It’s the BBC’s most popular show, but BBC Worldwide has no idea how to handle it.
There’s no doubt about it – Doctor Who‘s popularity has soared since its move to BBC America in 2009. The network has been pushing and promoting the show with vigor, giving it the star treatment and prime-time advertising that SyFy never afforded it. They’ve been pushing the show on social networks – the official Doctor Who Tumblr page is a little annoying at times but there’s no doubt they have a winning social media strategy. BBC America are amazing and are undoubtedly one of the key reasons for the show’s current popularity here in the States.
BBC Worldwide, on the other hand, appears to be staffed by incompetent morons who don’t really seem to understand what they’re sitting on.
The international sales arm of the BBC are the cause of a number of issues for the show – just speak to anyone working for a company licensed to make Doctor Who merchandise – but nowhere is this more apparent than the show’s, frankly, appalling presence on Netflix. Since the show was added to Netflix in 2008 it has consistently been mishandled, mislabeled and mismanaged, and nobody at BBC Worldwide seems to have any interest in remedying any of the problems viewers may encounter when watching the show.
October 20th is 24-Hour Comics Day, in which artists around the world will be attempting to create a full 24-page comic in just twenty-four hours. Does that sound crazy? Good, because I’ll be doing exactly that.
Galaxy of Comics, my local comic book store and the same store which plays host to the Soulgeek Singles Nights every month, will be holding their 24-Hour Comics Day event from 10am on Saturday October 20th right the way through to the following morning and, despite having almost no artistic talents whatever, they’ve asked me to participate. And I can’t say no. No, really, I can’t – Warren has photos.
Here ae Galaxy of Comics’ details:
Galaxy of Comics
17306 Saticoy St
Van Nuys, CA 91406
Phone: 818-578-8559
Event Date & Start Time: Our event starts October 20, 2012 at 10 AM sharp
It’ll be a laff! I mean, statistically speaking. I don’t handle sleep deprivation well.
BE ADVISED: While the post itself doesn’t contain any spoilers, there are two inline images that contain spoilers for for Game of Thrones season one, and Saturday’s Doctor Who series 7 premiere “Asylum of the Daleks”. You have been warned.
It takes a lot, a lot, to get me watching a new TV show these days. It’s not because I’m a hipster who doesn’t want to watch the same thing everyone else is watching (though I will confess that in my teens I avoided the Harry Potter novels and films specifically because all of my friends were obsessed with the bloody things), but because most current shows have been thoroughly, utterly ruined for me by everybody on the internet everywhere ever before I’ve even had a chance to read a series synopsis.
Everybody is talking about Breaking Bad at the moment. Everybody. It’s the show’s final season – or, as is my understanding, the first half of its final season, the rest of which will be shown in the new year – and the internet is ablaze. People are nattering about it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and all those other social networks I’m not hip enough to know about yet. Also Google+. Tumblr in particular is rather boisterous, with people posting quotes, clips of the show in subtitled GIF format, and reams of fanart based on episodes that aired less than 24 hours prior.
Now you know how Game of Thrones season one ends. Thanks, internet.
Breaking Bad isn’t the only show that suffers this problem, either. The pilot for CBS’ Elementary, their attempt to modernize Sherlock Holmes following the BBC’s rather successful go of it, recently leaked, and within minutes people on Tumblr were posting quotes, breakdowns and, of course, GIFs. Doctor Who‘s seventh series also started this Saturday in the UK, and Tumblr had already thoroughly ruined the show long before the east coast premiere rolled along later that night.
When Game of Thrones is running on HBO, damn near everybody on the internet knows what happened in the latest episode whether they’re watching it or not. When a new episode of Community airs, Tumblr almost immediately becomes a Dan Harmon fansite, and remains that way for the following 48 hours.
Tumblr cannot help but build its nest out of screengrabs, spoilers and snippets like a demented pop culture magpie. Amidst it all, the by now familiar cries of “ALL THE FEELS”, “DEAD” and “ASDFJGFGJKSDJK”, punctuated by reaction GIFs that inexplicably also spoil other shows and films you haven’t managed to get around to seeing yet.
For someone who spends a lot of time on Tumblr, this represents an enormous problem – seeing a TV show you want to watch becomes not just entertainment but a social obligation; something you have to do to avoid being behind the curve. This means torrenting the show before it comes up on Hulu the next day (or, in the case of Doctor Who, after it airs on the BBC but before its North American premiere on BBC America or SPACE), or, if you’re one of those people who still inexplicably has cable, actually sitting down to watch the show as it goes out live.
Imagine that for a moment – having to actually schedule your life around a television show. What is this, the Dark Ages?
A lovely piece of Doctor Who fanart that, if you haven’t seen “Asylum of the Daleks” yet, has the potential to utterly ruin the climax of the episode for you. [Source: Wil Wheaton, via Tumblr]DVRs and digital distribution are a Godsend – they allow us to digest content at our leisure. We are in a golden age of television not just because of shows like Louie, Breaking Bad and Doctor Who, but because we are no longer shackled to the television, forced to watch something as it goes out. We can record it or, better still, log on to Hulu or the iPlayer, to watch when convenient for us.
But to anybody who is active on a social network like Tumblr, that freedom is countered by the desire not to have your favourite show utterly and irrevokably ruined by some well-meaning fan who absolutely has to draw a picture of that new character in the latest episode right fucking now, utterly ruining the plot twist for the episode in the process.
Even webseries like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are chewed up and spat out by social network users – why sit down to watch the show when it’s already splattered all over my dashboard in GIF form?
There are, of course, ways of avoiding this flurry of spoilers. You could install Tumblr Savior, a plugin that allows you to block posts including certain words or hashtags (such as, for instance, #doctor who or #breaking bad). It’s not an ideal solution, however – for a start, it’s predicated on the person posting about the show actually tagging the post, or even including the words you’re blocking. Not ideal if that person you’re following for their exceptional fanart doesn’t tag any of their posts or even post text in their image posts.
I could avoid Tumblr and Twitter entirely, but that feels like not going to a bar simply because you don’t like the house ale, or deciding not to visit an art gallery because you know they’re currently running an exhibit of paintings by an artist you don’t like. It’s like throwing your iPod out the window because you might hear an Alanis Morissette song, and you’re just not in the mood to listen to “Head Over Feet” right now.
While these two solutions might keep me safe from the shows I’m actively watching, like Community and Doctor Who, it doesn’t save the shows I haven’t started watching yet, like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. I’ve seen neither show yet, not even so much as a pilot, because while Tumblr has convinced me that I absolutely have to see them, it’s also ruined every single fucking plot point in every episode that’s broadcast. There’s no point in ordering any box sets, no real sense in adding a show to my Netflix queue, when I already know what’s going to happen. These shows have, in a very real sense, been spoiled.
So my answer, when people nag me about why I haven’t started watching obviously brilliant TV shows yet, is that I simply can’t anymore. I crave new experiences, new stories and new media, but social networking is actively preventing me from receiving those things. Short of stepping away from these platforms and declaring myself a digital hermit, I don’t really know what else to do.
Y’know, other than just watching the shows to watch them. Which is obviously madness.
As you can probably tell from the snazzy Kickstarter widget on the right, our attempt to fund PortsCenter was slightly more than successful (and I use the word “slightly” in a literal sense – no typical British understatement here).
I’ve already ordered almost all the equipment needed to produce all 13 episodes, and this weekend I’ll be moseying into my local “Holy Shit, They Sell Everything” store to buy pretty much all of the games and hardware.
The last year has been building up to this moment. I am preposterously nervous, but very excited to finally be working on the show. I’ll probably post occasional updates here, but for more news and announcements regarding PortsCenter keep an eye on PortsCenter.tv. PortsCenter is also on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
I’ve already tweeted a fuckton of Thank Yous, but… thank you to everybody who pledged for the show. You have no idea how incredible grateful I am for the opportunity to make this happen. I hope you won’t be disappointed with the end result.
Incidentally if you weren’t able to pledge to the Kickstarter, consider pledging to this one instead. Joe Walker is trying to raise $700 to produce a webseries about underrated and inexpensive gaming gems called “The Backlog”. It’s a marvelous idea, and he isn’t asking for much money, so do pledge if you’re able.
Heading to the Geek Media Expo this October? So am I!
This year the fourth GMX takes place in Nashville, Tennessee. There are a number of cool guests with a ton of geek cred, including voice actors like Rob Paulsen and Billy West, actors such as Star Trek: Voyager‘s Garrett Wang and Marilyn Ghigliotti of Clerks fame, and internet personalities such as “That Guy With the Glasses” Doug Walker.
Not only will I be at GMX this year, but I’ll also be hosting a one-hour presentation on videogame ports, looking at a few specific titles as well as going into a bit of the history of how, and why, some ports are so radically different from others. It’ll be a sort-of kitbash of PortsCenter, a stand-up comedy show, and a PowerPoint presentation.
I’ll also, in theory, be participating in a couple of Doctor Who panels as well.
GMX haven’t announced their schedule yet, but keep an eye on their programming page for updates. I’ll also be updating this post with details once they’re available.
Once a year, every year, I re-read The Writer’s Tale. According to Russell T Davies’ foreword to the book, Steven Moffat said of this book, “If you still want to be a writer after reading this, you probably will be.” I always, without fail, finish my re-read creatively charged and itching, itching to write. No, not even when I’ve finished reading it. Before that. Long before that. Less than 100 pages into the book, and I’m yearning to be at my computer, tap-tap-tapping out a script, or a short story, or some other manner of thing.
The Writer’s Tale is responsible for a good chunk of writing. It’s responsible for dozens of Ficlys, for huge swathes of Jump Leads story. The last time I re-read the book I knocked out two Jump Leads scripts that, owing to current artist-related circumstances (JjAR had to step away from the comic due to freelance commitments, leaving stand-in artist Mr Phillby to finish what will in all likelihood be the last Jump Leads comic story ever), will probably never be seen.
This year, re-reading that book for, what, the fourth time?, I find myself wanting to return to those characters, to revisit them and give them new adventures. But I can’t. The comic is done. Jump Leads is no more.
…Or is it?
See, last year I wrote an audiplay adaptation of the first Jump Leads story, “Training Day”, with a few to recording it and using it as a jumping-off point for a series of brand spanking new audio-exclusive Jump Leads adventures. I talked to Dino about recording it, I spoke to Adam about playing Llewellyn. I spoke to rather a lot of very excited people about the prospect of giving Jump Leads a soft reboot and continuing the adventures as monthly audioplays… or maybe weekly serialized ones, like old-school Doctor Who.
But those plans fell by the wayside. Whatever happened to them? It wasn’t so long ago – January, as I recall – that I was frantically emailing people about making those audio adventures. What happened in January that–
Oh yes. I got a job. I got a job working for a wonderful company – Quantum Mechanix – working with people I loved spending time with, and serving as a cog in a machine that made the shiniest, most wonderful geek candy.
Except this month – July, nearly three weeks ago now – I left QMx. Not by choice, mind, but a necessary decision. Since then I’ve been remarkably busy, launching and continually writing Deadlong, relaunching the PortsCenter Kickstarter (it’s at 22% right now, if you can believe it!), preparing for my appearance at GMX in Tennessee, and working on another incredibly secret but tremendously awesome project I can’t really talk about yet… and that’s all before the other two webseries I’d like to develop if PortsCenter gets funded.
But there are still a few hours left in the day, and I really want to write for these characters again. Surely I can squeeze another project into my schedule. I can feel Jump Leads stories pressing at the temples of my head – stories I wanted to write, but didn’t, or couldn’t. Don’t they deserve a second chance? Don’t I owe it to myself to write them?
Or am I just being self-indulgent? Should I take that creative energy and channel it instead into Deadlong, a project that deserves my full attention? It’s a dilemma.
Perhaps this blog post is a load of old wank. I don’t know. It does feel good to get it out of my system, though. And I still have that itch…
