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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

watched an old episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe the other day where he was interviewing various TV writers about craft, and I'm still thinking about what RTD said about dialogue

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

it's cool to me that two of the all-time best pieces of Dr Who cover art are for the same book

Chris Achilleos' original cover art for Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion by Terrance Dicks (as used on the 2011 reprint)

Andrew Skilleter's clean cover art for the 1981 reprint of Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

@davidmann95.bsky.social were you aware that the protagonist of Steven Spielberg's Duel has your name

From the IMDb credits page for Duel (1971): Dennis Weaver - David Mann

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

if only the author of the works of Shakespeare had dropped some subtle hint as to their true identity

Shakespeare's Sonnet 135:

"Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,
And will to boot, and will in overplus.
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in will, add to thy will
One will of mine to make thy large will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill.
Think all but one, and me in that one will."

Shakespeare's Sonnet 136:

"If thy soul check thee that I come so near,
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will,
And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there.
Thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfill.
Will will fulfill the treasure of thy love,
Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.
In things of great receipt with ease we prove
Among a number one is reckoned none.
Then in the number let me pass untold,
Though in thy store’s account I one must be.
For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold
That nothing me, a something, sweet, to thee.
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will."

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Grant Morrison seeing this strip like "I worked on this story for years and he just... tweeted it out"

A four-panel Nancy comic strip by Ernie Bushmiller, dated December 19, 1947. Panel 1: Nancy walks along the sidewalk. She says "Anything--". Panel 2: Nancy is suddenly in her house. She continues "Can happen--". Panel 3: Nancy starts walking up the wall. She continues "In a--". Panel 4: Nancy walks on the ceiling. She concludes "Comic strip".

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Batman's face here is so funny

Two panels from World's Finest #75 (written by Bill Finger, pencilled by Curt Swan) - Robin excitedly tells Batman about an adventure he's had with Superman: "Gosh, you should've seen how Superman stopped those crooks, Batman... he's terrific! And golly -- is it exciting flying through the sky with him!" Batman responds "Y-yes... it must have been a new kind of experience for you!" He then stares ahead with a look of blank-faced consternation, and thinks to himself: "After working with Superman, I wonder of Robin will find it dull working with me again? After all, I don't have any super-powers!"

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

"You will see strange and alarming things here. Do not be alarmed. Alarm is forbidden."

The opening splash page of City of the Damned, from a scan of Doctor Who Weekly #9 (Written by John Wagner with art by Dave Gibbons - The Star Beast was written by Pat Mills, with art also by Gibbons) - rows of blank-faced people in identical uniforms march through the streets of a futuristic city, overseen by guards with sci-fi goggles and truncheons. Four captions read: "WARNING: You are about to enter the city. Leave all personal items behind. They are not permitted.

You will see strange and alarming things here. Do not be alarmed. Alarm is forbidden.

Do not smile. Do not laugh. Do not cry. Do not care. Abandon hope.

Hope is an emotion -- and emotion is a crime in... the city of the damned!"

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

esp love Gibbons channelling his inner Kirby here

The opening splash page of Doctor Who and the Star Beast, from a scan of Doctor Who Weekly #19 - The title sits at the top of the page in big, dramatic letters. The rest of the page is filled by a massive spaceship, a sleek and powerful rocket with a full array of propulsion jets, flying low over the rooftops of a small British town as it crashes down to Earth. Three narrative captions read: "Good evening. Here is the nine o'clock news. Reports by local people that a U.F.O. flew low over Blackcastle last night have been scorned by official sources. "They should get their eyes tested," a spokesman said. "Blackcastle is the last place on Earth aliens would want to visit!""

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

a lot of old-school comics artists' work has been greatly underserved by modern digital colouring and imo Neal Adams is a prime example. you see it in B&W and there's a tone and texture that the glossy final colours at best smooth out and at worst actively clash with & cheapen.

Neal Adams' original pencils for the cover of The Coming of the Supermen #1

The final cover of The Coming of the Supermen #1 as printed

Neal Adams' black and white inks for his variant cover for First Wave #1

The final printed version of Neal Adams' variant cover for First Wave #1

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

was bored; ranked the Dr Who title sequences (on further consideration Shalka moved up two spaces. ask me about the current one in a couple of years.)

1: Tom Baker V1
2: Eccleston/Tennant V1
3: Pertwee V1
4: Hartnell/Troughton V1
5: Smith V1
6: Tennant V2
7: McCoy
8: Capaldi
9: Troughton V2
10: Davison
11: TV Movie
12: Pertwee V2
13: Colin V2
14: Colin V1
15: Tom Baker V2
16: Smith V2
17: Whittaker
18: Shalka

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

is there anyone who has provided a more noble and valuable service for Dr Who fandom

Chrissie's Transcripts Site: This is your one-stop site for who said what and when on BBC televised Doctor Who and UK free-to-view Star Trek, with some vaguely tangential Extras.

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

also reminds me of this from Ursula K. Le Guin's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, one of my favourite pieces of writing about writing

"In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find – if it’s a good novel – that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it’s very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed. The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolical or metaphorical usage. (They also have a sound – a fact the linguistic positivists take no interest in. A sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence, than by the attentive intellect.) All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life – science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in function, is a metaphor. A metaphor for what? If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination."

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

thinking about Alister Pearson's Target book covers

Alister Pearson's cover for The Underwater Menace by Nigel Robinson

Alister Pearson's cover for The Edge of Destruction by Nigel Robinson

Alister Pearson's cover for Paradise Towers by Stephen Wyatt

Alister Pearson's cover for Ghost Light by Marc Platt

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MindProbe @mindprobe.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

Moffat in a 1996 fanzine article where he contentiously argued that Peter Davison was the best Doctor (reddit.com/r/gallifrey/...), and RTD in the pitch document for series 1