#Decalog

[gargusscp]

Decalog 1: Enigma - "Fallen Angel" by Andy Lane

Cracking through the utter avalanche of Doctor Who books in my backlog and rambling about them on tumblr because this site deserves someone who cares to post about the short story anthologies.

The first of Virgin's anthologies uses a pretty standard set-up for its wrap-around segments, entitled "Playback": Seven has lost his memories, stumbled into a private eye's office in the mid-1940s, and together they seek out the help of a psychometrist, whose visions sparked by assorted objects in the Doctor's coat serve as glimpses into interrelated stories from his past. Obviously I can't judge the thing until through with the book, but Stephen James Walker seems to have an alright imitation of period detective novel descriptive language, and it's neat seeing a guileless Seven when one knows a Virgin-era story means there's some overly-convoluted plan in the wings once his memories return.

As to "Fallen Angel" itself, we kick off with as close a crossover as Lane and Virgin can publish without a lawsuit. The narration most commonly sticks to the thoughts and experiences of one Lucas Seyton, a gentleman thief whose shady family history compels him to give back by robbing the world's rich criminality their ill-gotten gains, for both justice and the fun of it. He aliases under the story's title, leaves a calling card with a little stick figure doodle of himself, brushes elbows with working-class friends who enable his adventures, and lives life to the fullest with no apology for his criminality or compunctions as to its righteousness. His voice is also described in tones evoking Roger Moore. In other words, he's a thinly-veiled analog for Leslie Charteris' popular hero Simon Templar, alias The Saint, and the story is basically Lane bumping him against a fellow 60s British telly alumni so they can exchange banter, save each other's bacon, and generally compliment how brilliant they find the other despite differences in philosophy.

S'not a bad thing by any shot. Seyton's an amiably-written perspective character whose blase attitude and observations about the Doctor's eccentricities are amusing, especially opposite so disheveled an incarnation as Two, and Lane uses the homage as excuse for all the classic pulp adventure staples. Rough alleyway encounters, morning after recuperation and pleasantries, high-flying biplane dogfights, desperate manor-bound shoot-outs, the works. Highly amusing to imagine Troughton bumbling and panicking through the best realizations a mid-60s ITV budget could manage, or exchanging quotations from Winnie the Pooh opposite Moore.

The actual plot of the thing is deliberately incomplete, as you're supposed to piece things together through the whole anthology, though I've a complaint all the same. The Doctor accidentally lands the TARDIS in a manor house that's secretly a Time Lord prison for warmongering aliens whose punishment after defeat was confinement in a convincingly faked forever war, and barely escapes the automated security on his lonesome. All the business with Seyton goes down, the Doctor revealing little details all the while, they bust into the manor, and find the prisoners dead, having killed each other over some petty dispute long ago, their robotic guards still viciously attacking any intruders because the Doctor forgot to program their deactivation if their charges died. It's always irksome to me when Wilderness Era stories decide the increased focus on Seven's machiavellian tendencies means all prior incarnations were equally duplicitous and scheming, cause it never fits how One was written or played to imply he was some brilliant Time Lord mastermind with fingers in all their devious little projects. I know we're stuck with it because "Remembrance of the Daleks" is a classic and the Hand of Omega plot point is super memorable, but I'm a stickler for Doctors feeling right, and this bit ain't it.

(Also it's a Jamie and Zoe-era story in which they barely feature, so boo on that too.)

Beyond a bother introduced by the frame story's needs, I'm happy with this self-indulgent fannish runaround. Nice tribute to the then-recently deceased Charteris. I'd say it's pretty solidly...

GOOD

[siryl]

Cover art by Colin Howard for Decalog 4: Regenerations. I saw this book at Brentano's when I was fourteen, and couldn't figure out what its deal was. Was this a Doctor Who book, or was it something else?

I now know that it's a Doctor Who book, and also something else. Decalog 1 through 3 were anthologies of original Doctor Who short stories published by Virgin Books. The publisher lost the license, and B.B.C. Books supplanted the Decalog series with the Short Trips series, just like Virgin's Doctor Who: The New Adventures and The Missing Adventures were replaced by B.B.C.'s Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures and The Past Doctor Adventures.

Here's the confusing part. Virgin still went ahead and made Decalog 4. This book couldn't legally include anything from the Doctor Who television series, but it featured the Doctor's companion Roslyn Forrester from Virgin's Doctor Who: The New Adventures and various other heroes in her family tree, and was by implication set in the Whoniverse. They also continued Doctor Who: The New Adventures in the form of Bernice Summerfield: The New Adventures, which you'd think would go over like a lead balloon, but somehow ran for two dozen novels without the Doctor showing up.

There was also a Decalog 5, but I don't feel like even getting into that.

[nitronine]

UPDATEEEEE

[dalesramblingsblog]

Lemon Jelly. Creationism. Fight Club. The cinema of Hal Hartley. All this and more will be touched upon in the Dale's Ramblings Sixth AnniVARsary Spectacular, as we look at the last of Virgin's Decalogs.

[cringecompanionapologist]

5/Turlough Moments in Short Stories

Short stories mainly means Short Trips, but the older Decalogs and Annuals still count. Unlike the chronological order of the novelizations, these are in no particular order. 

I’ll start with two from the Short Trip Qualia. Turlough is a teacher’s pet and Tegan is jealous.

There there’s Zeitgeist, a Decalog. It’s another story from right after Tegan left. The Doctor is sad and Turlough is having no fun.

The Matasian Pleasure Rings sounds like one of those Star Trek pleasure planets, like Risa.

The Doctor smiles for the first time in ages because Turlough says a Turlough thing and the narration, still in Turlough’s PoV, describes it as saintlike. That’s adorable.

Lastly, there’s The Oxaqua Incident from the 1984 Annual. I’ve already posted this screenshot but it goes here.

The Doctor saves Turlough’s life in a way that involves rolling around on top of him and Turlough basically asks him out in response. This being 1984, it probably wasn’t intentional but wow.

Also, this isn’t really 5/Turlough but it’s interesting:

So, the 1995 Yearbook, which is basically an annual for a year when the show was cancelled by the fans wanted one anyway, there’s a short story called One Last Try. There’s an alien life-form that’s sort of like a Ditto. It turns itself into the people it sees. However, when it turns into a copy of Turlough, it couldn’t imitate his clothes for some reason. And there’s an illustration.

(Mildly NSFW? Nothing graphic, really...)

So...screenshots. I have quite the collection.

[soweirdondisney]

If you’ve been keeping up with Family Law, you might have caught the Firefly/Andromeda crossover that happened in episode 2 when So Weird alum Jewel Staite shared the screen with Laura Bertram.

The two haven’t done a lot of work together, but they’re good friends who have shared panels at places like FedCon in 2007 and Decalogy (Starfury Conventions).

They’ve also done some semi-cross So Weirdish content. Both of their early roles included Are You Afraid of the Dark episodes - with Laura returning in the 2019 revival - and were each on episodes of Supernatural.

Staite was on X-Files, DaVinci’s Inquest, and Cold Squad (the latter two being shows Belinda Metz was also on) and Bertram had a role on Once Upon A Time (a show close to David Squatch Ward). And they’ve both had their share of Hallmark movies as well.

Show business really is a small world!

[batmonkfish80]

I have now written up reviews of the entire ten book Malazan Books Of The Fallen series. This review has an index to the other reviews at the bottom. At this time, this is my final word on the decalogy.

[corndasby]

Patch 1.9 Full Event Summary! (Live Updates)

The 1.9 event summary got posted! I ran the patch notes through google translate and combined them with some translations from the official server. If I find anything else major I will update. Skin/Character previews can be found in my previous post, and I'll post some new character kit rundowns later! I will tag every spoiler post with the version number, so add that to your filters if you don't want to see anything about it.

Things You'll Care About

Full translated list is after this section.

Free Six Star for everyone: Semmelweiss, a mineral support that drains ally health to give them buffs based on their missing health.

First banner: Lucy, an intelligence DPS/support that spends Electricity to give their incantations extra effects, such as hitting more targets or buffing ally afflatus damage.

Second banner: Kakania, a plant support/tank/sub-healer that absorbs a portion of damage taken by allies and uses it to enhance her self-healing and damage.

Lorelei is a star afflatus five star support/sub dps. Her incantations haven't been released but her i1 Passive gives a buff depending on the most common card type in your hand, and her i3 passive gives her moxie when critting with her ult (Just Star Things). She is obtained from the new roguelite mode so may be accessible to players starting after 1.9.

Free Sonetto skin for logging in!

New skins for Mesmer Jr., Desert Flannel, Voyager, Regulus, and Jessica.

Thirty combined free pulls just for logging in. I'm sure clear drops will be showered on you elsewhere in the event.

Special banner for a single 6* rate up selector (If you win the 50/50 on this banner you get to choose ANY six star up until 1.6 excluding JNZ! This is a crazy good deal and you can pick up anyone you missed before the next saga of the story)

New main story chapter of course. Chapter Six is called Vereinsamt. Apparently, 1.7 is not a direct continuation of 1.5, but 1.9 will combine the two for a proper ending.

Brand new roguelite mode. The reception to 1.6's attempt was pretty poor, so I think this is a revised version that will be left in the game permanently.

New story events for Lucy and Kakania.

New anecdotes for Eagle and Semmelweiss.

New maps for Three Doors! I enjoyed the Mesmer storyline so I'm interested.

Reruns of all the skins from 1.1 - 1.4. The London wilderness will now be permanently available in the shop.

All of the standard stuff you can find in events. There's a shop, new wilderness, free items all over the place, and puzzle side events. Uttu is going to be there. You know the drill.

Edit 1: They're finally adding a system to let you seamlessly connect water tiles in the wilderness. No more dumb transition tiles!

Edit 2: They're adding new animation upgrades to older skins!?!? Confirmed list so far: Jukebox Bkornblume, Halloween Sotheby, Halloween X, Jukebox Matilda, Summer Pickles, Wild West Tennantt.

Full List

Some of these are literally just titles in the patch notes so if I don't elaborate that is why!

Login event: free 6* character: Semmelweiss, a mineral support that drains ally health to give them big damage buffs.

Free Sonetto skin

Login event: free decalog (exclusively for Lucy's banner)

Login event: daily free Unilogs (total 20 Unilogs)

Login event: free Matilda Portray (why did we wait a year for p1 Matilda lol)

Login event: free clear drops and anniversary item

Login event: free Wilderness building

Login event: free golden materials

Shop crystal drop reset (I think this means the "first time buy" bonus is reset?)

Special banner: free single 6* rate up selector (If you win the 50/50 on this banner you get to choose ANY six star up until 1.6 excluding JNZ! This is a crazy good deal and you can pick up anyone you missed before the next saga of the story)

New main story chapter: Vereinsamt

New story event: Lucy

Limited collection: Thoughts Alone in a Tank.

New story event: Kakania

Event: Practice of Phantom starts.

New permanent gamemode: Roguelite

Three Doors: new maps

New function: select BGM on suitcase lobby

Anecdotes: Eagle and Semmelweiss

Mane's Bulletin: Abyss, Opera, and Lord of Dreams

UTTU: Mesmer Jr. skin

New function: event atlas

Limited collection: Promise of the Lake

New Jukebox: Desert Flannel skin

New skins: Regulus, Jessica, Voyager new skins

New Wilderness set: Laplace

New packs

Patch 1.1 skins rerun

Patch 1.2 skins rerun

Patch 1.3 skins rerun

Patch 1.4 skins rerun

Patch 1.1 Wilderness is added to the shop permanently

Event starts: Little Steel Gold Rush

[ineffableclassics]

Aziraphale knew the 10 commandments. He provided Moses with 10 commandments. He only wished they weren’t so difficult to follow.

-----------------

the first time Aziraphale breaks each of the 10 commandments for Crowley

Words: 21,040

Status: Complete

Rating: Explicit

Art Credit: Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the Decalog by Gustave Doré

[dalesramblingsblog]

Very glad to say that I've ruined everybody's day with this information, it took eight months since reviewing Wonders for this cursed knowledge to pay off but I think I can conclusively say it was all worth it.

doctor who's short trips are great because without fail they're one of the below:

wanna see something incredibly fucked up? here goes!

the best subversive speculative fiction messing with the fundamental structure and format of a short story you've ever read

nothing actually happens, and it's basically just a fanfiction missing scene, but it's still the most heartbreaking thing you've ever read

we don't talk about that short trip

[thatisayouproblem]

im saving up on unilogs to pull for getian but the free decalog is only for jiu niangzi’s banner who i dont really care about but i did the pull anyway and i didn’t get jiu niangzi but i did get tooth fairy who i wanted and did not have so let’s go ig

[softcrustgrunge]

watching the entire saw decalogy with the boyfriend, we're just done with the 4th one and god after the third it gets so stupid and exhausting for a while before it becomes fun again

[st4rshiptr00per]

reading some of them decalog stories. for the love of god help me

[dalesramblingsblog]

Anyway, as a follow-up to my half-joking celebration of six years of writing too much about these dang books - an anniVARsary, call it by its name - I do want to voice a more sincere thank you for all the support, I always remain pleasantly surprised whenever I come back from a hiatus of a few weeks and see how many views my newest post has accrued and I think that's a positive sign for just how far the blog has come.

It'd be a cliche to say it's exceeded my wildest expectations, but it really has. So this is not-quite-21-year-old Dale telling you that you would have blown not-quite-fifteen-year-old Dale's mind completely.

Stay tuned for the review of the fifth and final Decalog as a dual celebration of the sixth anniVARsary and my 21st birthday. Predictably, it'll probably be out a few days later than either one, but I've just hit 10,000 words and I've still got four stories to cover.

So buckle in.

[companion-showdown]

Can I Add Cousin Eliza (aka Christine Summerfield) to the Summerfield? She may or may not be a clone of Benny. At the very least she looks a lot like her. And can I also add Dylan Summerfield the first - fourth for just being Rubish people. Oh and the Other Christine Summerfield. If you do not think. She counts as a Summerfield then can she count along with Chris Cwej as a member of the Little House of Cwej (this is an either or my preference is for her to be in the Summerfield family over the Cwejen.)

May I also so add the Forrester Family as they have a whole Decalog all about them.

okay

[rachelbethhines]

60 Years of Doctor Who Anniversary Marathon - McCoy 9th Review

Question Mark Pyjamas - Short Story

The Virgin Decalogs were kind of a precursor to the Short Trips of today. An anthology series that at first focused on Doctor Who, that then went on to feature the Expand Who Universe, and finally focusing on original works with no connection to the series.

This is because Vrigin lost the publishing license for Who after the TV movie. More on that later.

Question Mark Pyjamas is the final story in the second Decalog "Lost Property". The recurring theme of this anthology is all the random properties the Doctor acquires through out his travels... houses, land, condos, boats, hotels... ect.

It's an odd theme, but I haven't read the entire book yet so I can't tell you how well it works as a whole, but I can tell you that said theme is front and center within the short story I'm reviewing today.

A house the Doctor owns is stolen by a alien conman looking to set up a theme park on an asteroid. The Doctor and his companions are held hostage and forced to become a side show attraction for the park. They must quite literally 'play house' and pretend to be a 'normal' earth family for the constantly viewing audience.

I probably make the story sound way cooler than it actually is with that summary.

In reality the narrative has a very slow first half, an awkward middle, and doesn't really come together until the very end.

Part of the problem is that the Tardis crew just kind of stumbles onto the theme park and discovers the stolen house by shear coincidence. They then get captured by the villain when they try to confront him.

Rather than making the very comedic villain an unstoppable force to be reckoned with, it instead just makes our heroes look weak... especially Ace who is supposed to be combat hardened by this point.

Also they aren't forced to preform for a live audience, but are made to 'rehearse' for the villain who never shuts up.

The tension of the story is basically downgraded.

But that's alright, this is intended to be a lighthearted comedy piece.

Except it's not particularly funny.

A lot of the jokes fall flat for me. Mainly cause it only seems to have one joke.

Two foul mouthed, 'modern' women are forced to perform sanitized outdated stereotypes that they hate, and they won't shut up about how much they hate it, but quite literally won't do anything about it with out the Doctor's permission. Hardy, har, har...

Oh and the Doctor makes a weird, out of character, sex joke at some point.

Finally, I just hate how everyone is written through out most of it.

It's like I'm walking into middle of on going argument between a poly group that I have no context for.

Why is everyone in the tardis crew so rude and bitchy to each other at the beginning? What's up with all the awkward innuendoes between them? Why has Ace regressed as a character despite supposedly being older now?

Yeah that's the real disappointment here. I know the NAs had nothing to do with the Professor and Ace audios, but it's still disappointing to go from one story where she shows actual character development to another story where she's even more immature than she was on tv.

Like the character's main conflict in the story is that despite being in her 20s now, Ace is forced to play 'the child' for the attraction. Except she is childish.

She's rude, bratty, calls her own supposed friends names behind their backs, paranoid, self-centered and more concerned with 'having fun' then actually rescuing her friends.

The narrative makes a point to say that she's 'a woman now' and 'old before her time' but then has her behaving like a spoiled 13 year old.

But it's not all bad.

As I said, things pick up as we head towards then end. After Ace decides to remove the stick up her butt and help out, we get several cute scenes.

Ace escaping the house on a motorbike, driving through the amusement park with killer robots chasing after her, laughing all the way, is just unfiltered concentrated Who.

The Doctor and Benny cooking lunch together is adorable, and I love the pay off at the end regarding the roast.

And Benny's pure joy at getting to raid the Doctor's wine cellar full of antique alcohols from around the universe is perhaps the most realized the character has ever been to me.

Like counting this one, I've only read/heard three stories with Benny in total and the character never really clicked for me until this moment. Where she's cradling a wine bottle like a baby and cooing at it, going on and on about how much she's going to enjoy drinking it.

That's hilarious.

Hopefully that humor follows her into the Benny spin-off series which we'll be covering next.