Five Questions Meme

[john_amend_all]

Ask me five questions about anything — fandom, real life, random preferences — and I'll ask you five questions in return.

Memed from lost_spook, who asked me:

1. Which is your favourite Doctor?

Two. The first one I saw was Seven, and he was my favourite for a long time; but as I've seen more of Patrick Troughton's episodes, I've come to think Two has all the characteristics I like about Seven, and those of Troughton's performances I've been able to watch have been uniformly brilliant.
That said, I think they're all splendid chaps, in their various ways.

2. What do you like best about Babylon 5?

The Vorlons. They're one of the better attempts to create an alien that isn't just a human with a funny forehead. They're ancient and devious and don't think like us. And I love the way their speech is done: vaguely musical noises, with simultaneous translation.

3. When you write a mystery story, do you plot it out carefully first, or work it out along with your protagonists?

I don't have a detailed plan. I know, as a rule, roughly how the murder (or whatever) was done, and by whom; but I let the protagonists fill in the details at their own pace. Sometimes this part does cause tweaks in what I already knew, or thought I knew.

4. What's your comfort reading?

Most recently (while I was waiting to go to hospital and have my retina examined), The Loss of the Jane Vosper by Freeman Wills Crofts. Golden Age detective fiction with all the characters made of the finest cardboard.

5. What was your first fandom?

My first fannish behaviour (imagining myself in the setting, making up adventures and so forth) would probably be the original Star Trek. In the sense of discussing the show with other like-minded people, I think Star Trek TNG — I recall chatting with others at school about the episode where the solution to the problem of the week was to turn the Enterprise off, then turn it back on again. Doctor Who was the one where I actually went as far as joining a society of like-minded people.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

1. I suppose that should have been obvious, but it wasn't. I mean, I had a good idea of who your favourite companions were, but you seemed fairly even in your treatment of Doctors. (Which is a good thing.) My Doctors are pretty much the same for the same reasons, except I'm more sentimental and Seven still holds first place.
2. Thanks (since I know nothing about it!)
3. And here was me thinking you must have a Terribly Clever Plan when you wrote yours.

[john_amend_all]

1. Well, obviously my favourite companion's Rose! :-)

3. I'm not sure what a Terribly Clever Plan would look like. Unless it was something like that diagram I made Zoe draw to prove that there was no way she could solve the mystery in time.

[thisbluespirit]

Exactly. ;-)

I think that's probably exactly what a Terribly Clever Plan would look like!

[john_amend_all]

That diagram was, I think, slightly influenced by the Two Ronnies, where Charley Farley draws a Terribly Clever Plan of the case that occupies a whole wall. "If we study this for long enough," he says, "Sooner or later the killer will emerge." The prime suspect immediately walks through it from the far side.