So my wishlist for series 8 of Doctor Who

I summed this up with this tweet.

Ok Moff can we have a female doctor please? And some writers who are women too, while you're at it? Ta!
— Dalek Jane (@pipsytip) June 1, 2013

Let me break things down further.

1. A female Doctor would be a nice change.  There is now a precedent thanks to Neil Gaiman's Episode the Doctor's Wife.  And if Moff is up to the challenge of writing the Doctor as a woman then I have a list of women who would make awesome Doctors.  Sophie Okonedo, Julia Davis, Olivia Coleman. I don't think it will happen because I don't think anyone is brave enough to do this.  When I mentioned the possibility of a female Doctor for the first time ever, I got a bit of abuse.
2. Writers who are women writing Who.  Since 2005 there has only been one writer who was also a woman. Helen Raynor wrote the two parter Daleks in Manhattan and since then there has been no other women writers.  I would love someone like Sarah Pinborough to tackle an episode.

I don't think that Doctor Who is intentionally a boys club with a young pretty female companion but it really is beginning to look that way.  

Would love to see some changes for the future.

In Moff I trust - yes still.

I'm writing this because I'm really uncomfortable with the level of hate being slung at Doctor Who at the moment.  I'm seeing a lot of negative stuff surrounding Eleven, Clara and indeed the writers. Especially towards Steven Moffat.

So here is my theory behind series 7b of Doctor Who.

I saw a lot of people complain about how Clara felt repetitive.  We had seen her ilk before, more than once. Not least I suppose because we met Clara twice before we meet her properly.  In addition to this in her first outing we find out that the Doctor stalked her as a child which echoed strongly of young Amelia Pond.

Ok I can see what that seems uninspired and a little bit dull but what if this was deliberate? What do I mean? Well This year is the 50th anniversary of the show and maybe all these nods which are being dismissed as being done before or lazy writing are in fact deliberately harking back to earlier stories and familiar tropes to culminate in the 50th anniversary special.

And why do I think this? I agree that this series has felt lacklustre but lest we forget, when Russell T Davies was show runner we were subject to a number of below par episodes.  I am still believing in Steven Moffat delivering an exciting 50th special because I still think he's one of the best writers working in British TV at the moment.

In series 5 many people picked up on inconsistencies and 'plot holes' which were finally resolved in The Big Bang.  I think we might all be underestimating The Moff and his command of all things TImey Wimey and he's going to blow us all away with something brilliant.

If I'm wrong I will eat my dalek dress.

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Professor Elemental and me

Part of the Saturday night entertainment was Professor Elemental a purveyor of chap hop and general awesomeness.

I was drunk enough to volunteer to join him on stage.

And my boyfriend had the presence of mind to capture this for prosperity.

Without further ado I present Professor Elemental featuring Dalek Jane.

Sci-Fi Weekender 4

Well we're home, I've been recharging my batteries literally and figuratively. Sci Fi Weekender has been a blast and I've enjoyed 95% percent of what has gone on. This event evolved from last year's SFX weekender my blog about that can be found here.

This event was a vast improvement in almost every way from last year and I'm going to reflect on my experience of the event.

We arrived Thursday afternoon and check in took forty minutes from joining the queue to getting out again having organised which signings we wanted to go to having bought VIP tickets.

The caravan chalet was modern spacious but cold, it took us a while to work out the best way to heat it up - I'll come back to that.  We also decided to mainly self cater and heartily recommend to those who drive to the venue to bring your own slow cooker and throw things in it works a treat.

Thursday evening was spent in the Mash and Barrel, meeting up with old friends and meeting new ones. Hello @geekcampgirls. The atmosphere was great, relaxed and happy great hugs a gossip with Sam Stone and all was well with the world.

I kept quite a busy schedule, I went to Here come the Girls which despite the hopeless title was actually a wonderful discussion of the issues that writers who happen to be women face. On the panel were Emma Newman, Amanda Rutter, Sam Stone, Raven Dane, Stacia Kane, Kim Curren and Frances Knight.  Lots of interesting points especially about genre and horror and distinctions between how things are perceived I was fascinated.

My other must see was Just a Minute ably compered by Paul Cornell (nicest man in the world - official) This had been a highlight for me last year and was not disappointed this time round as Emma Newman, Gareth Powell, Stacia Kane and Chris Brookmyre did battle. Watching Emma Newman's inner pedant wrestle with her anxiety was brilliant.

One of the things that was disappointing was that two of the major TV guests pulled out in the week preceding the event and it left the event feeling a little bit light on that side of things.  I spent most of my time in the Spaceport listening to writers and learning as much as I could. I loved the panel on dystopian futures and post apocalyptic fiction.

Other huge things for me were meeting Brian Blessed and Peter Davidson both were utterly lovely and charming.

We attended the imaginarium on Friday night and having missed out last year was mostly impressed we felt that some of the acts went on a bit too long and an interval of 15 minutes would have been a godsend.

Saturday more signings and author panels. I have a hard time speaking to people I don't know so chickened out of speaking to some authors because I was a little bit intimidated.  The saturday night entertainment ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.

On the side of Sublime, Professor Elemental who was fantastic. He kicked ass and I vounteered to go up on stage and was an apprentice monkey butler who was also a dalek.  Yes I am Dalek Jane.

The Gameshow between Robert Rankin and Dez Skin which on paper sounded good, was excrutiating and went on too long.

The dancing afterwards was epic, I got my geeky dancing on with the GeekCampGirls who had been cosplaying their asses off all weekend and much fun was had.

Bad points?

Just a few, TV and film guests were few and far between.  Guests are fairly important to me, I like to meet me heroes when I can and was disappointed when the big names pulled out.

It was cold.  our fire didn't light automatically and we had to buy matches, the heating in the bedroom was completely ineffectual. But we spent so few hours in the chalet it didn't really matter.

I thought placing the author panels in the space port was a bit rude, the sound was dreadful and a bit disrespectful to the guests.

The 'gameshow' on saturday night was awful.  Jokes about child abuse aren't funny. 

I didn't hear any abuse from muggles thrown my way, but I would have been gutted if there was.

We'll be back next year but Chic will have to up the ante and sort out some of the issues.

To sum up, you get out of these events what you put into them -  this time I took a big risk and I dressed up and I loved it and I've made friends from the experience too, that made the event worth while.

Making a Dalek dress for the craftily impaired.

I've made a dalek dress, not from scratch you understand because that is beyond my skillset but I have made one and here is how I did it.

What you need:

1. A jersey dress - I got one similar to this though you can play around with styles that suit.
2. Ribbon  - to decorate the bust area I used 5 metres of silver and just over one of black satin ribbons
3. A sink plunger
4. Polystyrene spheres cut into halves
5. acrylic paint in black and silver
6. a wide plastic alice band
7. two sound to light kits from Maplin http://www.maplin.co.uk/sound-to-light-led-22545
8. a whisk
9. glue gun
10. all of the pins
11. elastic stretchy belt
12. leggings
13. knee high boots
14. A friend to help with fittings

I decided I wanted to be a black and silver dalek because the materials were slightly easier to source and I was running short on time. 

Unless you have a you shaped mannequin it is impossible to set the ribbons on your own.  My friend used me as the dummy and we pinned the ribbons in place to look like the venty mid section on the dalek in a grid pattern.  I decided to have three horizontal silver lines and three black uprights. On the front and back and pinned the ribbons in place so I would know where to sew.

So this took a while and because my bust is on the large size, we had to shape the ribbons over the top.

Due to the nature of the jersey being a stretchy material and the ribbon being non-stretchy, I've only sewn in strategic places so that there is still give in the jersey.  On the sleeves I've stitched three piece of silver ribbon but again only in certain spots to keep the flexibility.

Next the balls.

I am not to be trusted with sharp implements so I enlisted the help of my father to cut them into half.  I ordered 25 60mm diameter balls and ended with 50 half spheres.  I have hand painted them all silver.

I recommend acrylic paint for this because yes aerosols would have been quicker.  But I didn't want the polystyrene reacting with the paint and thought that the water based paint would be less likely to react.  The down side is that it has taken three coats of paint to get near the shade of silver and the coverage I wanted. Dull work but someone's got to do it.

To attach the half spheres to the dress I use a hot glue gun and stick them on in columns.

And the finished article: 

I got a little over excited when my Dad finished my headset...

I bought a wide plastic alice band and two sound to light kits.  My dad is an engineer so it was his job to do the electronics and mount the kits on it. I'm thrilled with the results.

A reaction to the now deleted Geek Camp Girls Post

I'm quite sad that this post has to be written but it appears it does.

Last night the Geek Camp Girls posted to their blog some guidelines for interacting with them in whilst in costume at geek camp.  I have to admit I felt sad that they felt the need to post it, but in the current climate with geeky girls being challenged a lot I completely understood their need to write and post something.

The tone of the piece (which has now been taken down or I would link to it) was written very much tongue-in-cheek and the thrust of the piece was just asking to be treated with respect.

This post was shared because it was funny because it was talking sense and then bad stuff started to happen.

By bad stuff I mean those who shared the post were getting abuse - getting accused of being sexist(!) and this being the internet things quickly escalated and lots of people involved felt very upset.

So why am I writing this? It upsets me when people I like are attacked and it saddens me that when a group of women are saying that they want to be treated with respect that they get slammed for it.  These are normal women, they are not booth babes, they want to celebrate their fandom, their way and should be able to do that without harassment.

This morning, one of the group has left because she feels she will not be welcome at geek camp anymore and that's the kick to the guts. Fandom is becoming a polarised place  - somewhere that should be accepting of everyone no longer is - at least not to women who dare to stick their head above the parapet.

For the record, this is making me ever more determined to kick ass with my dalek dress that I am putting together.

Poetry

Even though I've submitted my second TMA the course continues to rumble on and I am knee deep in poetry at the moment. Glorious bonkers poetry.  Now it just so happens that I used to write poems horribly naive poems of teenaged indulgence.

It is weird putting poetry to the forefront of my mind again, I feel like I'm squeezing back into skin I've not used in an awfully long time. I've started drafting three different poems this week and it feels like I've been working muscles I've not used in aeons.

I was tidying up my office/geekspace at home yesterday to tidy away some xmas decs when I paused at my poetry shelf. (Yep studied literature long enough to amass a shelf of poetry) and flicked through some old favourites. All the annotations that I used to make and it was weird, I was that person am I still?

I'm certainly fond of poetry, in a free verse ignore the rules kind of way but I'm not sure if it is who I am now.  The course book lists some ways of generating poems which feel clunky and I'm not sure if I'm generating anything worthwhile.

But on the flipside, it's fun and it is a different way of working, if I could write prose in the same picky way, contrstructing and crafting on a micro level it would drive me mad, but in a 12 line poem it is something else.

Well here's a draft of a poem I wrote today.

Between Two Nowheres

There is a rock, cragged old granite,
Fissures deep and wider than two fingers.
Heavy it dominates the plain.

The sky is open here, a dialogue
of weather converses with the land
Shaping and changing it like opinions
And reasoning win arguments.

Place a hand on the ground flat
Palm down, absorb the resonance
Slow throbbing vibrations, a gong
Last hit millennia ago still reverberating.

There is a path, nothing official
No signs or stiles or steps
Just the memory of a thousand feet
Taking a thousand more steps.

Amazed

Last night I posted Geek is a Feminist Issue because it was something I felt strongly about. I was sure that some people would appreciate my opinion but  I've been overwhelmed, amazed and bewildered by the response.

Thanks to @GeekCampGirls especially @dalekette and @_BabyDollNikki_ for helping to get the message out there.

If you took time to read the post and tweet me or comment or shared it with someone else thank you.

I have tweeted @therealgokwan a few times over the last forty-eight hours and I know that a number of other people have done the same or retweeted at him.  As yet he hasn't acknowledged which is a shame. It has been suggested that I write to him personally and I'm considering that option.

It's been a strange 24 hours.

Geek is a Feminist Issue

This is something I've tried to write on more than one occasion.  This is something I have wanted to write for an awfully long time.  But this subject I'm about to tackle is thorny and I need to use my words carefully, I want you dear reader to understand exactly where I'm coming from and why I want to rant, shout and holler to make people take notice.

Geek is a feminist issue.

So what is a geek? Simon Pegg defines it like this:

Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection.  It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something.  It is basically a licence to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult.

So a geek is someone who enjoys something, be it a game, genre, musical theatre, sport or academic subject and has a sense of ebullient enthusiasm about that subject area. On a personal level being a geek is deriving a certain amount of joy and pleasure from learning as much as you can about a subject area, a desire to know more and to share it.

Geeks tend to be outside of the mainstream one way or another and the stereotypical idea of geeks have been derided in mainstream media for decades.  There has been a shift in the last fifteen years or so, the rise and rise of comic book heroes alongside the rise of the Internet has repositioned geeks as being more or less respectable, there is now a sense that it is acceptable to geek over things. But this is not without issues, male geeks are accepted but if you are female and a geek then a whole new level of issues are encountered.

My theory is that female geeks have always existed, if you don't believe me go and read Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey,  Catherine Moreland is the first recorded evidence of a fangirl.  I just don't think that female geeks have been all that visible.  The Internet, message board sites, live journal communities allowed geeky women to come together and become more visible. I know that I've always been geeky, I don't think there's ever been a time where I wasn't deeply into something, Knightmare and the Mysterious Cities of Gold through Xena the Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones there has always been at least one passion that I have to follow relentlessly.

So it appears that being  geeky is now acceptable and we're all  just peachy and that is where you are wrong, there are still areas of being a fangirl and fanboy that are derided by the mainstream.  Lets take cosplay as an example.  I have a huge amount of respect for cosplayers, they put hours of work into their costumes either to create replica costumes that match the originals perfectly or else creating costumes which express their love for their fandom or comment on it in a new way. A lot of mainstream media decides that this is weird and that the cosplayers must either believe they are a storm trooper, hobbit or batman or they are doing it because they are broken in some way.  I watched a TV programme last year where Connie Fisher visited the SFXweekender and spent the entire report treating the cosplayers like they were mentally unstable. I would like to know what the actual difference is between someone who goes to football matches, paints their face red and white or blue and white and wears the strip opposed to someone who dons a starfleet uniform and pointy ears?

Women who cosplay get more derision than there male counterparts and this derision comes from all directions. From male geeks who think that female cosplayers aren't real geeks and are only dressing up in order to 'trick' male geeks in some way or are there for male geeks' titillation. This viewpoint is not the default one but it permeates conventions enough for it to be quite intimidating.  Over on the mainstream side of things there are the pitying glances, look at that girl, she could be pretty if she listened to what we are saying and bought the right clothes.

Gok Wan, who I used to have a lot of respect for in championing women's self esteem has let me down.  Last night his new show went out on channel four Gok's Style Secrets and the woman who was a cosplayer.  What disappointed me the most was that someone who presumably enjoyed cosplay was made acceptable to men so that she could find a date.  I had always assumed Gok Wan to be about empowering women to celebrate themselves no matter what and not just conforming to what he thinks is normal and right.

I am not broken, I am a resilient woman who enjoys science fiction and fantasy. I choose to wear geeky t-shirts because that is what makes me happy, I feel most like me kicking around in my jeans my boots and my purple genki gear hoodie that proclaims release the attack kittens. I am not mainstream, I have never been cool and I never want to be.  If I want to cosplay as a dalek in a dress I have customised then by golly I will. I do these things to please me, I do not seek approval. I have the right to celebrate my fandoms my way and this includes visiting platform nine and three quarters on September the first or speaking like Gollum when the mood takes me. I collect 5" Doctor Who Figures and if I was a man  this would accepted as normal geeky behaviour but in a woman, there is some assumption that there are issues there.

I'm reaching the stage where I think noise has to be made and regularly.

Happy New Year

I think that is is fair to say I really sucked at blogging last year, hard to explain, but the mojo just upped and left and that was a bad thing.

Having said that I've been writing quite a lot since september for my OU course, it is just that it hasn't really been visible to any one but those I've been brave enough to share my work with.

I love writing, I feel that when I reach that zone, I can come up with stuff that entertains and is interesting.  Time as ever is the enemy, I never seem to have enough of it or I seem unable to settle.  I need self discipline and I know from experience I need this in all areas of my life.

So what do I need to do to counter this? Control, that is what I need and I'm taking control of myself this year and giving myself a bit of a talking to on one level and then setting myself reasonable boundaries and rules to help me make the most out of this life I've been given.

I may blog more about that at some point but I feel it's important for me to get into my head what I'm doing first and then share later if I feel that is is appropriate.

I've just submitted my short story to the OU for marking and I'm pleased with it, having never written any science fiction before I wanted to write something that felt honest and authentic, I don't think it's perfect but I do think that it is reasonable if not without flaws.

I hope that my tutor enjoys it, I felt like I've had a rough trot of late with the OU but I'm tenacious and I don't go down that easy.

The next unit is poetry and I have some reservations about the methods that the Big Red Book is suggesting but I'm swallowing the grump and giving it a go.