Dale's Ramblings

OK so the Tumblr is back. Really don't know what that was all about. In all likelihood you may not have even noticed it was gone 'cause it only disappeared for twelve hours, but like... weird.

Not in This ZIP Code: Unsolved Mysteries, The Silence of the Lambs The following is the introductory essay to a larger series looking at The X-Files, because I figured it was about time that I finally went back to my roots. Knowing my general state of exhaustion a…

Anyway. The WordPress remains up. Got a new piece talking about The X-Files, which will hopefully be the start of a larger series.
(Although again, I'm very much trying to take a break.)
dalesramblingsblog.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/n...

I'm assuming this is some kind of glitch, so I've contacted Tumblr support. But if you were wondering where the Tumblr went, uh, well, so am I?

Woah hey.
So um.
The Tumblr just got terminated, for no reason I can readily discern. Also didn't get any kind of email saying "You violated XYZ part of the Terms of Service," which I would generally expect if that's what was up.

I should probably post links to the two Ko-fi exclusives I have atm at some point, as they'll probably be the last straightforward book reviews I write for a little while.
If I do start compiling that critical history of Ten Thirteen, it'll probably start going up on the Ko-fi as well.

So in light of what will likely be a rather volatile physical process as I adjust to my ADT regimen, I'm kind of scaling it back a bit.

More seriously/less morbidly, in my case it has less to do with the books themselves and more just a change in my personal circumstances regarding my realising that I'm probably somewhere in the vicinity of trans/non-binary.

It's telling that the only way I could get myself into the right frame of mind to talk about The Well-Mannered War was by beginning with an extensive rumination on my two desperate suicide attempts.

I would like some day to do a proper critical history of The X-Files and its ancillary shows (Space, Millennium, HR, TLG, all that). Maybe that would be a nice change of pace from the book reviews, which are fun but... God I'm dealing with some fierce burnout.

I'll admit I also haven't watched Harsh Realm, I'm mostly just speaking from reading Darren Mooney's reviews of the contemporaneous seventh season of The X-Files, as well as of Harsh Realm itself.

Say what you will about the weaker episodes of the first season, they generally at least failed due to flaws rooted in Millennium's general outlook/aesthetic. Loin Like a Hunting Flame is recognisably a Millennium script, for better and (mostly) for worse.

The bulk of it is just stuff like Through a Glass Darkly and Human Essence, which honestly stand as some of the worst television Ten Thirteen ever put out.
Crucially, though, they're also episodes that could easily be reworked for Criminal Minds or some other similarly numbing forensic procedural.

whereas the only episode I would say is worth watching from his tenure is probably ...Thirteen Years Later.
And even then I'd accompany that with an asterisk saying that you need to accept that it's not the best Millennium comedy episode, nor the best Millennium Halloween episode.

And the third season does, to be fair, pick up appreciably in quality the second Duggan is replaced by Chip Johannessen and Ken Horton.
Like it's telling that three of the best third season episodes are... the ones produced immediately after Duggan's departure...

So you had Morgan and Wong gone, Carter more involved than he was in the second season but less involved than in the first due to being in Los Angeles most of the time, and a rather generic cop show showrunner in the form of Michael Duggan... who then ends up leaving eight episodes in anyway.

The biggest problem with the third season, really, is that everyone just kind of assumed the show would be done with after The Time Is Now, so very little preparation was done until suddenly *bam* third season renewal.

Oh for sure.
I mean it's quite possible that a hypothetical fourth season would have turned things around. If even a quarter of the season hit the quality of something like The Sound of Snow, it would have been worth it as an interesting televisual object, at least.

(The use of "autistic" also stood out to me as a bit of a sour note in an otherwise fun novel. As I think I said in my review, I'm kind of just saving up a larger conversation on that for The Mary-Sue Extrusion, because... well, I have read some passages and *hoo boy* there's stuff to talk about.)

but the Benny novels are much more of a blank canvas, critical consensus-wise, which means I often have to expend more intellectual energy to come up with some measure of analysis.

Thanks for the quote! I think that's honestly the first time anyone's quoted my work in a review in any capacity, so it does mean a lot.
And I'd rather it was for one of my Benny reviews, honestly. I like doing the Doctor Who pieces, don't get me wrong...

That said, would I have necessarily wanted a fourth season? I mean, I guess there's no way of knowing, much like there's really no way of judging Harsh Realm as a "finished" show rather than a three episode pilot that burned off six further episodes on FX months later.

Indeed, the cancellation of Harsh Realm really seemed to get under Carter's skin at the time, pretty understandably. It was, by most accounts, at the very least a major blow to his working relationship with Fox.

I think it's always been at least tacitly assumed that Millennium was sidelined to make way for Harsh Realm. It was very much hyped in the same way that Millennium had been prior to *its* launch, only with the added benefit of having a much younger/cooler aesthetic/cast.

BBC Past Doctor Adventures Reviews: Mission: Impractical by David A. McIntee (or, “All Hail the Big Talking Bird”) The history of Doctor Who in comics is a long, complex and storied one, beginning less than a year after the broadcast of An Unearthly Child with the publication of Neville Main’s The Klepton…

And as the latest season of Doctor Who comes to a close, we venture sideways into the realm of comics as the late lamented David A. McIntee provides us with the first and only Sixth Doctor/Frobisher novel, Mission: Impractical.
dalesramblingsblog.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/b...

Join me for Seeing I as we discuss fanfic, shipping, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and how it all ties back to what is unquestionably the best Eighth Doctor novel of 1998 so far.
Somehow I don't see it getting dethroned any time soon.
dalesramblingsblog.wordpress.com/2025/05/24/b...

I've drifted away from here again, sorry, gender introspection is no joke frankly.
Anyway. Updates aplenty inbound. Or at least two of 'em.

Virgin New Adventures Reviews: The Sword of Forever by Jim Mortimore (or, “The Bleakverse, Part VI: Templar’s Creed”) This is the end. In a very specific and minimal sense, of course. Undeniably important and noteworthy, yes, but specific and minimal all the same. Ever since the release of The Highest Science in F…

The Jim Mortimore farewell tour enters its middle act, and the New Adventures turn out their final monthly instalment, as we pick apart The Sword of Forever.
dalesramblingsblog.wordpress.com/2025/05/17/v...

(And notably when I say Dicks' books are a mite conservative, I don't necessarily mean he's a frothing-at-the-mouth Reform UK voter or anything like that. It's a way more classical kind of conservatism, if anything, hence the fascination with the French Revolution.)

Catastrophea was just particularly overt in its weird insistence on the apoliticality of Doctor Who, and shared some of the odd vaguely conservative artistic tics of something like The Eight Doctors.

That's fair. I don't necessarily want to reduce the entirety of a man's 84-year life down to a couple of particularly sub-par Doctor Who novels. I have no doubt Terrance Dicks was, like all humans, a lot more complex than that.