices he makes.

Harry could still yet do terrible things. So could any of us.

Possible birthdays

We need to know our birthdays. The hospital, the Passport Office, all sorts of official forms and documents, identify us by our date of birth. Laws and allowances come into effect depending how old we are. Our age, the people in our year at school, the options we've got because of when we were born – they make us who we are.

The thing is, none of us remember being born. Our birthdays are a matter of faith.

Usually, we know our date of birth because someone told us, long ago. Usually it's a trusted person, who underlined the date with presents and cake and a party. That person might well have been there at the birth: the mum who pushed us out into the world, or whoever held her hand.

These people are primary sources – people who can speak with some authority on the subject because they were there at the time.

There are also secondary sources – people who didn't see the birth for themselves, but whose memories back up the story. The grandpa who remembers what he was doing when he was rung with the news. The friend who remembers the trouble she had having flowers sent to the hospital. They don't prove the date, but they don't contradict it. Their evidence lends weight.

There's also a whole bunch of documentary evidence, everything from the official birth certificate and hospital records, to a time-coded video and the cards – and these days emails and text messages – sending best wishes. Taken together, this evidence tells us when we were born.

But it's possible this could all have been faked. We don't know when we were born because we don't remember. It's possible the people who tells us what day it happened is making it up. It's possible the documents have been faked – the cards would be easy, the birth certificate harder but not impossibly. The woman who throws the parties each year and provides the presents and cake might not even be our mum.

(There are DNA tests to check things like that, but you'd have to already suspect something before you went for the test. That's a fun thing to suggest to your mother. And I know a few people completely surprised to discover they were adopted.)

Even if you prove this woman is or is not your mum, you still can't prove what day you were born on. It's possible there's some huge conspiracy, or just some huge mistake. It's difficult to prove a negative: whatever evidence you present, it's still always possible...

The best we can do is judge the available evidence. We might suggest ways to test it. We might point out the flaws in the evidence we've got, welcome others to scrutinise it, or just name the sources we're using. But after that, it's still possible we missed something out. All we can truly say is, “As far as we can tell...”

And that's just with our birthdays.

There are people who don't like this trust in evidence, the 'authority' of science or history. There are those who speak out against scientific theories, or in favour of medical treatments that the evidence peer-reviewed, double-blind trials doesn't support. There are people who say that certain events never happened or were the result of some god. There are vested interests involved, too: conspiracies, industries and individual egos who profit from belief in their statement. They're all very different, but they all stand against the weight of evidence with the argument, "But it's still possible...".

Like our birthdays, these things bound up in our what makes us who we are. Our science, our history, our medicine, our gods - they define us and our behaviour. So challenging - or defending - them can feel like a personal attack. (Sometimes its meant as an attack.) We should not try to cause offence, and we should make our case with a weight of evidence.

Nor is it enough to argue against a weight of evidence, “But it's still possible...”. It's possible there wasn't a Holocaust or Moon landing, or that homeopathy might work. But then it's possible I was born not in June but September. On Mars. And that I'm made of turnips. These possibilities also need to be backed up by evidence. Until then, they're just so much hot air.

We probably can't know anything for certain – there will always be the possibility of something else. And we should endeavour to keep open minds. But that is an argument in favour of evidence, not one for abandoning it.

We shouldn't just believe what we're told, or what supports our assumptions and desires, makes us feel better or safer. We should challenge our beliefs, however sacred. And we should challenge them with the weight of evidence. Because that's the only way we'll really know who we are.

"It's not fair!"

Via Jonny, I’ve been enthralled by the first, 50 year-old season of The Twilight Zone on DVD. It’s a much copied and parodied series, yet watching the run of 36 standalone episodes has been a constant surprise.

For one thing, having seen some episodes in my teens as stories, I thought it was all stories with twist endings. There are some good twist endings, but often we start with a twist that skews the ordinary, mundane world (and hooks us before the first ad break).

It is an anthology of quirky, one-off stories. Narrator Rod Serling explains in the three different title sequences (only one with the “doo-doo doo-doo, doo-doo doo-doo”), that the “twilight zone” is the realm of the imagination.

It quickly establishes some basic archetypes. There are protagonists battling the devil or fate who find they can’t cheat the rules. There are characters caught up in a dream world that turns out only too real. The show has been copied and parodied for five decades, so these moral set-ups feel familiar, almost cosy.

I’m not sure how much it invents these archetypes, but it’s weird seeing what feel such modern archetypes in stiff-suited black and white. “A World of Difference” must surely be ahead of the game. A man discovers his whole life is a film-set, the people he knows merely actors: a smart – and early – play on the conventions of television.

By the end of the season I was also spotting the same locations and sets. If I remember my tour of Universal Studios last year right, I think a lot of it’s set in the same safe all-American cul-de-sac as features in Desperate Housewives.

What makes the show so compelling, though, is not the familiarity but how it continually undermines the norm. It probes the cracks in the veneer of the everyday, and pokes the underlying sores and fears.

A lot of it’s about alienation. There are plenty of loners and misfits, and often no one believes the poor protagonist’s story. Figures of authority turn out to be villains – twinkly-eyed old men are really murderers, children having alarming powers. Or there’s the Doctor Who trick of making some everyday object the source of threat. In the genuinely spooky “The After Hours”, Anne Francis goes shopping with Autons.

Sometimes it seems to be sneaking in comment on the concerns of its day. There’s inherent paranoia – about the bomb and other people – in stories as different as “Third from the Sun” and “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”. There’s the fear of the new frontier – space – in “Where is Everybody?” and “And When the Sky was Opened”.

The hairstyles and clothes betray the series’ age, and the “norm” it’s disturbing is one of wholesome nuclear families where married women stay at home. I’m not quite sure what’s even behind “The Lonely”, in which a prisoner marooned on a rock in space is given a robot girlfriend he then won’t give up. Is it about our addiction to gadgets, or our need for companionship to survive, or just some weird misogynist nonsense? (The robot girlfriend is Jean Marsh, who I’ve now got playing a house.)

“Time Enough At Last”, by far the best episode, sees a bookish Burgess Meredith the sole survivor of nuclear holocaust. The first half, before the bomb, is light and fun, with Meredith ignoring his work and wife just to carry on reading. The second half, as he wanders alone through the ruin of his town, is then all the more disturbing. The twist end – having found the library and no one can stop him reading, he then breaks his glasses – underlines the bleakness. It verges on profundity without ever being explicit, sci-fi addressing the fear of the age in a way ordinary telly never could.

The final episode of the first season, “A World of his Own” again follows a protagonist whose fantasy life turns out real, but also – for the first time – makes the series’ own format part of the story. But it fluffs what should be an excellent gag. When the protagonist exorcises narrator Rod Serling himself, it’s the first time we’ve seen, not just heard, Serling. It would have worked better if we were used to seeing Serling walk through the set of previous episodes, commenting on events. And when he’s banished he still narrates the show’s coda. The twist fails because a show that constantly warps the normal rules won’t warp its own conventions.

Holes in our heads and other stories

"People are too often terrible advertisements for their own beliefs."

Derren Brown, Tricks of the Mind, p. 357.

The Dr took me to see Derren Brown's magic show, Enigma, for my birthday back in June. Even before I'd read his book I suspected how some of the tricks might be done. Perhaps he wasn't reading people's minds, he just remembered which cards they'd taken; perhaps he used a loaded die...

I'd thought the book, Tricks of the Mind, would be a magic primer, detailing his card-sharpery and the mechanics of illusion. Indeed, Brown begins with a simple coin trick and a simple card trick. He explains misdirection and showmanship – at least as important as the simple “trick” of palming a coin or remembering a sequence of cards.

But he then goes on to explore all kinds of gaps in our cognition that can mean we’ll believe very odd things. In doing so, we learn how to use our memories better, how to hypnotise ourselves, and see how neuro-linguistic programming, psychics and other belief systems are able to ensnare us...

Brown tells us he uses a mixture of these techniques himself. He also tells us something much more important: that what he does is a trick.

The joy of magic, I think, is in knowing it’s a trick – a way of fooling our perception a given event. The performer doesn't really have psychic abilities or a way to sidestep physics. We just have to puzzle out how it was done. Brown talks about laying false clues to muddle the audience when they try to review what they've just seen. But even if we can't figure out how trick is done, we know there is an answer.

On that basis, it's easy to see where Brown's thinking overlaps with scientific enquiry. He's intrigued by NLP but cynical about its cult of personality and resistance to meet its great claims with evidence. Brown is a doubter, though he also talks earnestly about having previously been an evangelical Christian. There's a sense - one I sort of share - that he hates the thought of being fooled again.

He might labour the point, but Brown’s good at explaining why, if you have a proposition – that a certain chemical has healing properties, that the world works in a certain way, that there’s some kind of God – the onus is on you to prove the proposition is true, not for others to prove that it isn't. That's especially important if your proposition encourages some kind of action.

With the zeal of the convert Brown hopes to convince us to doubt. In many ways, Brown's book reminded me of Dawkins' The God Delusion – it's smart, it's lively, it covers a great deal of ground and it explains complex ideas simply. Yet the petulant tone makes it read as if written by a clever 17 year-old. It’s hectoring, ranty and the jokes are often forced. That can give the impression – in both books – that the author has all the answers, whereas the whole point is that we don't settle on easy answers.

Rather, Brown explains the strangeness of reality. In the section on lying, he explains how people telling the truth include all kinds of odd, incongruous details. (I'm reminded of Orwell on Charles Dickens and the genius of his “unnecessary detail”.)

On which point, though I've still not got to Ben Goldacre, I'm hesitant about m'colleague Jonny's review of it:

"Yes! That’s exactly what I already thought, but put slightly more clearly!"

As Brown and Dawkins both spell out themselves, a lot of science is counter-intuitive. In fact, one good test of a scientific theory is whether it confirms what the proponent already "knows". Brown has a whole section on "confirmation bias".

That in turn reminded me of Flat-Earth News by Nick Davies – and especially the bit on heroin use and the war on drugs, where policy seems based on comforting, fundamental beliefs and not on physical evidence.

In fact, Brown’s book has make me connect dots between all sorts of disparate stuff. I shall blog at some point on Father Christmas and on birthdays – two subjects much scrawled in my notebook.

Tricks of the Mind is then a primer not in magic trickery but in strange and wondrous reality. Despite the painful jokes and adolescent tone, it’s an extraordinary book.

Other recent reads:

Austerity Britain by David Kynaston
Loved this; intend to blog my notes. But then I said that about Flat-Earth News, too. Oops. So here’s the Telegraph’s glowing review.

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
A funny, provocative collection of leftie newspaper columns full of sharp one-liners. Not as heavyweight as the other stuff of his I’ve read, but more hits than misses.

The Ghosts of India by Mark Morris
Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with Ghandi. Mark explores the last complex and controversial days of the Raj, for ages eight and up. Plus there’s spooky monsters. I wish I’d thought of this.

Johannes Cabal – The Necromancer by Jonathan L Howard
Reviewed for Vector, but didn’t think that much of it.

Me, Cheeta by Cheeta and James Lever
Another birthday present, the autobiography of the chimpanzee who played Tarzan’s mate. I thought the joke might wear thin quite quickly, but it’s an often very funny read. Sometimes it’s funny because we read between the lines, sometimes because of Cheeta’s animal perspective. Cheeta’s last meeting with the aged Johnny Weissmuller is beautifully moving. What’s more, it’ll be hard to hear salacious showbiz tales without thinking of that ape.

Now reading Spies by Michael Frayn.

Frock vs Gun

More details on the day I’m doing in Manchester on 11 October about Doctor Who novels, for which tickets are now available:

“The event will explore the genesis of the range, the rise and fall of the New Adventures and their indelible impact on Nu-Who, the transition to in-house publishing and the future of the range now the programme is back on the air.

Weighty topics we will be debating include ‘guns v frocks’, ‘BBC v Virgin’, ‘past Doctors - what's the point?’, ‘roots of the TV revival - begged, borrowed and stolen?’, ‘bigger and broader - are the books the real home of Doctor Who?’ and ‘a question on canonicity - was it all a dream?’ Guests confirmed to date include Paul Magrs, Mark Morris, Mark Michalowski, Steve Lyons, Paul Dale-Smith, Andrew Cartmel, Daniel Blythe, Simon Guerrier, Martin Day, Trevor Baxendale, Paul Cornell and Gary Russell.”

It will be hosted by my new chum John Cooper, and David A. McIntee has just been added to the line-up. You might want to bring copies of the Bernice Summerfield Inside Story to get them signed by these luminaries…

Also of excitement is that you can now get a selection of Big Finish Doctor Who stories for a fiver, plus there’s a free download of a brand new Doctor Who story and some special offers in this month’s Doctor Who Magazine, and a free CD featuring the fifth Doctor and Daleks with this week’s Doctor Who Adventures (and also an inflatable TARDIS!).

None of the stories on offer are by me, so I shall add this cheeky plug for The Drowned World, which is out this month, too. Oh, and here’s a glowing review of the Iris Wildthyme boxset, of which “the highlight” is the “simple surreal jollity” of my story, The Two Irises. Hooray!

Meanwhile, I’m still all tied up in other stuff that cannot be spoken of yet – real life stuff as well as the writing. Got a thing to finish by the end of next week and then should be blogging more regularly. Have read a whole load of books and seen a whole load of telly with which to bore you at length…

But in the meantime, I’m fascinated by George Orwell’s blog at the moment, as he alternates between listing wild flowers spotted and chicken’s eggs laid, and the lead-up to world war. (In September, the outbreak of war will coincide with Pepys’s account of the fire of London.)

Just quickly

The new - free! - Big Finish podcast is a Bernice Summerfield special. David Richardson and Lisa Bowerman discuss all things Benny and, briefly, say how clever I am. Hooray!

Working manically on a few exciting things right this second. Wish I could say more. Soon. Oh yes, soon...

Grand Tour 2009

Busy, busy, busy. Lots of different bits of work on and about to go on tour…

Tomorrow morning I’m a guest at Faringdon Arts Festival, reading to children at Faringdon Junior School and then trying to answer their questions. Kids tend to ask more challenging, leftfield questions than grown-ups, so I’m more nervous than normal.

My bit is just for the school kids, but on Saturday afternoon proper TV writers of Doctor Who Paul Cornell and Phil Ford will be spilling their secrets to anyone who’ll listen. Miffed I’m going to miss that.

I’ll be at a guest at the Winchester Arts Festival on Saturday, at the library where I used to borrow Doctor Who books. Me, Mark Morris and Nicholas Briggs will be encouraging three sessions of school kids to write their own monstrous stories and explaining what makes a good monster.

At the end of August I’ll be at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich – the centre of time and space itself, and location for Doctor Who and the Dimensions in Time – as part of a weekend of family activities. More details on what that will involve soon.

Over the weekend of 19-20 September, I’ll be at Regenerations in Swansea, flogging copies of the Inside Story. (How splendid that Gary Russell gets top billing above Derek Jacobi and Davros).

In October I’m hoping to do a thing in Manchester and possibly also in Leeds, of which more details soon. And then, at the end of October I’m at HurricaneWho in Orlando.

If you're able to make any or all of these, do come say hello.

The Firemakers

In Reading, yesterday, there was the impressive sight of two geeks attempting a barbecue. I can do typing. I can do reaching things from shelves. Beyond that, I am pushing my luck...

First, there was an attempt to fix-up the proper barbecue to its gas cylinder. But there were two gas cylinders: one propane, one butane. Could we remember which one would evenly cook a burger and which would just explode? No. So we consulted the women and they explained, "The blue one".

So then we needed to fit a regulator to the butane cylinder. This helps regulate the amount of gas as it comes out, and stops the thing exploding. You attach the rubber hose to the regulator, then fit the regulator to the cylinder, and then fit the other end of the hose to the barbie. Easy.

We scoured the shed for the hose, bought especially for this purpose. Couldn't find it, so checked with the women. One of the women looked quickly into the shed and spotted it, right in front of us.

I managed manfully to fit the hose to the regulator. It's not easy, because the nozzle of the regulator is all notched and bobbly to make it impossible for the hose to slip. Or, indeed, fit on.

Then we tried fitting the regulator to the cylinder. Hmm. Except, as the internet tells us:

Gas bottles come in a variety of different sizes and, confusingly with different regulator fittings. The clip-on regulators used for barbecues are blue for butane, with a standard internal valve size of 21mm. Propane regulators are red with 27mm in internal size. That means that it is not possible to connect to a propane bottle using a butane regulator or vice versa.

Infomania: Barbecue gas - butane or propane?

Guess which we had.

So, Plan B. We had some disposable, "instant" barbecues in little foil trays waiting on standby. And, with a bit of sliced genius, put them on the shelf of the proper barbecue so it looked like we were doing this properly. Soon the barbie was going great guns, flames licking up into the sunlight.

And then we spotted a small error in our thinking.

With the help of a woman with tongs, we got the cardboard off before the whole thing exploded. And then managed to cook the food pretty well. Though I did manage to throw some sausages on the floor. And sunburnt my arms a fair bit. All of this achieved without recourse to any booze.

Ho hum. Think I shall spend the summer indoors, typing. Not that I've got all the much choice...

Free to those who can afford it

Free stuff! Issue 5 of Big Finish's Vortex magazine is now available for free. Pages 14-15 feature my diary of writing Dr Who & the Drowned World and include a fetching picture of me by the western-most fountain in Trafalgar Square. Readers will have no interest in knowing that I am wearing the same brown tee-shirt as I write these words now...

There's plenty of other excitements in the issue too, including interviews with authors of Dr Who & the Company of Friends, in which m'colleague Jonny Morris explains how he wrote the Doctor's new companion - Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. The Dr might even be swayed by a story in which Dr Who meets Lord Byron.

And how thrilling to see the Inside Story included in the release schedule. It is so almost real!

Also free - yes, free - is m'colleague Caleb's latest Podcast of Impossible Things, which this time reviews the Big Finish Short Trips range. As I blogged before, I owe a lot to those books which gave me my first professional break. The podcast includes a competition to win the last of the anthologies, Dr Who & the Indefinable Magic, which has one of my stories in it.