Submission

I submitted two items this morning, which was all I managed to accomplish. It’s all part of the business, so I guess I can consider it progress. I did one final read-through of an article I pitched to Pensacola Magazine, got it in proper format and sent it off with attachments. Assuming it’s accepted (the editor requested the piece in response to my query), it won’t see light until next April. The other was a short story that didn’t place in a contest I entered, so I checked out the market listings and found a good candidate. It is an erotic hardboiled tale. I was amused to find that Duotrope’s search engine returned “Highlights for Boys” as a potential market for the piece! The market was one of those that requests embedded-in-email submissions without curly quotes, so it took a while to get it in the right format.

Last night I watched two Doctor Who serials. First up was Four To Doomsday, which was the first of Davison’s episodes to be filmed. I thought it was quite well done. The special effects—the hovering monopticons, some of the gizmos in the Tardis—looked decent. The only shaky bit was the extracurricular trek to the TARDIS at the end, which looked campy as hell and decidedly non-scientific. The instant he threw the cricket ball, he should have moved in the opposite direction instead of having to wait for it to bounce back (all conceding that we overlook the impossibility of him being out in space without any protective garb).

The acting, especially by the guest stars, was stellar. The guy who played Monarch sounded like a Stratford actor. I did notice that he coughed into his hand during some of Enlightenment’s dialog, which seemed like a glitch but, given the Doctor’s revelation at the end, was actually a subtle clue. Bigon (I kept thinking “bygones will be bygones”) was also very good, and the ethnic performances were a nice touch. I liked the way Davison kept referring to the Urbankans as “frogs”. Lots of funny references to Terminal 3 at Heathrow, too. I thought it strange that Tegan spoke the language of the Maori, who had been taken 35,000 years ago! Annie Lambert (Enlightenment) is one of the prettiest villains I’ve seen yet.

Next I watched the two-part serial The King’s Demons. King John pre Magna Carta crossed with the Master (Sir Gilles Estram—an anagram) and the introduction of Kamelion. Is the Doctor getting frisky with Tegan? When she says, “Look at the size of that bed!” the Doctor responds, “Another way of keeping warm.” Not one of the stronger serials, but entertaining in a medieval sort of way. How did the Master pull off that trick of disguising himself?