For this season the 40 Years blogs will mainly be on Wednesdays and Thursday, to follow the episodes original airings on Tuesday and Wednesday. The one exception is this first week: the episodes originally aired Monday 3rd Jan 1983 & Tuesday 4th Jan 1983 so those blogs will go up Tuesday 3rd Jan 2023 & Wednesday 4th Jan 2023.
But before we start I have a small confession: we won't finish this season. I've been writing about DW constantly since the 50th anniversary in 2013 and we're now approaching the 60th. Before that I wrote everyday from 2010 to late 2012. I got into good practice of having a significant number of blogs in hand in case anything went wrong. In 2018 I had my first major stall and went a couple of months without being able to write anything but was able to pick up after that and finish the blogs for the later Tom Baker stories for the 40th Blog and Jon Pertwee for the 50th: My s11 blog file has a last edit date in late 2019 and I'm pretty sure that that was an edit and the blog itself had been in the bag for a while by then! So the 50th blog entries for s10 and s11 will follow this year and next, that's happening.
I took the choice to push on with the Peter Davison stories for the 40th blog even though that was beyond the original remit of the blog which had been to do the Toms. I especially wanted to say stuff about Earthshock. But, iirc, I stalled again quite early on, and then again later in the season. I got stuck in episode 4 of Arc of Infinity in Jan 2020 then Covid happened, my head fell apart and I didn't write a word about DW for a year. Early 2021 something clicked, I finished the problem Arc 4, sailed through Snakedance, which I'm generally not to fond of, and went into Mawdryn Undead, one of my favourite Fifth Doctor stories. Writing about episode 1 wasn't too bad but I very quickly ran into trouble with episode 2 and had to down tools again but knowing I had 2 years to work it through and get going again.
I never did.
I just could not find the new words to write, and by this time last year I knew I wasn't going to so the question changed from "How can I push on?" to "How can I salvage what I have?" Do I want to even start a season I can't finish? Just stopping might be neater but I've got two and a bit stories worth of blog entries I've slaved over that I don't want to waste.
So I settled for finishing Mawdryn 2 then taking the existing episode a day entries for 3 & 4 and plugging some screencaps in.... which was the point my DVD drive decided to refuse to play my Mawdryn Undead disc any more. Fortunately there are a few screencaps from these episodes out there so I've got something to work with. But that's the limit of what I can do, I've not done the story justice but I've done what I can.
I'm sorry, but I've hit my limits and need to acknowledge that taking this further than this point is beyond me and I don't have the words anymore. I would have LOVED to redo Five Doctors with lots of nice pictures but ..... :-(
I am fortunate that most of later the Episode a Day blogs - see http://dweveryday.blogspot.com/2018/10/index.html aren't too bad.
Thanks for reading. Arc of Infinity 1 tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment