Happy Birthday, Valentine Dyall!

I expected no less of you! You whimpering wraith! But your death is already compassed in my designs. For now, the Doctor shall release the key to ME, and chaos shall break upon the universe!

-The Black Guardian, The Armageddon Factor

 

Man, he looks more like he got poor night's
sleep than anything.

And right on the tail of a post wondering if Who is a religion, we wish a very hectic birthday to Valentine Dyall, the scheming Black Guardian and the ultimate Devil figure of the Whoniverse (well, until they decided Satan actually existed, in any case), who would be turning 105 today had he not died in 1985. His character is kinda responsible for two of my favorite things in Who--thanks to being the driving motivator in the search for the Key to Time, he's inadvertantly responsible for the presence of Romana on board the TARDIS as well as one of the finest stretches of episodes Who ever got, and he recruited Turlough, my favorite Fifth Doctor companion, to kill the guy. So, yeah, without him--no Romana. No Turlough. No Key to Time. And he's played in this delightfully hammy way, too, a way only the most powerful Who villains can really get away with these days. 

 But that's not the only fantastically nerdy thing he's done. He's been both the upkeeper of the Total Pespective Vortex and Deep Thought in a combined three versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was created by Douglas Adams, who wrote part of the Key to Time Saga. And he guest starred with Colin Baker in Series C of Blake's 7, and in that very same episode is John J. Carney, who played one-off character Bloodaxe in the Doctor Who serial The Time Warrior--which means he was guest starring in a show created by Terry Nation in an episode with the Sixth Doctor and a Robert Holmes character...the latter of whom also means that he's still tied back to the Key to Time. Kevin Bacon's got nothing on this guy! 

For more information on his life and whatnot, see here.

Promoting Philip Sandifer

Hey, folks. I'm a big fan of analyzing Who, almost as big a fan of it as I am on the show itself, and few people do it better than Philip Sandifer of TARDIS Eruditorum. His blog is about placing the entire show into a historical context and seeing how it was influenced by attitudes of the times, discussing how the show reflects world politics as well as popular and internal opinion on the show itself. ("It's astonishing how many Robert Holmes scripts make sense if you hypothesize them as deliberate insults," he quips, just as an example.) He manages to acknowledge the inherent brokenness of Who's continuity while still arguing that many things make sense on a thematic rather than logical level, and in that sense he's a big believer in symbolism with regards to the power of storytelling. All this can make him come off as a bit pompous, but he manages to keep a level head and a cool wit that makes his approach not only insightful but an absolute joy to read.

I mention him here now because tomorrow, he'll have finally written on every story of the classic era and about as much on the expanded universe as he can stand, and will begin talking about the Russel T. Davies run that started in 2005--which, I know, is the bit most people care about. So, while I advise you to read his older stuff, I'll just be glad if you read him at all. I for one am looking forward to what he has to say, and I hope all of you do too.