Gaming, Science Fiction, Culture, and Such
Chris Baer In the spirit of this most American of holidays, I give thanks for a delivery of TastyPies—including the elusive Seasonal Pumpkin TastyPie—fresh from a Center City Philly Wawa:
TastyPies are, of course, best at the peak of freshness, so no need to examine the nutritional contents panel, especially on Thanksgiving. If you have TastyPies at home, just enjoy.
Wired points out that today, November 23rd, marks the 46th anniversary of the first airing of Doctor Who, with BBC viewers tuning in at 5:15 P.M. to catch “The Unearthly Child,” the first episode of the first story, “100,000 BC,” in which two schoolteachers unwittingly stumble upon a Time Lord and are kidnapped for their curiosity.
According to Howe, Stammers, and Walker’s Doctor Who: The Handbook: The First Doctor, only 4.4 million people can claim to have been with the Doctor from the beginning, the first episode coming in at 114th out of 200 shows that week. A repeat airing of the pilot, shown as a lead-in to the second episode the next week, did marginally better, climbing to 85th and 6 million viewers.
The show’s continued existence was, indeed, in doubt after this disappointing debut, the combination of poor ratings and high effects budgets potentially dooming the Doctor to be a footnote in the BBC’s broadcast history, until the Dalek’s appeared and decided to, ahem, Exterminate! all doubts…
So, happy anniversary, Doctor Who! Here’s to many more.
(Image from the BBC Doctor Who site.)
When the stars are right, when mighty Cthulhu has risen (even in adorable plush form), and when the color beyond space is flashing in your eyes, you know you’re in H.P. Lovecraft country. It’s easy to get lost there.
Thankfully, science fiction superblog io9.com has provided those who seek to put their sanity to the test with a roadmap to the works and worlds of H.P. Lovecraft:
You’ve heard about Cthulhu, and you’ve probably heard about the man who created this tentacled horror, H.P. Lovecraft. Now you want to try delving into the world of Lovecraft, but where to start? Let us help you.
As with their earlier guides to Blake’s 7 and the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks, io9 does a nice job of providing an approach to entering the complicated and delightful Cthulhu Mythos through a variety of media, including the all-important Call of Cthulhu role playing game.
I would add Fantasy Flight Games’ Arkham Horror series of co-operative board games to the list of essential Mythos works. Any game where everyone can lose definitely captures the spirit of Lovecraft’s world.
With all four of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams in action at present, Philadelphia sports fandom is in full swing, pass, dribble, and slap shot. And with most eyes on the Phillies and their quest for a repeat World Series championship against the Yankees, the New York Times has posted a nice piece on the essential character of the Philadelphia fan.
Mike Tanier’s “In Philadelphia, Heroes With a Lunch Pail” (Saturday, October 31, 2009) proposes the “Schmidt-Schultz Fan Appreciation Axis,” with the cooly reliable Mike Schmidt, a star by any measure, less appreciated than Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, who helped the Flyers win consecutive Stanley Cups with his grit (and his fists):
Most cities would treasure Mike Schmidt, a three-time most valuable player who led the Phillies to their first World Series title. Philly old-timers, however, swear that Schmidt stank in the clutch, his 548 home runs somehow producing only 274 runs batted in.
Philly fans preferred Greg Luzinski, a portly slugger who played left field like a brontosaurus flailing in a tar pit. Schmidt was aloof and sensitive, Luzinski flabby and fun.
While Mike Tanier interjects a few incendiary jabs typical of most writing about Philadelphia sports fans—”Philadelphia’s most beloved sports legends provided hooliganism and success”—the article nonetheless provides a fair look at the social and emotional context surrounding sports’ finest, most passionate fans.
(Image courtesy of Vincent J. Brown via a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.)
Over at The Penguin Blog, the house blog for venerable publishing house Penguin Books, art director Jim Stoddart has unveiled some choice cover selections from this fall’s releases.
My favorite of the bunch has to be the cover to Richard Overy’s 1939: Countdown to War, designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, combining the typically clean Penguin cover look with a sense of movement.
And I think I’m going to need to get the collection of 100 cover postcards being released in November. They’re just crying out for mounting in small frames.
(Cover image from The Penguin Blog)
Funny thing about Doctor Who is that the show’s visual identity has always centered on the current iteration of the Doctor and in the swirly title graphics; the title logo has never really been a focus for fan identity.
The lens-flare-esque logo for the Ninth and Tenth Doctors is a case in point. It’s just sort of there, really, not entirely memorable as it flips and flops in the time vortex as impatient viewers wait to for the show to start.
Prior logos were similarly utilitarian, as a nice BBC image gallery demonstrates.
io9 brings news that the BBC is updating the logo for the Eleventh Doctor, incorporating that most iconic of Doctor Who images, the TARDIS:
While I’m admittedly circumspect about Matt Smith’s casting as the Eleventh Doctor, fearing that the new show runners are playing to a younger demographic than, well, the demographic that I inhabit, I like this new logo. Bit of a visual pun, and it’s surprising that the TARDIS hasn’t been used in the logo before.
But that lens flare is killing me!
(Images from the BBC Doctor Who site.)