Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror Review

The Crimson Horror

And to think, I wasn’t looking forward to this one. How wrong can you be? This was an absolute corker. Mark Gatiss, who wrote the earlier corker “Cold War” produces the goods again.

I was ready to hate Strax – but he wins me over, he is a comedy character but he is let loose to be a proper warrior as well.

Perhaps the Victorian era is overly used in Nu-Who, but the Doc has a very solid reason to go there as part of the quest to figure out what/ who Clara is.

Our Silurian and her lady-friend are on good form investigating the weird goings-on, and actually rescuing the Doc (to some extent). Smith, as always, is on excellent form, and JLC finally gets a decent outing as Clara – bringing the sauciness and sassiness of her debut stories.

With Diana Rigg, we have a proper villain – a thoroughly nasty piece of work, perfectly willing to do nasty experiments on her own daughter (played by her actual real daughter, Rachael Stirling). Stirling is superb, blind, disfigured, abandoned yet still capable of compassion and fury. And Rigg is a villain to the end – as she dies she asks her daughter “Can you forgive me?” The daughter replies “never”. “That’s my girl,” says Mum with pride before her last gasp.

All that AND a sort of cliff-hanger/ lead-in to next week as the kids that Clara nannies for discover her time-travelling antics (although Clara seems bemused by the pic of her in Victorian London...) and insist she takes them along...

....along to meet the Cybermen in the next episode it seems..

And now, fanfic/ flashfic..

Consequences of Time – Episode 6

The wind stopped. “That’s better,” said the Doctor. He looked up, but didn’t let Graf go.

“What have you done?” grunted Graf, his voice muffled with his face in the snow.

The snow, which had obscured everything, was now settling. A dark shape ahead was materializing as the view became clearer.

“Your frozen terror,” said the Doctor, letting Graf raise his head.

“What is it?” he asked. The Doctor climbed off. Both men stood.

“No idea,” said the Doctor as he walked towards the large, black cube.

“STOP RIGHT THERE, OR DIE!” boomed a huge, electronic voice. The Doctor stopped.

First draft done...and we wait for first reactions

It's always great to finish something, or at least, get it to a state when you can't go any further without several second pairs of eyes. And so it was that I came to the (first) finishing of "The Royal Wedding from Hell".

The first edit was fun - taking that very first, warts and all version, re-reading it, giving every major chunk a number, making a wee post-it note for each chunk and then arranging and re-arranging bits to make sure it all makes sense, re-writing some bits completely, cutting out bits and writing all new bits (like how I somehow missed a major character getting killed - he was there one moment, then gone the next).

So after a week or two of that, I reached a version that can be passed out to my 2nd readers, including a Phd in English Literature who is excellent at the hardcore grammatical proofreading, as well as annoyingly good and honest story critique. Though it did make my teeth grate when I handed the manuscript over and she said "ah, a misplaced apostrophe" a second later.....

So with the actual writing bit finished (for a week or so surely) I can take it easy, right?

NO, because I have to knock up a cover for my novella. I have gone back to my faithful old desktop PC, still running Windows XP (Service Pack 3), still running very well and clear of bugs (mainly because it is not connected to the Internet) and still with PaintShop Pro installed on it.

I've not touched PaintShop Pro for years since the photo editing tools that come with Windows 7 are good enough these days, but, I need logos and layers and fancy fonts and some way to make a blood splattered effect.

And cover design is interesting - just casting my eye along the shelves of the bookshops or around Amazon and I realise that there's an awful lot of ways to put your name and the name of the story on the front cover. Name above, or name below title?

Along with cover, I need to make some kind of similar themed banner for the blog, and thumbnail versions, and other little logos to go here and there for Facebook and so on.

And then - I have to make sure the finished, finished version is formatted to go through the Smashwords convertor, then figure how to do all that again for Amazon.

And then try to plug the whole thing - it would be nice to have someone buy it in the end. And maybe even read it.

It is all a great exercise though - and hopefully I can put it all to good use again when I get to writing and publishing "MechaObama vs The Angel Romney".

And now, 100 words of awesome Prince Harry and Pippa action from The Royal Wedding from Hell (2nd readers version, very subject to later editing...)

“Cover your ears,” said Harry. Pippa did as she was told as Harry hit another switch.

A sonic shockwave pulsed out from the car and the dozen or so armed cops were thrown backwards.

“Woah,” said Pippa.

Harry clutched his head. Blood trickled from his nose. “So that’s what happens with that,” he gasped.

“Harry, get us to the church on time,” said Pippa.

He shook his head to clear it and pumped his foot to the floor again. The car shot forward, hurtling towards police barriers and the tower of Big Ben.

They roared past the Houses of Parliament.