Xenon's Seventh Circle

Title: Fire & Brimstone
Fandom: Could be either Doctor Who or Torchwood
Rating: G
Word Count: c. 400
Characters: Captain Jack Harkness

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fandom_stocking fic for imamaryanne.

Fandoms: Torchwood and Harry Potter
Characters: Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Owen Harper, and Neville Longbottom
Gen, 1600 words

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So. Ten years ago today (it was a Sunday), the BBC aired the first episode of Torchwood. The first two episodes actually, as it was a double bill. Much of the country boggled at it, unsure quite what they'd just seen, but I fell in love. It was loud and fun and a bit ridiculous; okay, quite a lot ridiculous. It turned out to be just what I most wanted from my television though, and I couldn't let the tenth anniversary go by without some sort of celebration. A short story then, hopefully in the spirit of the fun, sensible-sci-fi-fan-annoying show that I fell in love with, ten years ago tonight. It's beneath the cut, and also at AO3.

Title: Persistence
Characters: Jack, Tosh, Gwen, Owen, Ianto and Myfanwy
Rating: G
Word Count: c.5500

Spoilers for season one. Set early in season two, but no spoilers for that.

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Some time today I plan to begin a rewatch. I haven't seen seasons one and two in years, so it will be something of a rediscovery.

Happy birthday, Torchwood!

I moved house in 2012. Theoretically a simple enough procedure, but it turned into a comedy of errors so far as my internet connection was concerned. I can't blame my ISP, which seemed to be doing its best, but BT were a nightmare. I don't think it can actually have been sixteen years before I was reconnected, but it certainly felt like it. I spent the offline time intending to accomplish something useful, but in reality doing some extensive moping, and quite possibly squeaking every time I looked at my computer. Oh, and I rewatched Blake's 7, which seemed like a worthwhile use of my time. And wrote a Torchwood/Rentaghost crossover, which isn't really a worthwhile use of anybody's time, but whatever.

Beyond that, pass. When I started this, I thought that these would be the easy years, but they're not. I know a few things, obviously - Arab Spring, ISIS, David Cameron and Ian Duncan Smith being dicks, etc, but for the most part recent history is a mystery to me. I'm sure something must have happened somewhere in 2012. There was Hurricane Sandy of course, which caused some nasty damage along the Jersey Shore, but I have to confess to mostly knowing about that because of E Street fandom. Staying up until stupid o'clock to watch the benefit concert, because the E Street Band and the Who were playing, along with quite a lot of modern acts that I couldn't pick out of a line up, and frankly wouldn't want to. Otherwise, apparently I was looking the other way.

The Avengers! That happened this year. We had to call it Avengers Assemble here, in case Britain saw Robert Downey Jr in a bright red metal suit, and thought that he was Patrick Macnee. Which presumably makes Mark Ruffalo Diana Rigg? Anyway, it was fab, and everything blew up. On the smaller screen there was Ringer, briefly. On paper it looked wonderful - Richard Alpert, Mr Fantastic and Buffy the Vampire Slayer teaming up. With evil doubles! But it was another of those twenty-two episode shows that didn't get good until halfway in, when everybody else had stopped watching. So it went away again.

Musicwise the year was better. Springsteen brought out Wrecking Ball, and embarked on a two year long world tour with the E Street Band. Two years! Of obsessively stalking them on YouTube, and cheerfully filling my hard drive with music. That was a great tour, and a nice tribute to Clarence and Danny. It's horrible when your fandoms start losing people. Familiar, for those of us who aren't so into the new stuff, but still horrible. Which brings me to the Monkees, I suppose - and also to marine biology. Specifically to Mike deGruy, a hero of mine since I was a teenager. A whirlwind of enthusiasm for sharks and cephalopods, who died this year. No fair, universe. He was on your side.

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2009 was the year that bit back. It seemed as though just about everybody in my family got diagnosed with something horrible this year. Happily, for the most part it went okay, but blimey, 2009. What did we ever to do you?!

Elsewhere, it was the year of Children Of Earth, the Torchwood mini series that broke the fandom. Some loved it, some hated it, some were baffled at how completely it reimagined everything. I think it's great, but it's so far removed from the first two series that I have trouble seeing it as the same show. It was also the year when White Collar started, hurrah! I do love that show. I probably didn't see it until early 2010 though. I know I had several episodes to catch up on anyway.

FlashForward also happened this year. And then stopped abruptly. It was one of those shows with a lot of promise, but a production staff who clearly didn't know what to do with a twenty-two episode season. Nothing happened for weeks, half the audience stopped watching, it picked up, but too late. A shame, as I should dearly have loved to see where it was all going! Another one to add to the list of sci-fi shows that got bashed over the head by the networks. It wasn't alone. This was also the year when the BBC aired Paradox, a wonderful show starring Emun Elliott and Tamzin Outhwaite as a scientist and a detective investigating weirdness from outer space. Outer Space!! I rewatched it only recently, and it turned out to be even better than I remembered, annoyingly. Why can't they let me choose which shows to axe and which to save?!

Talking of ending, this year also saw the final episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien, the chat show/Pythonesque comedy series that had been a hit for NBC since 1993. I only watched it for Max Weinberg, but it was a lot of fun over the years. I still rather miss it. Still, sixteen years is a good run for any show.

Some good films at the cinema this year. None of which I saw this year, or in the cinema, but whatever. The Hangover, which I love (and didn't see until around 2012), Sherlock Holmes (the RDJ/Jude Law version), which I think I also saw in around 2012, and The Brothers Bloom, which nobody saw in 2009. Which is a shame as it's extremely good, and I recommend it highly. So yes. Not so much "cinema in 2009", as "on DVD just the other day", but never mind.

Oh, and politics, world events, things that make me look brainy, etc, etc. Yeah.

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I am a bad, bad fan. I'd been planning all year to do something when the 21st May ticked around, but everything's been so crazy lately that I forgot. And now it's been and gone, and I am so, so sorry, Jack. Believe it or not (sometimes it seems like it, sometimes it definitely doesn't), the 21st was the tenth anniversary of the first screening of "The Empty Child" - the tenth anniversary of the day that Captain Jack Harkness made his debut. I have never really been happy with New Who, I admit. It usually pleases me well enough whilst it's on, but once it's over I rarely rewatch it, and don't often remember what it was about. I didn't really like the Ninth Doctor; I hated the Tenth, and came to hate Rose too in his company; I couldn't stand Donna Noble; and John Simms' Master was worse than the whole lot of them combined. And then some. But Jack... Doctors aside, Jack's the best thing to happen to the show since Ian and Barbara. And I'm sorry that I didn't celebrate your anniversary properly, Jack. It's nothing personal. As a consolation prize, here's my favourite Jack fanvid, from years ago, by somebody named Senmurv. I love it.


So happy tenth, Captain Jack. I miss you and your swishy coat, and your smile and your indiscriminate flirting. You know, ten years on, and swashbuckling gay/bi/othersexual heroes are still in pretty short supply - basically there's still just Jack, and that's more than a little bit rubbish. He's getting lonely, television. Isn't it time that we gave him a friend?

I have been watching new television! It wasn't at all crackly or old. These things always take time to get used to. Anyway, I posted a trailer a while ago for a new, upcoming series called Forever, starring Ioan Gruffudd as a naked, immortal murder detective. Quite the most gloriously silly premise that television has ever come up with. Why they're calling it Forever, I have no idea. Surely Naked, Immortal Murder Detectives! would be a much better title? But anyhow, ABC put episode one up on the internet, a month prior to its TV debut, so I watched it over the weekend. I'm happy to report that it's just as daft as the premise would suggest, although in all the right ways. Clearly it knows that it's completely ridiculous. I hope it does well, as I would like to see a full season, even if a second one is probably highly unlikely. No spoilers, but Gruffudd plays a bloke who discovered two hundred years ago that he can't die, and has spent his time since then learning languages, studying death, and attempting not to fall in love with inconveniently mortal women. Along the way he's picked up Judd Hirsch, a war orphan who he's raised as a son (and who is now much older than him); and has also acquired an in-depth familiarity with all the many ways there are of killing people. He seems to find his own death quite entertaining. Well, perhaps one would.

Obligatory "woe is me, for immortality is such a curse" nonsense. Yes, it probably is, but that phrase does get awfully boring when you've heard it a billion times; and any fan of Highlander/Torchwood/any other show that features immortality has heard it at least that often. It would be nice to have a happy immortal for a change. Somebody other than Methos, that is, since even he gets broody about it on occasion. There's Kronos, I suppose, but Duncan sodding MacLeod beheaded him, so he probably doesn't count, and sorry, distracted. But once you've got past the brooding, this is ridiculously entertaining. And, yes, silly. A man dies - with frightening regularity - and instantly pops up again in the nearest large body of water, completely naked. In between deaths he solves murders, because why not? Some niggles here and there. Concentration camps didn't tattoo babies, they just killed them, so trying to pass Judd Hirsch off as a tattooed baby rescued from a concentration camp at the end of World War Two is just a little bizarre. Nice nod to the original Highlander movie there though. Connor MacLeod also lived with a war orphan he'd raised, who eventually grew older than him. So I quite like that. Also the obligatory lady cop is pretty generic, but then I suppose it has only been one episode. And perhaps one should feel sorry for her, since she can never hope to be prettier than he is? Very promising arc plot. Not sure about the occasional narration, but it's done with a spring in its step and adds to the general air of fun, so maybe it will work, and what the hell am I grumbling about? Naked, immortal murder detectives! Who can consider that premise and fail to smile?! I like this show, at least on the basis of one episode. It's nonsense, but honestly, who the hell cares.


Ioan Gruffudd as Henry Morgan. The only thing more entertaining than your own (alarmingly frequent) horrific death is being arrested afterwards for indecent exposure.

So there's your recommendation for new TV to look out for. It won't change your life, but it ought to make you smile. Good enough, some might say?

Okay, so back in November (ish) sabethea made a post discussing a particular list of "One Hundred Books You Must Read", and asking for other people to make their own recommendations on a similar theme. I had intended to have a go at answering the question at the time, but there was fandom_stocking, and dw_50ficathon, and some stuff involving actual real people too, believe it or not. But here now, belatedly, is a book post. There aren't one hundred recommendations, although I might just about be able to squeak that if pressed. Due to reasons of space, most of my books are packed away just at the moment though, so I have nothing to refer back to, which complicates things. Neither is this is a list of "Books You Must Read", because that sort of thing is clearly nonsense. Instead it's a jumbled and probably incomplete list of books that I've especially enjoyed, or that have made, at some point, a particular impression. Not such a snappy title, I know, but a far less obviously inaccurate one.

( Books... and quite a lot of rambling, sorry. )

The end of 1996 was The Season Of Peter Capaldi. It began with Neverwhere, which ran for five weeks, and then almost immediately after that, for another four, there was The Crow Road. It looked like he was taking over the world, but instead he vanished from my radar, and I didn't really see him again until Torchwood. Odd, because The Crow Road is the sort of television that ought to put people on maps. It's utterly brilliant in every possible way, and since Capaldi's the new Doctor, this seemed like a good excuse for hauling it out for a rewatch.

I've been thinking about watching it again for some while, but somehow never got around to it. This year has seen the death of writer Iain Banks though, as well as the announcement of Capaldi as Doctor #12, so there really is no time like the present. Hadn't seen it since it came out on DVD back in the Middle Ages sometime (2004). And ouch, I just realised that that's nine years ago now. We had DVDs that long ago? We had colour television that long ago? Apparently.

Anyway. The Crow Road is about a family. The narrator is Prentice (Joseph McFadden) a student with an annoyingly talented, better looking older brother, and an uncle who has been missing for seven years. Alternately baffled by life and tripped over by it, Prentice sets out to discover what happened to his uncle, whilst negotiating the older brother pitfalls and assorted family tragedies. The book that it's based on is beautifully written, funny sometimes and bleak sometimes, and twisted in a very Banksian way. Although adaptations for television don't always work too well, this one does. In fact it's damned close to perfect, in casting, in visuals and in tone. As the missing Uncle Rory, Peter Capaldi drifts in and out of the story, half wise-cracking favourite uncle, and half tragic willo-the-wisp. Inevitably (it aired on BBC2, the channel that 70% of the country never bothers to watch), hardly anybody saw it back in '96, which is a damned shame. Watch it today. Along with Neverwhere and Torchwood, it's the best way to meet your new Doctor. Actually it's a better way than either of them, as he's a git in Torchwood, and Neverwhere does rather emphasise the annoying point that he's not Paterson Joseph. Although he is very good in both.

But yes, The Crow Road. Watch it. It has Bill Paterson being grumpy, it has Dougray Scott being very young, it has Sean Biggerstaff being even younger. More importantly, it's probably the best television that you'll watch this year. Then read the book, too. That doesn't have any of the above in it, but it's still very good. And Iain Banks seemed like a nice bloke, so it's only fair to highlight the fact that he was rather a talented one as well. I must get around to reading more of his stuff. If I manage to find a book even half as good as The Crow Road it will be more than worth the effort.

Day nineteen, the best TV show cast. Oh, yikes. Have you any idea how much TV I have watched in my life, meme? How much television I remain ridiculously attached to? Or television to which I remain ridiculously attached, if you want it in proper grammar. And yet you keep asking me to not only remember it all, but also to choose between it, and I'm not sure that that was a proper sentence. Choices, choices. The first cast of M*A*S*H? Or how about Robin Of Sherwood? Or original Torchwood, or season three Blake's 7? (I like Glynis Barber a lot, but the poor woman is so easily overlooked in season four, that I can't really rate Soolin above Cally). And then there's Between The Lines (and indeed Drop The Dead Donkey, just to stay on a Neil Pearson theme). Cardiac Arrest? Quantum Leap? How about every TV show in my tags list, with the obvious exception of Invasion: Earth?

If I behave and narrow it down - or if I just stop thinking, which is probably easier - I can get it down to two. Babylon 5, (from season two onward, as Sheridan trumps Sinclair), and The West Wing. And it's a difficult choice, so I'm not going to make it. Instead I'm going to avoid the issue entirely and, in a vain attempt to prove that I do watch modern stuff occasionally, I'm going instead with True Blood. The show is a pale shadow of its former self, but the cast has never put a foot wrong. It's a big, varied, interesting cast, and it currently includes Rutger Hauer, which says it all. Or it included him until this week. I'm hoping they're bringing him back, because Rutger Hauer. And four episodes is emphatically Not Enough. Because Rutger Hauer!

Anyway, that was day nineteen.

And this is Rutger Hauer being king of the fairies. Why doesn't more television have Rutger Hauer in it? I might watch more of it then.