Matt Smith > Recent Status Updates

It's insane how much is left to happen in the next 300 pages.

New podcast ain't gonna do episodes itself.

Victoria Alonso stalking thru the Marvel post-production offices wielding a smiley-face-covered inflatable baseball bat to remind her employees that what they’re doing is “supposed to be fun” is peak everything exploitative wrong about Marvel’s machine-churn creative process.

Made all the more galling by her doing this in the midst of her employees working 20 hour days.

Fuck that noise.

Hey fuck Scott Rudin, you know?

The Treebeard chapter (which starts with Merry and Pippin meeting him and runs through the Entmoot) is twice as long as the Helm’s Deep (which starts with the journey to there and ends with Gandalf’s arrival).

Also spoilers that Gandalf is in this book.

This is batshit insane. The Doctor tripping on acid is maybe the least of those right now.

‘How often have aliens interfered in Earth’s history, anyway?’

‘Very often. There were the Osirians in Egypt, the Exxilons in Peru, Scaroth all over the place. The Timewyrm, of course, and various Dalek sorties, and –’

‘And you’re Merlin. Great.’

^ Is it fan service? Absolutely. But man is this the good stuff.

The intense swagger this has in the first chapter lets me know I’m in safe hands.

I think my status updates are wonky on this book? Whatevs. The big action was Big.

I am finding the Doctor’s absence (while intentional, experimental, and forward-thinking) to be wearing on me a bit (and I knew that was the conceit going in). Despite that, I am super jiving on this. It’s a thrill ride.

That was a nice fun interlude with Ace but I’m glad she’s with Benny now and we can move forward.

Solid Benny mystery in the first half.

The descriptions of Trudy’s three Oscar nominations is so good.

Didn’t have “and then Benny gets chucked in jail” on my Doctor Who bingo card

Oh look another race to get a book done by the end of the year. Will it happen??? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Officially into the new-to-me stuff.

The fantasy of this is astounding. The way that it’s someone who is certainly obsessed with this era and who has a lot of capital O Opinions and who is also absolutely a scholar of the material playing out a pseudo historical fiction really captures exactly what Tarantino is trying to do here. Loving it.

Hey y’know this is a pretty good book.

I’m rarely here for cheap fan service, but having Bernice’s stay in 1909 London be possible through The Doctor’s ownership of the post-Evil of the Daleks Waterfield Mansion and a safety deposit box w/ Victoria, Susan, Sarah Jane, Mel, and Benny herself manages to make fan service that is not just fun but also quite practical.

Well this is just lovely.

This is an interesting experience. Knowing the [recent] movie as well as I do, being vaguely aware of where the series kind of goes after this installment, and having absolutely no idea what happens in the back half of this book is rather unique I think.

So many reasons to finally read this, not the least of which is it’s holding me up in other places.

(Mad excited though…)

Just updating to say I’m actually this far in this book. Stalled out pretty hard for a number of reasons, but the one I choose to blame is because I’m mostly waiting for Chibnall to leave so I can get excited about Doctor Who again.

Stoked for the gap year.

Pros: Basically the French Revolution only it happens in a Magical Victorian London.

Cons: Clearly a white guy writing it.

WHICH OF THESE WILL END UP PREVAILING

There's a ton going on this book and I'm interested to see how it all snaps together. Or maybe it'll snap together in the third book. Regardless, this is rad.

I read this for the first time senior year of high school. Only read the first two volumes and aside from a few powerful beats I only remember two stories. The first is this story, of Morpheus reclaiming the helmet. His duel with Choronzon is burned vividly into my brain. Reading it again, yeah. Of course it is.

“It could be an Imperial trap!” You know what Luke you should probably listen to Leia here because on the off chance this is the first ever trap laid in Star Wars you don’t want to get caught flat footed…

This is good so far. Glad I took a big swing at this to start because I’m just now starting to get to the big excitement.

Massively digging this

This isn’t an indictment of the book but it says a lot about me that I spent a couple minutes staring at Nick’s math homework to try to figure out a problem that had stumped him. After re-teaching myself square roots through the two example problems above the stumper, I come up with what I think is the answer, turn three pages… et voilà.

Still got it, boyo.