Dividing up the content surrounding the Wilderness Years of Doctor Who has been an interesting experiment of trial and error. I had initially planned to read the two Companion Novels during the time time I was listening to the Lost Season 23 audios, but it became clear that these books would be a slow burn, and in the end it did take me about 18 months to get around to finishing them both. Is this a commentary on their quality? Perhaps. I'm still glad I read them though, and it helps provide a good context to where tie-in media was at during this era of the show. I'm also glad I got them out of the way before I dive into the Wilderness Years proper.

I also decided that, since most of the content released during the Wilderness Years is at least somewhat contemporary, I would tackle the two Third Doctor radio dramas beforehand as well. All four pieces of media are set during the original run of the show, and each takes a different approach that I think helps lay the groundwork in a big way for how future works such as the novel ranges in the 90s and Big Finish later on would approach creating content set during previous eras. And I have to say, the audios have already come a long way from where Slipback left off less than a decade earlier.

The two novels were bought used as they are no longer in print, but the two radio plays are available as audio books from sites such as Audible. I've ranked each story based on it's medium, though I found both audios superior to the novels.

( But he was a good man, and a brave one. It's silly, I know, but I feel as though I've lost my best friend. )

I've given myself a couple of days to let the episode sink in, as a lot happened and there was a fair amount I was surprised by (and a couple of things that people theorized that I'm surprised came to pass). Overall I was pretty happy with it even though it suffered from some of the same writing pitfalls as the rest of the Chibnall era, but this definitely erred on the better side.

( As River Song would say: Spoilers )

I debated whether I should write one of these, since we're less than two hours away from the episode's premiere in the UK, but with the looming self-imposed six hour internet blackout to avoid spoilers, I figured now was the last chance I'd have to commit at least some of my thoughts and theories to a post. And I have to stress some, since a sixth month wait for a single episode of television gave me a lot of time to form various thoughts and expectations for one of the biggest episodes of Doctor Who in recent memory.

I have seen the trailers, but I haven't (at least knowingly) been spoiled for anything outside of that that actually happens in the episode. As far as I can tell the people who saw the advanced screening of the episode have been very good about keeping their mouths shut, only confirming that whatever happens with the regeneration at the end was not shown to them. So I'm going into this with high hopes and what I think are reasonable expectations.

( I think I have pretty reasonable expectations, but who knows? )

I posted a couple of days ago that I haven't been sleeping well the past couple of weeks, mostly because my sleep schedule has been super off the past week especially. Last night I pulled the "in case of emergency" rip chord and took some Tylenol PM in order to force myself to go to sleep at a slightly more reasonable hour, but I still think it's gonna take some work to get fully back on track. With vacation and travel stuff starting on Thursday I need to be in better shape sooner rather than later.

I wish it wasn't so hot out? I normally don't mind the heat but its been so consistently hotter than normal that I haven't really left my apartment at all the past three weeks, and it's starting to feel like how it was during the thick of lockdown which hasn't been spectacular for my mental health (and might explain why my sleep schedule has been so off). Weirdly I'm still doing way better than I was in the winter, and I guess I just have to accept that I get seasonal depression now for the first three months of the year. So yeah... that's fun.

As far as fan stuff goes it's mostly been K-Pop for the past couple of months, but I've been trying to slowly wean myself off of it because as far as fandom goes its not a particularly great environment? Like even with the groups I "stan" being relatively low drama, it's still not great. Now that Queendom 2 is over and I went to my summer concerts, picking my other interests back up is something I'm making a concentrated effort on. If any kind of new Doctor Who news dropped that would certainly help matters a lot.

Overall though I'm excited to get into this last leg of summer and into the fall, which is my favorite time of the year. I woke up this morning actually brainstorming fall activities and I hope I can actually get some of my friends to do some of them with me.

Haven't posted in ages because for about a month and a half I was crazy busy and in the last couple of weeks I've been doing basically nothing. Though I'll probably have more to post in the coming months as I finally get into Wilderness Years Doctor Who content and the Centenary Special gets closer.

I'm in a weird mental headspace that's definitely not burnout. I experienced that in spades back in the winter. It's more like restlessness I guess? Like there's so much I want to do but can never seem to find the time to actually do it? It doesn't help that my sleep schedule is the worst its been in years the past couple of weeks, and try as I might I cannot seem to fix it.

☆ Television: I've been keeping up with Drag Race the past few weeks but that's really about it as far as Western TV goes. I'm also technically watching Roswell New Mexico but I'm very behind on it, though I do want to get caught up sooner rather than later because it is the final season. I managed to stay current with the final season of Legacies and it was definitely worth the investment.

☆ Anime: The tradeoff to not watching much regular TV is that I'm finally watching anime again! I go through phases where I watch I ton for a while and then none for months at a time, and it feels nice to get caught up with certain shows and get reminded how much I actually do love the medium. This current resurgence is definitely thanks to My Dress-Up Darling. Now I just need to do my rewatch of The Devil is a Part-Timer! so I can actually start watching season 2.

☆ Gaming: It's mostly still just been Animal Crossing and Fortnite, though I recently replayed all of the first Danganronpa game on the Switch, and I loved it but also forgot how long those games are. I was gonna replay the second game right after but I'm taking a bit of a break from it because it's a huge time suck. I have played some more of Wandersong as well and it is a delight, and I want to set aside a day this month in order to play though even more of it. Biggest serotonin boost I've had in a while.

I haven't been super inspired to write lately - bad things happening in the world will do that - but with how this summer has gone I'm hopeful for a creatively fulfilling trajectory this fall (and maybe even a concentrated effort this year to do NaNo and finish up some stuff). I also have stuff I want to say about the concerts I've gone to but I think I'll save that for a different post.

So I feel like in a few days this entry may be very outdated, which tbh is a very exciting feeling. I totally understand why Chris Chibnall was so adverse to releasing casting info or filming in public after the number of high profile leaks that happened during Moffat's tenure, but god its nice to see so much buzz about Doctor Who and have some idea of where it's going in the future.

( under the cut is a bulleted list )

So it's been just over a year since the last time I've done this, and in the time since I've only published one (1) story to AO3, so I at least have not broken my yearly chain. Hopefully sometime this summer I'll be able to actually push out some of the drafts that have been gathering dust the last couple of years. Interested to see how things have (and haven't) changed.

( It's not my favorite activity, inventory management, but it's close enough. )

Doing these audios was never really something I considered when I was planning my watch of Classic Who, and it was only after I did my previous "lost season" watch that I realized another "season" like it actually existed. It makes complete sense that the show's future had already been charted when the BBC pulled the plug back in 1989, and these audios probably don't reflect what the season would have truly looked like the way the previous ones did, but the way they've been changed and adapted feels much more faithful to the direction the series actually did take after it was cancelled with the novels and the subsequent revival. The fact that much of it was also helmed by Andrew Cartmel himself was a major selling point for me, and upon listen I was surprised by how much of it ended up being a large, linked "season-long" arc.

However, I will say that because these stories weren't as fleshed out as the ones from the aborted season 23, they by and large feel much thinner. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them - I really did! - but they almost felt constrained by what they could do with The Doctor and Ace since so much ground has already been covered elsewhere. What they did get, however, was extremely satisfying, and this listening experience has really inclined me to look into Big Finish more once the dust has settled a bit more.

All four stories are available for purchase from Big Finish as well as on platforms such as Audible. This "season" ended up being difficult to rank due to how interconnected they each were, and its entirely possible my ordering will change after I hit publish. I should also note that I actually lost a huge chunk of this review due to hardware failure and had to rewrite it later, which means that parts of it have been written much later and in less detail than I originally gave.

( So... is that it for us? I bet you're already into other dodgy schemes, with other dodgy people. )

Writing an impromptu update entry because as I was finishing up a recent Doctor Who review post, my browser crashed and as a result 60% of it was not saved, and the way Dreamwidth's draft function works means there's no way to recover the rest of it, and I am very upset and it will probably be a while before I muster up the energy to write the rest of it all again, since it was essentially two separate sessions of work that were lost.

I'm gonna try to finish up the long postponed Companion novels this month and do a separate review on those as well, maybe grouped with those two Third Doctor audios from the wilderness years as they're kind of outliers for the other content I'll be reviewing from that era. I've decided I will cover all the indie productions, but will just stress how much I've pirated every piece of BBV media considering their shitty business practices, while paying for Reeltime's as far as I am able.

In other Doctor Who news, it looks like we won't be getting any episodes between Jodie's swan song this fall and the 60th Anniversary special. Considering RTD's affinity for spinoffs, I'm lowkey hoping something else is in the works for 2023, because just one special feels very barebones. (I'm also hoping the special is just a one-off fanservice thing featuring the past Doctors, and Fourteen makes their actual debut in the following season, but you know what they say about hope.)

The past two weeks have been... fraught to say the least. I went on a really fun vacation right before then but as soon as I got back I was immediately swamped at work and had to deal with a freak power outage over the weekend, so today is the first day where I haven't felt completely burned out. So yeah, no progress on any writing or other creative projects. At this point I'm not holding out much hope on that front until spring rolls around and the weather improves, because I wanna channel whatever motivations and energy I have into getting a semi-consistent workout routine again. (In the past I've had the most success attempting it in March so fingers crossed.)

☆ Television: Still watching Drag Race, and the current regular season is starting to pick up again... which is good because UK Versus the World is really crashing and burning as it limps towards the finish line. (Right now I'm #TeamMoHeart because at least she's been killing the runway every week, but I think they're gonna end up giving it to Blu who I've felt very meh on aside from a couple of bright spots.) I'm really hopeful the upcoming season Drag Race España will be as good as the first one and inject some much-needed enthusiasm back into this sphere.

As far as regular television goes, I hit the pause button on my Golden Girls universe watch for my vacation, and ended up seguing afterward into finally finishing the third season of You, and watching the first seasons of Bridgerton and Archive 81. All three were excellent, and it's making me tentatively wanna dive into more new shows like that even though I'm not really sure I have the drive or the attention span (Squid Game is still sitting in my queue unwatched). Disney Plus is also adding all the Netflix Marvel shows in Mid-March, and conventional wisdom seems to indicate those characters will only become more re-integrated with the main MCU films and tv series, so it might be a good idea to check those off my list? I've had very mixed responses to Phase Four so far so it probably wouldn't hurt.

☆ Gaming: I bought Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Legend Arceus, but I wanna finish all of the Pokémon Sword Expansion Pass content before I officially start those. I should be finishing Isle of Armor tonight so then I can start The Crown Tundra this week, and then I'm planning on starting both of the new games simultaneously. I've also been enjoying New Pokémon Snap quite a lot, and I'm anticipating that one will have a long shelf life for me like Animal Crossing has. I have mixed feelings on the Scarlet and Violet announcement, since I really like the starter designs and the vibe, but I think the art style is veering too much into uncanny valley territory and I wish they'd done something similar to Sword and Shield.

As far as other games go, I've started Yooka-Laylee, which I'm enjoying but I never played that style of game as a kid so it's a bit of a learning curve. I'd also like to get back into and finish EarthBound, Figment, and Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town, but I think taking a break from them is a nice recharge. I've still been playing Fortnite on and off but my enthusiasm has definitely waned compared to the last two seasons, and I mostly just wanna hit level 200 before the season ends so I can unlock everything.