Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Meditations on Daily Doctor Who Reviews

Because I've been known to work on impossibly long blogging projects (namely, 3 years of daily Star Trek reviews), I'm asked now and again if I'd consider doing daily Doctor Who reviews, starting with 1963's An Unearthly Child. Going by episode rather than story (which usually ran 4-6 episodes apiece, but could go as high as 12), that's almost 700 posts before I even hit the New Series. Am I thinking about it? I am. But there are two main obstacles...

1. Availability: For one thing, there are a lot of missing episodes in the canon, almost all in the first 6 years. I do have the first three boxed sets of narrated audios, which gives me access to all the missing episodes in audio form up through The Moonbase. I haven't seen a volume 4 announced yet, and there are still plenty of 2nd Doctor stories still missing after that point. Not that all intact stories are out on DVD yet either. Some are available to steam online, but not all.

2. Relevance: I've read a lot of Doctor Who reviews over the years, most notably in the DisContinuity Guide, Mad Norwegian's About Time series, and most recently, Running Through Corridors. What can I bring to the table that's new and interesting, not just for readers (who may not have read all those books), but for myself, so that I don't feel like I'm regurgitating information and opinion found elsewhere.

The first obstacle will be overcome by timing. When would I start such daily Who reviews? Right now, I could safely do the 1st Doctor's episodes, which represents some 4½ months of reviews, so the stuff I need may turn up before I get to it. In any case, I've got Reign of the Supermen going as a daily feature, and that should last longer than the initial year. Might my 4-year anniversary in early December be a good moment to make the switch (sending Superman to a weekly slot)? Or perhaps the 1st of January 2012? Maybe you have a preference.

The second obstacle is the more important, and I look forward to reading your suggestions in the comments section. Obviously, I'd include a Review of the episode, and notes on the different versions available, but what else? Should it be just like the Star Trek reviews with "Why we like it" and "Why we don't"? Should I include a permanent or occasional "Theories" category in the same style as my New Series reviews? How about "Why it's important" (to the canon)? Should it be more thematically Whovian, with space and time annotations of some sort, or a category I can't think of right now?

I know blogging about blogging is a cardinal sin (with its own statue in Shazam's cave), but I place myself in your hands. What do YOU want out of potential Whovian daily reviews?

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