Whatever Power Has Taken Hold of the TARDIS Has Taken Your Pen!

Oh my word, we are in a pickle.

I've such a backlog of entries to write it's unbelievable. I knew I wouldn't do that 30 Doctor Who things meme in 30 days!

But anyway I shall start with the present and then catch up; after all if the show messes around with it's chronology on a weekly basis I suppose I can too.

On Saturday Leslie and I went to the Winter Warmer hosted by The Flashing Blade Podcast at The Fitzroy Tavern.

For those who don't know 'The Tav' was something of a Mecca to Doctor Who fans back in the day before t'internet where a huge group of them would meet up regularly. It's tailed off since then though I'm lead to believe a few still attend on the first Thursday of every month. Past regulars were the likes of Steven Moffat and Paul Cornell and as you'll know from Tony Gallichan's Private Lives column in TTZ8 that the first drafts of Timewyrm: Revelation were passed round the Tavern as Mr Cornell worked on them.

Saturday's event was a follow on from The Flashing Blade's hugely successful summer picnic and was of course timed to take place around Doctor Who's anniversary. Leslie and I had had a great time at the first one and it was so wonderful to talk about Doctor Who all day with people who were so passionate about the show.

I've never been to the Tavern before despite living in London all my life (Though to be fair I was still a kid when it was in its heyday of being the hub of fandom) but I had a reasonable idea of where it was. As it turns out I was almost right. I confidentally took Leslie to the Fitzrovia which was just round the corner and it was amusing to walk in and find absolutely nobody in there.

Although the outside temperature was a bracing 1C and thus scarves were of course highly justified, once we finally got to the right place, even if we hadn't of recognised people from last time, the sheer number of very long scarves in one corner of the room would've given the game away. Not to mention that Tony was dressed as the Fourth Doctor circa Season 18 (Though as some wag had it, the Fourth Doctor as in Dimensions in Time!).

People we'd met before were Tony of course, his two co-hosts Robert and Rob (Jo! came towards the end of the evening), Adam (the best dressed man in Fandom) from Staggering Stories, Craig (aka Mister Chinn from the Ministry) and Lee from That 1963 Show Podcast (Wyn joined us later), Tim from Tim's Take On and Martyn from the Bad Wilf Podcast plus other faces that I sort of recognised from last time but hadn't really had a chance to speak to them / been properly introduced.

There's also the weird element that some were people who I later learnt I've spoken to on Twitter like Luke from The Minute Doctor Who Podcast but hadn't made the connection whilst there. A couple of people were still tweeting whilst there and using the #fbwinterwarmer hashtag so I sort of worked out who some people were.

Another Tony turned up, he had seen me tweeting about the event and so as a result of that decided to come down and we chatted for most of the evening. Melissa (also published in The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who) arrived not long after us and would be staying with us for the weekend as we were to have a belated Thanksgiving on the Sunday.

It was nice to be recognised as the team behind The Terrible Zodin and to get positive feedback for the zine. Discussions with other Who fans gave me ideas for future articles and Tony C. is already so passionately defending The Web Planet that he's gonna have a shot at the next No! Not The Mind Probe! And whilst you don't know what that is yet, all I can say is stay tuned for it's debut in TTZ9.

Tony G. had dared Leslie and I to wear our costumes for Halloween which reminds me that I never did post it on here. So that's another entry pending. Ditto I need to write an entry about my Draculasaurus t-shirt but I hope he'll be pleased to note that people did get the joke.

Highlights of the evening for me were:

* A chap called Andrew wearing an authentic Seventh Doctor question mark jumper

* Lots of Doctor Who lego figures

* Fans comparing sonic screwdrivers

* Everybody shouting "HELLO LILIBET!" down the phone to Florida

* Learning that one shouldn't wear a long Doctor Who scarf when on the toilet

* Playing the "first Doctor Who memory" game and having to sheepishly say "Dalek flying up the stairs in Remembrance versus other people's memories of Magnus Greel having his mask ripped off and the giant maggots advancing upon Jo.

* The unfortunate phrase "Daniel Redcliffe pulled off Equus" considering the subject matter of the play

* Shouting "Zarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrbi" across the bar.

* Planning a series of graphic novels of the missing Hartnell and Troughton stories though knowing the purists will try to burn down our publishing empire if we put the colorful Victory Daleks in The Dalek's Masterplan or have Mavic Chen interviewed by the Bad Wolf channel.

* Speculating about who River Song is / What will happen in the next series of Torchwood / What's in store for Season 6

All in all I had a very fun evening and I hope I'm invited to the next one.

PS: Tony you've got till Friday to get that column in for the next issue!

Give Them a Hygiene Chamber And They Store Fossil Fuel In It

Credit where credit is due. I forgot to say that the wonderful Drashig Hear Be Spoilers banner (which several people have already commented they'd love to see on a t-shirt) was designed for Issue 8 of The Terrible Zodin by Steve Sautter, stalwart writer of the zine since issue 2. He has his own infrequently updated Doctor Who blog called Blog High For Happiness which incidentally is the name of his roving column which has appeared both in TTZ and FF&C.

Despite the potential for it to have gotten awkward on account of Steve being best friends with my ex girlfriend, we've remained friends for more than 5 years now on account of shared appreciation for all things Doctor Who.

So credit where credit's due. When TTZ Confidential gets round to that bit (Honestly it will happen, it's a planned series!) I'll talk about why I commissioned this piece for TTZ8 and my opinion of spoilers and their application in general.

Until then... revel!

Saving the Universe Using a Kettle And Some String!

Sorry I've been quiet on this blog. I do intend to update it fairly regular but of course as of late I've been very busy trying to put together the final edit on issue 8 of The Terrible Zodin. Once that's all done I'll have the freedom to talk more about Doctor Who on here and already have topics lined up. I will also take requests.

Additionally once you've all had time to read and hopefully enjoy TTZ8 (And I really would welcome your honest feedback) then I'd quite like to do a behind the zines feature and show how the zine was but together. Also as I'm on the editing team but thankfully not overall editor on every issue (I don't know how Leslie's done it 7 times!) I will also comment on the making of future issues as and when I can.

But in the meantime and to whet your appetite before TTZ8 we're happy to promote the competition, so here's a list below as far as I can ascertain of all current Doctor Who fanzines out there. Some are free, some you gotta pay, some are downloadable PDFs and some are photocopied A5 paper zines.

Enjoy (And make sure you tell em we sent you!)

**Last updated 29/05/11**

***

Blue Box (No longer active)

Celestial Toyroom

Comfy Chair

Enlightenment

The Finished Product

Fish Fingers and Custard

The Hub (Torchwood zine)

Inferno

Myth Makers

Panic Moon

Planet of the Ming Mongs

Rassilon's Rod (No longer active)

Reverse the Polarity

Shooty Dog Thing

The Third Zone

This Way Up

The Tides of Time

Time Space Visualiser

Venusian Spearmint

Vortex

Vworp Vworp!

Whotopia

Behold The Terrible Zodin

Originally written 18/02/10.

Although it's not something that comes up in conversation very often I am something of a Doctor Who fan.

Yes I know, I know you're all staggering back from that shocking confession.

Haha ok but seriously, I'm a Doctor Who fan. An unabashed and unashamed one. Like anything people are passionate about whether it's sports or opera, it is a part of my life that consumes me. The clue is there in the word fan which is an abbreviation of fanatic after all. Doctor Who isn't just some show that I watch on TV for 13 weeks and then forget about until it comes back on the following year, it's not something I just casually enjoy, it's something I eat, drink and sleep.

And I love it. I'm happy that I've something so fun and exciting and silly and ridiculous and loving and romantic and frothy and perplexing and mind blowing and cosmic and dizzy and frantic and energetic and barmy as my hobby obsession.

It's everywhere in my day to day life. When I wake up one of the first things I see is my Doctor Who calender, I've got framed posters on my wall, above my bed is the bookshelf groaning under the weight of the novelisations, opposite my bed is a cabinet with the DVDs... and hey you if you think I'm hardcore trust me there are even bigger fans than me whose collections would make mine look like a couple of tatty comics in a cardboard box at a jumble sale.

My head is full of useless Who related junk. Take the Zygons for example. David Tennant's favourite monster apparently. I've never seen them in the original series myself but I know the plot, I've read the novelisation (and insist on calling the novelisation Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster), I own the original 10th Doctor novel Sting of the Zygons and I know which other novels, comic strips, audio plays, direct to video movies and computer games they've been in. I know more about a rubber monster from 1975 than is healthy. I can't help it, this stuff just sticks in to my brain.

It was quite lonely being a Doctor Who fan when I grew up as I first got in to the show in 1988 and in 1989 it was cancelled, and barring one US attempt at a reboot in 1996 I had to wait 15 years for it to come back. I read DWM and bought the novels when I could afford them but I was isolated from the other Doctor Who fans who must have been out there (After all I doubt DWM's circulation was only me!)

It's why these days I'm happy that the show is a success and that my friends are in to it and that if it comes up in general conversation it's not with perplexed looks as to why someone should care so much about such a silly thing. And it's why I'm so glad to be part of the team that makes The Terrible Zodin fanzine.

In some ways TTZ has almost become a seperate love. It's Doctor Who of course but now it occupies a lot of my time and my imagination as an entity in itself. I actively recruit new writers and artists, I keep the facebook group looking lively, I run the Twitter feed and I'm constantly thinking about how to expand the readership and get more publicity. Article ideas are always popping in to my head and I scribble them down - I've a word document full of stuff that could take me through another 20 issues even if I just did one article per issue and dropped Back2TheWhoture.

Maybe its silly but I often wish TTZ was my full time job, that rather than a lot of it being email ping pong from London to Swansea to Albuqueque to San Francisco I do fantasise about myself, Leslie, Lori and Steve working in a Press Gang* style office and of course Evan, Adi, Tony, Paul and Simon are there too.

I think we can have just cause to be proud of TTZ, the hard work of everyone who has contributed their time for free to work on it is appreciated and I think we've produced a wide range of articles from indepth analysis to punning silliness. Although the original intent was that the magazine was for female fans by female fans, Leslie very wisely noted that actually the beauty of Doctor Who is its all inclusive philosophy. It's still aimed as being more female friendly than other zines have been (though don't for a moment think that's a stereotype in itself and that the mag is for 'shippers and slash fic and full of squeeeee) but I think its appeal does go beyond that. I like that we've contributers from both the UK and US (and exemplified in the fact that our editor is from New Mexico but lives in Swansea) but also further afield as Finland!

We seem to be hitting our stride at the moment. Issue 6 (The 8th Doctor special) is due out in less than a month and we've already started planning Issue 7, whilst further beyond we've tenantively pencilled in themes for Issues 8 & 9. We've been advertised in the new Shooty Dog Thing book, and once I finish writing the damn thing, thanks to TTZ I'm gonna appear as one of those blurb reviewers on a forthcoming non fiction Who book.

If you haven't already then please do check us out, there's 5 back issues to browse through and like I said TTZ6 is out in mid March. We're on Twitter & Facebook too and our discussion board is very lively and from there there are links to other zines such as SDT, Vworp Vworp, Whotopia and to podcasts like The Flashing Blade, Staggering Stories and the forthcoming Professor Dave's Ark in Space.

As ever we're on the look out for contributers to the magzine and that doesn't just mean article writers, that includes artists too and even if you're not confident enough in writing something yourself, let us know your ideas and we'll see what we can do with them. Whatever you want to see in the zine we'll find someway to incorporate it. Our only restriction is that we do aim to be family friendly so anything too adult is likely to be excised (And the editing team is not exempt, I had salacious references to the Rani's breasts toned down in an article I submitted and Steve had to cut the last part of his Genesis of the Daleks haiku due to its oral sex innuendo). Finally of course, if you like the zine tell all your friends about it!

I admit, when Leslie first floated the idea of a 'zine and was casting about for names I had reservations about The Terrible Zodin. I thought something with the word 'terrible' in the title might just be tempting fate. But I was wrong and once things were underway for the first issue I just knew it was gonna be right, and I've loved watching each episode go from strength to strength.

Huzzah!

* Seriously you need to watch this, best kids TV drama ever.