THAT'S not what you said in the Jeffries' Tube

sfred asked me:

1. If you had to not live where you live, where would you live?
2. What would 15-year-old Jennie think of now-Jennie?
3. What fictional universe would you like to live in?
4. What's for tea?
5. What are you listening to?

( answers under the cut )

If you want your own set of questions ask me in the comments.

... thousands upon thousands of incredibly witty and original people ask "but when is International MEN'S day, eh, if we've got equality? Answer me that!" or words to that effect. Most of these people seem to think that they are being both clever and edgy when they say those things. In honour of those people, I have changed my twitter handle for the day to "It's the 19th of Nov".

I do encourage you to join in. Several people already have.

andrewducker gave me the letter T, and specified that I couldn't cheat and use "the".

Something I hate: Yeah, I'm going to go with Andrew's suggestion on this: Throwing Up. This weekend was frustrating because I didn't get a lot done (or go to several things that I should have done) due to a cycle of throw up - drink water - throw up again - fall asleep - wake up with mouth like Ghandi's flip flop - drink water - throw up which went on (literally) ad nauseam for pretty much all of Sunday, and left me weak and incapable for most of Monday. I was lucky enough to have an understanding nurse who basically left me alone unless I was making disturbing noises, and brought me water, and then later tea, and even later small amounts of food. I would fully recommend this nurse to others should they become ill. You know who you are ❤

Something I love: Twining's Buttermint Sensation Tea. This stuff is the bees knees of mint teas, and more places should stock it. Had to put up with Doublemint Sensation the other day, which is good, but just not the same. The Camomile and Maple one is great too, but I'd avoid the lime and ginger one if I were you. It's all tangeriney, and nowhere near gingery enough (which is why you're not getting a link to that one :P).
Other things I love beginning with T include (but are not limited to) Technology, Triumph motorcycles, Tattoos and Terrible puns.

Somewhere I have been: Totnes. AKA Hebden Bridge On Sea. Geographically Totnes and HB are very different, but they FEEL exactly the same. Which enables me to have a go-to place in Devon where I can quell homesickness when I'm down there.

Somewhere I would like to go: Titan, the most likely-to-be-habitable moon of my supposed ruling planet, Saturn. Or anywhere else in space, really. Preferably without the horrific health problems one gains from extended space travel, but I'd be willing to put up with those if necessary.

Someone I know: This was actually the most difficult of these to select. I know very few people whose names begin with T. A few screennames but that's a bit of a cheat in my view. So I'm going to name-drop and say Tim Farron, party president of the Liberal Democrats.

Best movie: Theatre of Blood, starring VinnyP and Cousin Di. Gory and hilarious, and features captain Mainwaring and Miss Marple as a married couple. Watch out for the poodles. And the camp hairdresser. Not to be confused with Theatre of Death, which is one of the few Sir Lee films that bore me.

If you want a letter, say so in the comments. And that's one more thing ticked off my ToDo list ;)

Political Values

Radicalism 96.75
Socialism 81.25
Tenderness 53.125

These scores indicate that you are a progressive; this is the political profile one might associate with a university professor. It appears that you are skeptical towards religion, and have a pragmatic attitude towards humanity in general.

Your attitudes towards economics appear communist, and combined with your social attitudes this creates the picture of someone who would generally be described as left-wing.

To round out the picture you appear to be, political preference aside, a centrist with several strong opinions.

This concludes our analysis; we hope you found your results accurate, useful, and interesting.

I suspect the fact that my reasonably Leftie but not particularly extreme views are described as communist says more about this survey's USian origins than its statement of objectivity would care to admit...

You can take the test yourself here

I've been woeful at this while I've been ill. Sorry about that. This post will bring me up to date.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Favourite Writer

Robert Holmes. Witty, political, able to work in shedloads of Hammer Horror references, and one of only two writers prior to Big Finish who was able to write Leela properly.

Favourite Couple

Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and Benton, whose love remains true and constant right from The Invasion, through Benton's transition into Doris, and happy old age. It's just a shame they had to invent that "going off to become a secondhand car salesman" line as cover for Benton's transition because of the transphobia of the military at the time.

Favourite Friendship

Androgum!Two and Shockeye. They're just so cute when they are geeking over food.

Favourite Spinoff

SJA. No questions or doubts here. A kids' scifi show in which the cast skews female, the lead character is a strong independent woman in her late fifties, and themes of love, friendship, tolerance and family are thoroughly explored? Hell yes.

Favourite Quote

"What a marvellous butler: he's so violent!" - the Fourth Doctor, City of Death

Favourite Doctor Catchphrase

The Doctor has catchphrases now. Catchprhases are cool? Apparently. I don't like them. Maybe calling the Tardis "old thing" or "old girl" is as near as I'll commit to.

Favourite Doctor Gadget

I don't tend to like the recurring gadgets like the psychic paper and the sonic screwdriver because they are used as lazy story devices by lazy writers. You can't call the Tardis a gadget; she's a LADY. Similarly Bessie. So I suppose that leave us with some of the mad things the third doctor made Heath Robinson style. I'll go with the one in The Time Monster made from a wine bottle a corkscrew various bits of cutlery and some tea leaves. Because the Doctor is a very British Gallifreyan, this gadget does not work unless it has tea leaves.

Favourite Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLcXvmOdwpE - the Mighty Trout. Gotta love him.

Favourite .gif



Favourite Guest Star

Brian Blessed. Note: not my favourite guest character, because I'm not massively fond of Yrcanos, but my favourite guest star. Because Brian is just bloody awesome.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry )

I genuinely can't think of one. People slag off Beryl Reid in Earthshock, but I thought she was fabulous. There's a number of female characters I dislike, but they are almost exclusively played by genuinely lovely actresses. I suppose I shall have to say Catherine Tate, although I recognise that my dislike of her is mostly irrational and based on her comedy persona rather than her personally.

I think the reason I'm reluctant to answer this one is because this morning I dipped into Chicks Dig Timelords. Obviously me being me I read the Sixie articles first, and while Tansy Rayner Roberts's one about Trial of a Timelord was awesome, the one about season 22 (my favourite season, lets not forget) was a sour, one-sided, cherry-picking rant about how awful Peri is. And I recognised in it some of the way I can be cruel about other companions. I think, to an extent, the writer reacts to Peri the same way I react to Ace, and while I have had the opportunity to revisit and re-examine that reaction I don't think she has. And it makes me very cross that my favourite season is covered solely from the point of view of slagging off a character I like instead of the wider story points it has to offer.

So I have resolved to do less slagging off and more positive stuff.

We'll see how long that resolution lasts.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry )

Favourite Actor

Colin, obviously.
But after him I think, for regulars, it's joint between Nicholas Courtney and Lis Sladen, both of whom were reportedly very lovely. Frazer Hines is up there somewhere too, just for his wicked sense of humour.
For people who didn't appear as regulars, I'll have to mention cousin Di, even though she's not technically appeared in it yet. But aside from her, it's got to be the amazing, stunning, witty, Jacqueline Pearce. I quite liked Jacks, as she prefers to be called*, until I went to a convention in Sheffield last year and absolutely fell in love with her. She's so friendly and engaging, and naughty. Standing in the doorway of the convention hall having a ciggie with her and chatting about booze is a moment I will treasure always.

Least favourite actor

There's not much contest for this one, I'm afraid. Matthew Waterhouse. I don't like his character, he doesn't act the character well anyway, and he's really annoying on commentaries and in interviews.

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* LOL I went into Showbiz Chums mode then.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Favourite version of the theme tune

You can watch all of them here:



You have to give props to the original Delia Darbyshire arrangement. Nothing quite like it had ever been done before, and it's been steadily watered down ever since. I particularly detest the current series inability to have it without a full orchestra. The whole POINT was its electronic otherworldliness. Orchestras are bad and wrong for the Doctor Who theme.

That said, I do have a soft spot for the Peter Howell version that suffuses my childhood memories. That BOOOM at the end...

Character whom I love that everyone else hates



Lookit him, he's so lovely.

Oops. Appear to have missed doing this yesterday. Never mind! Have two day's worth at once!

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Favourite Master

I'm quite fond of the Pratt/Beevers zombiefied Master. I'd like to have seen more of Jacobi before he turned into Simm. Not fond of Simm or Roberts. I have a big soft spot for Gatiss. But really, it's got to be between Ainley and Delgado. And I love them both, so I'm not going to choose.

No, really. Ainley is my master, the one I grew up with. But Delgado is the originator. How can I choose?

Saddest Episode

Part six of The Green Death. I'm not Jo's biggest fan, but her exit is the best handled of any companion. Pertwee's little glance back at the party as he drives away in Bessie always has me teary. A tribute to the talent of the actors that even though I'm not fond of Jo, their performances can still have this effect on me.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Season 22.

Oh, you want more than that? OK, well, season 22 includes Attack of the Cybermen (Colin's mighty organ and Colin's shiny helmet, plus The Fat Controller), Vengeance on Varos (Proper Scifi with some really prescient stuff about reality television), The Mark of the Rani (in which Peri the botanist actually gets to use her botanical knowledge, Colin is well-hung, and Colin gets to fanboy George Stephenson), The Two Doctors (bums galore, Jacks Pearce, and Two and Jamie), Timeslash (OK, admittedly Timeslash is crap, but it does have Paul Darrow's Richard III impression and a really rather good monster), and Revelation of the Daleks (which is just bloody awesome).

Season 22 is a fine mixture of old and new - lots of continuity references and yet a fixed chameleon circuit. Daleks, Sontarans and cybermen and yet Sil and Androgums. It has the glass dalek scene, which is seared into my brain from childhood. It has Six/Davros. It has militant vegetarianism.

I suspect I am probably the only person who has picked season 22 for this meme, but I don't care.

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Madame Vastra isn't an alien, because homo reptilia are earth creatures, so I can't choose her. Possibly it would be cheating to choose the Doctor himself. There's always Davros, of course, but I feel I haven't given the Welsh series enough love yet, so I shall say Commander Strax. Soldier, nurse, butler, and producer of magnificent lactic fluids. Odd that Strax is always referred to as "he" when it's specifically stated that as a member of a clone race, genders are alien to her. I suppose "it" would be a bit disrespectful (not that the Doctor wasn't disrespectful to her anyway), but I don't see why it's always "he".

(a list of the questions and links to all the answers can be found on this entry)

Least Favourite Companion is hard for me. There's none that I really really hate for their entire run. The three that are in the running for this I don't dislike as characters per se, but for the effect they had on the show. The one who springs to mind first is Jo Grant. I like the actress that plays her, and there's nothing particularly wrong with the character as a person... It's just that she was specifically designed to be a dumb blonde because Liz Shaw was too brainy.

The second is Mel. Mel should have been someone I liked - and in a lot of the audio plays she is - but her fatphobia and screaming are played up and her brains and problem-solving abilities are played down far too much in the TV episodes she appears in for me to not want to smack her.

And the third?

The third, inevitably, is Rose.

I loved Rose with Nine. She was a great comeback to the idea that shop workers are all stupid - and given that I was a checkout girl at the time this was something I appreciated very much. Sure she didn't have many qualifications, but she was a streetsmart and brave young woman, and didn't let Nine give her any crap. And then suddenly, when Nine turned into Ten she turned into a lovesick teenager, and regressed horribly. And then Ten kept mooning over her to the point where he treated Martha like absolute rubbish. And then she kept coming back. And back. And back.

My problems with Rose don't stem so much from her as a character, but from the fact that she was Rusty's Mary Sue. He's been quite open about the fact that he grew up wanting to be the Doctor's companion. I see that as a poverty of ambition. I didn't grow up wanting to be the Doctor's companion, I grew up wanting to be the Doctor. And I suspect most of us who felt like outsiders who grew up watching the show feel similarly. If you feel like society doesn't understand you but you want to help anyway, if you're brainy and unconventional, then The Doctor is the obvious identification character.

But anyway, Rose kept coming back because she was Rusty's identification character and he was running the show. Rose got that vomit-inducing and overlong goodbye and her own Doctor-shaped Sex Toy* because she was Rusty's identification character. And if she comes back for the 50th anniversary I shall be very cross indeed. Yes, Rose is a special person, but ALL of the Doctor's companions are special. Hell, he's married one of them, and another one is his Granddaughter. Rose is just as important as the others, but not more so, and it annoys me when people talk as though she's his OTP.

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* and what's the deal with that anyway? "Here, you can't have me, but you CAN have someone who looks like me but has all the things you love about me removed" - what sort of a deal is THAT? It'd just remind her every day of what she was missing...