I had a clever title for this post

…but it slipped from my mind. Perhaps washed away by the rain. We’re expecting 2-4″ of rain today, with some places getting up to 9″. Typical Texas summer rain. The forecast says “100% chance of rain,” which is rare. Usually they waffle a little bit, but not today. It’s going to rain, dammit. Seeing as how it is already, I guess they were right.

I finished my readthrough of my novel in progress, wrote a new, short chapter that introduces the character I dreamed up the night before last, and completed the chapter that has been dangling since I last worked on the book a month ago. I also outlined the next chapter, which ends the section. I envision a cameraman pov showing vignettes of each of the major characters, a medley of sorts. With this book I would like to write shorter chapters than the 10-25 page monsters I usually do, with more intercuts. When I next print out the manuscript, I intend to go back over the existing chapters with an eye to seeing how I can break them up. I’m not sure it will be possible or even advisable, so it may be that the starting chapters are lengthy but once the foundation is set I can do more of these briefer scenes.

I watched the first episode of the David Tennant Doctor Who last night: Christmas Invasion. He looks like he’s going to be a fun Doctor. When he’s not on camera, he speaks with a strong Scottish burr that is completely absent in character. It always strikes me as intriguing when someone who has a distinctive accent can discard it.

This was a good transition episode, the typical regeneration plot where something grim is happening while the Doctor is incapacitated. Harriet Jones is back, now the prime minister of England. She has the same trademark behavior of identifying herself by showing her ID and pronouncing her name and position, which is funny since everyone now knows who she is. The writers add an interesting twist to her storyline at the end. A brave move, I think.

There’s also a funny ongoing gag about fruit in his bathrobe pockets that belong to Rose’s mother’s new boyfriend. The bit about the “sucker fish” seems extraneous in the final analysis, though. It was a neat scene, but doesn’t connect well to the main storyline. There are a couple of nods to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: the creative use of tea, a protagonist wandering around in his pyjamas and this bit of dialog, “Not bad for a man in his jim-jams, very Arthur Dent… now there was a nice man.”

When the tenth Doctor does emerge from his regeneration, it’s a lot of fun watching him trying to figure out who he is. “Am I rude, then?” he inquires rhetorically. It’s a real tour-de-force that shows him as insanely upbeat, almost a Michael Palin clone, and then switching to deadly serious. “No second chances,” he snaps.

The DVD I received has an extra feature (Attack of the Graske) that an interactive children’s program where the Doctor takes viewers on a short adventure where they can use a special feature of their remote control to make story choices (a la “choose your own adventure). It’s simplistic but fun, and has all the production quality of a “real” episode. I got a kick out of the part at the end where he uses the sonic screwdriver to “return the remote control to its normal state.” It’s safe to use again, he says, then adds as an aside, “But if you switch over to ITV tonight, the galaxy may implode.”