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Posted by News in Time and Space Ltd

Credit: BBC Studios

The BBC has confirmed that Doctor Who will return to screens worldwide at Christmas 2026.

The series will continue with a special episode written by the current showrunner, Russell T Davies and produced by Bad Wolf with BBC Studios for the BBC.

The BBC has also confirmed that Disney+ has decided to end its partnership with the corporation and will not be involved in any future series of Doctor Who. The BBC has said they remain fully committed to the show and will announce plans for the next series in due course.

Lindsay Salt, BBC Director of Drama

We’d like to thank Disney+ for being terrific global partners and collaborators over the past two seasons, and for the upcoming The War Between the Land and the Sea. The BBC remains fully committed to Doctor Who, which continues to be one of our most loved dramas, and we are delighted that Russell T Davies has agreed to write us another spectacular Christmas special for 2026.

We can assure fans, the Doctor is not going anywhere, and we will be announcing plans for the next series in due course which will ensure the TARDIS remains at the heart of the BBC.

The War Between the Land and the Sea, a spinoff from Doctor Who, is heading to BBC iPlayer and BBC One later this year, as well as a brand-new animation series for CBeebies, which is in development.

Boston

28 Oct 2025 08:18
sartorias: (Default)
[personal profile] sartorias
I love Boston so much, especially this area around Harvard. The trees are rich with color, the air is brisk, requiring all my layers of flimsy California-wear, and the sidewalks brick with lumps of tree roots. I love it all.

Yesterday I went with Nine to the Mapparium on the other side of the river. (The bus ride down Massachusetts Ave is great for scenery!) If you've never heard of it--I hadn't until one of the Viable Paradise workshop writers clued me in--it's an enormous glass globe that you can walk into, to see the entire world, worked in jewel-toned glass, as it was in 1935. It was constructed to be a reminder that we are all in this world together; a needed warning then, as now. (Naturally those who need it most won't see or hear.)

We had a great time looking, then testing the amazing sounds created by voices enclosed in glass.

Afterward we met up with Rushthatspeaks for tea and chocolate at L.A. Burdicks. Oh, they know how to do chocolate so, so right. Delish. We chatted and reminisced and cackled like maniacs. Today we'll visit the Fogg to see a Botticelli that is usually hidden in a private collection. I can hardly wait!

I'm coming down from the high of a very successful workshop, and a month of splendid visiting and seeing and fast-lane busy. The workshop writers are so talented and so focused, and all this in beautiful Martha's Vineyard.

Tomorrow homeward bound!
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Shocked by a dream fragment in which I was swept away down a rocky river, like Weena in the Time Machine. I woke to the sound of my own voice screaming for help, only I wasn't really. In real life, it was an intake of breath and there I was, sitting up.

Carcosa remains an interest of mine. Ambrose Pierce began its story (https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/InhaCarc.shtml ) I knew it as the mysterious double-sunned city of the Yellow King, an unknowable bringer of malevolence and madness. There's more but once one starts on the Cthulhu Mythos one is almost certain to face the ultimate maddening horror; the purple prose of HP Lovecraft. I mention it now because a poem turned up this morning, possibly triggered by the nightmare. But first the classic depiction of the Carcosan vibe:


Cassilda's Song
Robert W. Chambers (1895)


Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

Carcosa should never be fully explained. Still, here is my reply:

i could not help them then
those tired wretches dreaming of Carcosa
whose questions were all about
gold on the pavements,
and a world, however mad,
still better, still abundant

i could not say
beware this place
beware its tattered king
beware even of me
in all my kindness
all my talking kindness

of here
always of here
this my vein my home but
even a daughter stumbles
between shadows
born from double suns

above all beware promises
not for feared falsehood
But because here each
promise will be kept
to the last letter
the last broken letter

Beware the dreamer's song
of Lost Carcosa
The truth is
you will always find it
Wherever you thought
your steps were headed.

And because I like to remember them, here are my favourite inhabitants of Carcosa.

Candy or Curry

28 Oct 2025 06:49
smokingboot: (snail)
[personal profile] smokingboot
A friend has put up a photo of him cuddling his little black kitten, with a blissful expression on its face that reminded me of our boy. It has been nearly 3 months, I should change my photos on FB to help me move on. Just not yet. Gad, I just do not get over stuff. I'm not over the death of Surya and that was in 2021. Talk about maudlin! I need imagery around to cheer me and get me working, because this should be a busy winter.

Meanwhile shrooms continue to proliferate in the garden. My plant apps vaguely identify one large patch as candy caps or curry caps and for sure they do that whole latex milky thing when squeezed but the identifying smell is just pleasant, neither candy nor curry. Apparently it becomes more distinct when it dries, or you can burn a bit of it to find out. So I picked some out of the garden but right now it is too wet to set alight. I know exactly how it feels.

Posted by News in Time and Space Ltd

<\/a>The actor and writer Nabil Shaban has died at the age of 72.

Nabil Shaban will be best remembered by Doctor Who fans for his delicious portrayal of Sil, the odious and unctuous character created by Philip Martin for the 1984 story Vengeance on Varos. So successful was the character that he returned in the following season in Mindwarp.

Shaban would later recreate the character in audio form for Big Finish.

Nicola Bryant, who played Peri alongside Shaban, said

So sorry to hear of the passing of dear Nabil Shaban. A wonderful actor, good friend and probably one of the best Doctor Who villains of all time. He worked tirelessly for disabled actors and always brought such dedication and humour to whatever he was doing

Nabil Shaban was born in Amman, Jordan

As a child, he was diagnosed with brittle bone disease, osteogenesis imperfecta, resulting in him moving to England for medical care, where he grew up in a series of hospitals and residential homes.

After graduating from the University of Surrey, Shaban founded the Graeae Theatre Company, an organisation composed of disabled artists and theatre makers. He performed major roles in many Graeae productions, including: Hamlet, Godspell, The Emperor,  and Fleshfly.

Shaban’s film work includes parts in City of Joy, Wittgenstein and Born on Fire, whilst on television he has had numerous roles in Channel 4 and BBC productions

Nabil Shaban died on the 18th October 2025. He is survived by his wife Marcela Krystkova and their child.

Sil and the Governor Negotiate

Database maintenance

25 Oct 2025 08:42
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

The Fairy Ring

24 Oct 2025 10:44
smokingboot: (snail)
[personal profile] smokingboot
It's a cold wet day and my hands are cramping. The garden is riddled with fungi, including one properly round fairy ring under the last rose in bloom. I stepped in and made a wish, a small wish but then it's a small ring.

Now I'm huddled in a big pink cardi while it rains and rains out there. I have things to do but they may get put off in favour of sitting in front of the fire watching Traitors and Clarksons Farm. I'm not sure about Celebrity Traitors, that performative edge becomes try-too-hard ever so quickly. The usual version is much better.

Clarkson's Farm is my go to delight. He's definitely got elements of urgh to him, but no getting past the fact that he makes great TV. CF isn't just the cotswolds being beautiful and the townie failing comedically, it's a shrewd insight into British farming without ever once feeling like a lesson. Plus it's funny.

Today that will do for me.
Going to try it, see if it helps. Everything is a bit off. There is so much for me to do, but I seem unable to put my mind to anything. Was it a fortnight ago I was tromping between central Granada and Zaidin in the heat? Mum was hard work and so were the circumstances, but in physical terms it was easy. Now I am inevitably sleepy, my walks feel harder, perhaps I am a bit depressed. Is it the lack of light? Maybe that's it.

But there is stuff that needs doing and I must wake up.

It won't be long before I return to Granada, and it suddenly occurs to me that whenever I go, I never go into the mountains, I don't even go to Sacromonte, because my family used to have conniptions at the idea of me anywhere near the caves and the Roma. I wrote this poem about it;

THE SACROMONTE VALENTINE
Sacromonte, Sacromonte
Don’t take your purse or phone,
take cash in your pockets
And don’t go by yourself.
But the poet won’t listen
She is full of red wine
and all she hears are footsteps
footsteps to Sacromonte

Sacromonte, Sacromonte
her hands unfurl stories
bird bright, reptile supple,
taut as a new drumskin
Her feet move and shout
and others move too
Wood and wineskins keep time
in the smoke of Sacromonte

Sacromonte, Sacromonte,
His smile is a bullet
She screams and is woken
with laughter and coffee.
In Sacromonte she dreamed
of Lorca the poet.
Where is she now that
she dreams of Sacromonte?

Garcia Lorca did not die in Sacromonte. My dreaming of the above came perhaps from his reputation as 'the gypsy poet' though he wasn't a gypsy. It is thought that he was shot by Nationalist forces near Viznar, but no-one is sure. Motives were plenty; he was socialist, he was gay, he was controversial, but on the other hand, he had friends on all sides. Some claim there was a personal vendetta beneath the politics, a score settled. Excavations continue trying to find his remains.


Then I realized I had been murdered.
They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries and churches
.... but they did not find me.
They never found me?
No. They never found me.

- The Fable and Round of the Three Friends",
Poet in New York (1929), García Lorca.

Why did he matter to me? His poetry was beautiful, but more than that, he helped me to understand Duende.

All that has dark sounds has duende. And there is no greater truth.... These dark sounds are the mystery, the roots pushing into the soil which we all know, which we all ignore, but from which comes what is real in art. - Theory and Function of the Duende, Lorca

I do not think depth and struggle and rawness are the only powers birthing the real in art. But I can feel what he means. And on days like this it's good to accept the gift, to accept that however stupid things have been, I know Duende. While it would comfort many to find where he was buried, a part of me resists. After all, if no-one knows where he is then he could be anywhere which puts him everywhere.

Dream well Federico.

AWS outage

20 Oct 2025 10:11
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Fragments

20 Oct 2025 08:59
smokingboot: (dreams)
[personal profile] smokingboot
Strange dream full of sharp flashes. I was in a lesbian relationship with someone, I could feel them holding me, the real sensation of intimacy, but I don't remember their name/face/anything about them. Glimpses of me looking at a map, finding myself on the South East outskirts of London, close to Plumstead or Woolwich but there was another borough with a name I could not recall, and it was either South or South West. I don't even know why I was looking for it. Me again in a room with a high bunk bed, bit small for me but I could use it. Nuclear Man's wife in a house, she was expecting another child, a son. But the house had no curtains, no material at all that I could see, and this was strange because she was always excellent with fabric, upholstery,etc. She was very happy.

I woke with a gravestone suddenly in my mind. Maybe my mind is trying to tell me this is a time of endings and beginnings. All good I guess, but uneasy.

Flashing by . . .

18 Oct 2025 19:57
sartorias: (Default)
[personal profile] sartorias
Viable Paradise is about to begin, which means hunkering in the bunker.

But today the weather was perfect for the protest gathering at a very busy five-points intersection here on Martha's Vineyard, with A LOT of people and some winsomely unique signage. Lots of laughter and horn honking, and although there were two protesters for the current regime, and a couple of cars went by with passengers waving thumbs down, there was no violence whatsoever. Yay! I wish that would be true everywhere.

Interesting patterns in signage; many quotes from the Bible and from the Constitution, and so very many crowned clowns. One frog, one unicorn, and a bee. Many, but not all, were my age or older.
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Security

17 Oct 2025 09:20
smokingboot: (helmet)
[personal profile] smokingboot
Our new system does everything short of handcuffing intruders and taking them to jail. I'm terrified of it, in case I forget to click something or turn something on/off and suddenly find myself in a cloud of impenetrable smoke surrounded by screaming sirens. Overkill perhaps, but I'm definitely going to feel safer when R is away from home.

This is a fat bunny neighbourhood, lots of good cars and tidy lawns, the sort of place a professional thief would find interesting. Across and beside us are folk with dogs, so it's time to join them in looking like too much trouble. Nothing will keep a burglar out if they mean it, but most want an easy mark, so...

Now I'm getting endless notifications of people and cars passing by, the angle of the house front makes this difficult to avoid. I guess it's the point.

A big troublesome chunk of paperwork sorted out, now I have time to help friend's daughter. If only I didn't feel so bleary! How strange this Autumn is. It took ages to really get going and now it's dark, like Winter is right on the doorstep. I shouldn't wish October away, the leaves are very beautiful this year, but I have magically turned into a dormouse, doing little beyond drinking tea and sleeping.

Posted by News in Time and Space Ltd

Tony Caunter (Credit: Chuck Foster)<\/a>

The actor Tony Caunter has died at the age of 88.

Tony Caunter was a well-known British actor who appeared in numerous roles on British television throughout a career spanning over sixty years.

He appeared in ten episodes of Doctor Who. His debut in the series came in 1965 when he played Thatcher in two episodes of the First Doctor story The Crusade. He had a much more substantial role in 1971 in the Third Doctor story Colony in Space, where he played Morgan, the second-in-command on the IMC expedition.

In 1983, his third appearance was as Jackson in the fifth Doctor story, Enlightenment

Away from Doctor Who, Caunter was best known for playing the car dealer Roy Evans in the soap opera EastEnders, a role he portrayed for nine years. He often played policemen, including DCI Jim Logan in the first three series of Juliet Bravo. In the 1990's he was promoted to Deputy Chief Constable Arthur Quine in The Chief.

In 1978, he appeared in the Blake's 7 episode Deliverance. Other memroble roles include Titanic's chief officer Henry Wilde in S.O.S. Titanic and Jack Shepherd in the Yorkshire Television sitcom Queenie's Castle.

He also appeared in Crown Court, Z-Cars, The Avengers, Casualty, London's Burning, Home to Roost, The Saint, Special Branch, The Champions, Dixon of Dock Green, Catweazle, The Main Chance, The Professionals, The Sweeney, Minder, Pennies From Heaven, Westbeach, Howards' Way, Lovejoy, May to December, Boon, Heartbeat and The Scarlet Pimpernel

Tony Caunter married Frances Wallace in 1962, and the couple had four children.

He died in Eastbourne on 13 October 2025 a week after his wife's death