Doctor Who 50th Anniversary

source

At long last, the Day of the Doctor is upon us. After half a century of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, today, November 23rd, 2013, is the 50th anniversary of the British science-fiction TV show Doctor Who, the longest-running science-fiction TV show in the world ever!

Obviously, I am terribly biased because I am a die-hard Whovian (a Doctor Who fan), but I simply could not let this opportunity pass by without writing at least a short blog post to acknowledge the other 50th landmark (besides JFK's assassination) this year. I have been waiting for this day for some time now, and it appears the Internet has been as excited as I am. There's been a big bang in Doctor Who stuff in the past two weeks after the BBC launched a Build the TARDIS site, which collects all the information tagged with the hashtag #SavetheDay. Check it out, it's very "cool," as the Eleventh Doctor would say.

Yesterday was a very Who day for me, starting from when Selina told me about the Google 'Whodle'. Without Selina, I'd never have realized that Google had done a doodle to celebrate one of my favourite TV shows turning 50 years old! I absolutely love that it was Selina who told me – it was a complete full circle/Who-esque moment. I introduced her to Doctor Who, and she would in turn tell me about the 'Whodle'. This is turning out to be a lot like a Doctor Who episode. No? Then "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," as the Tenth Doctor (AKA, my Doctor) would say.

Naturally, when I got home, I ran, got exterminated by Daleks, deleted by Cybermen and zapped back in time by the Weeping Angels and regenerated more than a few times. I was able to finally save the Google logo and defeat the Daleks – as the Doctor always does – and see all 11 Doctors united and rejoicing:

For reference, here's what the 11 Doctors look like:

And here is a video celebrating the 50 years, featuring all 11 Doctors in costume (Let me know if you want to talk Easter Eggs in the vid):

And a little bit of an introduction about Doctor Who from author Neil Gaiman for any new potential Whovians amongst my students (ahem, Sandy):

No, look, there's a blue box. It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It can go anywhere in time and space and sometimes even where it's meant to go. And when it turns up, there's a bloke in it called The Doctor and there will be stuff wrong and he will do his best to sort it out and he will probably succeed 'cause he's awesome. Now sit down, shut up, and watch 'Blink'.

Continuing my Who celebrations – and because they didn't know who the Weeping Angels are and what they are capable of – Selina, Sandy and I then followed Neil Gaiman's advice and watched "Blink" together yesterday. It was creepy and "fantastic!" as the Ninth Doctor would say.

Anyway, this blog post has turned into me dashing about being really excited about "The Day of the Doctor" (and trying to insert as many Doctor Who references as possible). "The Day of the Doctor," the 50th anniversary special episode, is going to air this Sunday (11/24) at 3:50 AM in Taiwan on BBC Asia. Before you ask, yes, I will be up at the unearthly child hour.

Now some links to cool Doctor Who stuff done by our own:

• Selina has written two wonderful blog posts about two episodes that we watched together – "Father's Day" and "The Girl in the Fireplace."
• On the other hand, I have written a post on my other blog about my favourite episode of each season of the new Doctor Who.

That's all for now. Until then, you'll find me eating fish fingers and custard in the little shop – I love a little shop! Now, onto the TARDIS and to 23.11.13 we go! Geronimo! Allons-y! RUN!

P.S. Spoilers! I am going to be geeking out all of next week.

Halloween Roundup: Mystery, Suspense & All Things Spooktacular!

source

Hehehe, Halloween has arrived! For the past two weeks, we have been working on an array of Halloween-related activities, and now that the actual day is here, we can finally take a look back at some of the most spine-chilling, hair-raising and blood-curdling things that everyone has been doing this past week, which also happened to be midterms week. Boo! (Pun intended).

Alice has finally published to her blog! Her second blog post is her own version of George's Marvellous Medicine, complete with doses of wine, human eyes, stinky socks and creepy crawlies. If you are thinking of cooking up a witch's brew this Halloween, click here for instructions on how you can remake Alice's Fantastic Medicine*.

Coco has written a spooky story about a sweet old lady who really was not so sweet...

Sandy, who loves scary stories, has started working on her own story about a group of teenage computer geniuses who hack for the state. One day when our protagonist was on a covert hacking mission, a mysterious message appears on the screen...

Selina and I spent some time last week reading some Edgar Allan Poe, the master of mystery and macabre and the inventor of detective fiction. After we explored themes of madness and guilt in The Tell-Tale Heart, we watched this excellently creepy UPA animation of the story.

On the note of detective fiction, Selina and I also started reading something a little more challenging but very, very exciting and mysterious and intelligent and wonderful and all the rest (Can you tell I'm a big fan?) – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of the eccentric yet fantastic consulting detective who lives on 221B Baker Street that is, none other than Sherlock Holmes himself. After reading The Red-Headed League, Selina has written her thoughts up in a post. Our next mystery will be A Study in Scarlet, as well as other Sherlock Holmes short stories. In the mean time, we have begun watching Sherlock, the BBC's wonderful modern adaptation of the stories and one of my favourite TV shows.

source

Finally, we have been collectively working on a tale of mystery and suspense titled Rosebud. I did borrow the word from Citizen Kane but our story turned out quite differently, and thanks to the weird inner workings of the minds of everyone (myself included), much, much more scary. It is still a work-in-progress so keep an eyeball out for how the mystery unravels...

*We are in no way responsible for any injuries that may occur as a result of consuming the fantastic medicine. We also will not be able to help people clean up any vomit (or dead bodies).

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween all you witches, vampires, zombies, ghosts, werewolves and creepy creatures of the underworld!

You may have noticed that this blog has had a tiny bit of a makeover for pumpkin season. (Selina, please tell me what kind of irony I just used in the previous sentence.) For now, this blog will remain this way until we are done with all our creepy Halloween festivities this week!

Although Taiwan doesn't celebrate Halloween with trick-or-treating, we can still get into the holiday spirit with a few freaktastic videos. To get things rolling (over in the grave), let us start with the wonderfully iconic theme song of The Addam's Family.



Followed by Vincent, one of the first films done by Tim Burton, master of mystery and horror, when he was working at Disney. This short film is loosely based on Tim Burton's own life!



Speaking of Tim Burton, this is the Halloween a song from the essential Halloween movie – The Nightmare Before Christmas.



If that made you howl like a werewolf, cackle like a witch or crawl like a spider (happy, in other words), check out this amazing Halloween light show set to the same song:



And of course, no Halloween video post would be complete without the King of Pop's most famous song.



Have a spooktacular day!