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A few years back, I "worked" as a screenwriter, bouncing giddily around the porcelain rim of the UK film industry. I never made it, but I made a little money, a few good friends, and the odd short film. The odder the better. My adventures are recorded as an example for the unwary in the Displacement Activities blog. I gave up because my family and my day job needed an increasing amount of my time, but I always thought I'd write again somehow, someday.

To date, I haven't. And I think it's making me a bit brain-wrong; it may even be leading me to a mid-life crisis (I've always secretly wanted one, but not yet). I can't write about screenwriting now because I'm not doing any, but I need to write something, something close to my heart, something there's a need for out there, something original... hey, how about a blog where I watch all the Doctor Who stories one by one, and write about them?!

Okay, so there are no original ideas; this is something we must just accept. I wouldn't do it in transmission order from the very beginning, however as a) that's already been done to death by better and brighter than me, and b) I need sleep. Watching approximately a year of Sixties monochrome episodes and reconstructions in waking hours would cause my family to rise up and kill me. It could be better to do it in no particular order anyway; after all, that's how most of us first engage with Doctor Who, at a random entry point. I swiftly discovered to my dismay, though, that the random order thing has been done to near death too.

So, the twist is that there's no twist. This will just be my howlings into the void, tangentially connected on that particular day to, for example, The Dominators. To keep me sane. Or at least to keep me at the level of sanity I currently possess with no significant deterioration.

Before I start, to settle you into this, I'll give you an indication of the level of Doctor Who fan I am, so you can look down on me for my shortcomings and/or feel sorry for my wasted life. I have been watching since before it was fashionable, back through the period where it definitely wasn't fashionable, to where I started when it was just about fashionable again. I call myself a Doctor Who fan, not a Whovian (I fought in the Nomenclature Wars and they weren't pretty). I occasionally use the term 'Not We' to refer to people who aren't fans of the programme, but I always kinda feel dirty afterwards.

I distrust cosplay because every time I see cosplayers en masse, I tend to feel there must be some level of wife-swapping involved. I can recite every story title all the way up to the latest series, but I don't know the individual William Hartnell episode titles, as that would be obsessive and weird. I may have sometimes recited every story title in my head to delay climax, the way some folks think about baseball. There may once have been a great, great night where I got all the way up to Slyvester McCoy. I may not be as embarrassed as you'd think disclosing this.

So, that's me. Now, let's see what story the random number generator throws out to begin with. (Another fan-ness indicator: I almost said Randomiser there, but stopped myself.)  OK, it is - Arc of Infinity. Oh shit...