Just like the first time around, rereading The Martian just makes me want to play some Kerbal Space Program.

I’ve spent the last decade believing that The Martian was the exception to the “book is always better” rule, but rereading the book is challenging that notion.

This volume seemed to depart so drastically from the first that I had to make sure I hasn’t skipped something by accident. The stories are mostly recognizable as part of a shared universe, but the worldbuilding feels overly ambitious and underserved by the actual plot. The topless Galatea robots are unnecessary, and the lampshading of their luridness by attributing it to an in-universe pervert doesn’t help. I was willing to give the first volume in this series the benefit of the doubt, but I’m glad I don’t have any more of this to read.

See, this one I should have loved: I really want to like Paul McGann’s Doctor, and I do like the Vashta Nerada. This felt like excessive EU riffing, though, and I just couldn’t get excited about it.

I shouldn’t like this! It took a trip to YouTube to remember who the Carrionites even were, and there are so many Doctor-Who-dumb, audio-play-dumb, and just generally dumb elements to this play. Yet, it somehow came together into something that I enjoyed listening to during a stressful week.

Doesn’t knock one’s socks off, but it was a good mid-morning work tea.

I hesitated to give this full marks because I know it gets less interesting with time, but that’s also true of my chocolate mint tea that I love, and it’s been a while since I’ve had any of this, so my taste buds are very happy.

Since I’ve been posting about Doctor Who and Tinker Tailor: I had heard of the Valeyard before (my Classic Who knowledge is limited 😬), but I only recently learned that he was portrayed by the actor who played Peter Guillam, and this is really messing with my head.

I would never claim that Käärijä and Baby Lasagna’s #eurodab is a good song, but having it stuck in my head the morning after poor sleep is doing more help than harm.

I like the actor who plays Jim Prideaux in the Tinker Tailor miniseries, but even though I don’t speak a word of Czech, it’s very clear that he doesn’t either.

The Racnoss struck me as dumb in their first appearance, and this play hasn’t done much to disabuse me of that impression. That said, this played enough with interesting Doctor Who themes of peace and conflict that it won me over anyway.

Look, I’ve heard some good orchestral versions of the Doctor Who theme, but that song was meant to be as electronic as possible.

Interesting art, and some interesting ideas (like a foulmouthed human being transported to a land of animal wizards). I think there’s something here, even if I’m not totally hooked.

The art is good, and there are elements of a rollicking time travel romp hidden in here, but the story ultimately comes down to tech bros doing what they want because they have the power to, and we’re lucky that they decided to have a conscience at the end. That is not the kind of story I want to read in 2026.

I’ve read this too many times in the past two decades for it to feel as innovative and interesting as it once did, but it remains good!

La bd que je lis en ce moment avec ma fille fait un petit clin d’œil aux fameux pirates d’Astérix. Je l’ai donc envoyée chercher un album pour lui expliquer la blague—sauf que j’avais oublié combien l’un des pirates est un caricature raciste, et tout a fini dans la malaise 😬

“Classic Doctors, new monsters” is such a fun concept for an audio play series, and hearing Tom Baker face off against the Vashta Nerada was a delight. Don’t know if I’ll enjoy the upcoming stories as much, but this was fun.

Si je comprends bien, la ligne du tramway est tout près de l’appartement à Renens où j’ai vécu pendant quelques mois, et cette nouvelle fait donc plaisir même si je n’ai pas mis pied à Lausanne depuis 2010.

Sylvester McCoy is delightful, and I’m glad I got to experience a story with his Doctor and Sophie Aldred’s Ace. It’s goofy in the way that most expanded universe material is, but there’s enough there to be interesting, and I enjoyed the listen.

When did YouTube start autodubbing videos into the language it assumes you want? No, thank you!

It’s real neat that the Eighth Doctor has had such a presence in Big Finish and other ancillary media, but this is another story that entirely dissuades me from trying to get into any of that, because I cannot follow what’s going on. Hard to say whether it’s continuity lockout, poor writing, or both.

This story is the hardest to follow radio drama I’ve ever experienced. It did turn out that I’d accidentally skipped over the first few tracks, but even going back to listen to them didn’t help much. I couldn’t tell characters apart, I wasn’t sure what was a flashback and what was the main story, there was some serious continuity lockout, and I found the whole thing confusing. There were some fun ideas in there, but they were buried under a persistent feeling of being lost.

Je me souvenais de ne pas aimer cette saison aussi bien que la première. Si ça reste vrai (je n’aime pas trop ce qu’on fait avec André, ce qui me semble trop compliqué), il y a des moments marrants qui ont lieu dans cette saison, et je suis triste de savoir que même la plus compliquée des histoires ne trouveront pas de résolution dans une troisième saison.

There was some passing around of the idiot ball in this story, and it felt surprisingly dark for a Doctor Who story, but I appreciated the layers of disaster piling up, and the villain was compelling in a pathetic way (in multiple senses of the word). I don’t know the Eighth Doctor well, so it’s interesting to get to know him here.

Battle of Britain Doctor Who would really have appealed to me at some point, but it’s the sort of thing now where I find myself wondering if the story is uncritically pedestalizing an important moment of history that is actually much more complicated.