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 Third Anniversary Thoughts It’s hard to believe that we’ve been doing this for three years now. Within a month of each other we the announcement that Russell T Davies was bring back Doctor Who and the launch of an unnamed website. I don’t think the two are connected but in a very real sense they probably aren’t either. The big difference being that Russell had the idea and two years later we got "Rose". I had the idea and the next day we had some online rubbish. Thankfully there were a crew (some say posse) willing to step aboard and make it more representative of the majority who aren’t me. But what makes this thing worth carrying one with is that the initial rush of comrades wasn’t the end or the beginning of the end or indeed anything involving ends, begun ones or otherwise. New people come along. Yes – actual new people. People who want to spend their time producing new things for the site. The continued existence of the site it down to the people who take the time to send things to me because without them I’d have given up ages ago. The highlight of the last year for me was the strange Friday afternoon when I looked at the stats and saw an enormous spike. I thought it was the result of some spambot, malbot, spybot, webbot or other online trawler searching through millions of pages looking for email addresses and other things which its Russian paymasters can sell to drug importers. But then I looked at the referrals and saw the links from the Radio 2 website. It was one of those bizarre and vaguely fantastic things which makes everything worthwhile. The links went semi-viral for a week or two and there were a bunch of flattering message board threads around the world.
But equally unexpected was this email received a couple of days after the finale to season 2 of The New Series,
I wrote back with something about HADS and it seemed to satisfy him and his six year old son. Within a week I’d become a celebrity AND an oracle. Splendid. But enough of me, it's time for the now traditional "thanks" list (which as always comes with a pre-packed apology to anyone I’ve missed while trawling back through the last year of updates) of those who have contributed to the site and made it worth visiting: Andrew Curnow And all those who took part in the 2006 New Series League There have been many successes over the past year but also some not-quite-so successes. The Enjoyment Index proved to be a good idea (which wasn’t mine) that was badly executed, the monthly merchandise retrospective worked rather well but became too much hassle (especially when Amazon removed the "sort by release date" option from their search engine), The Writer remains stubbornly unfinished and if you’d told me back in October of 2003 that I’d only have reached season 17 of the episode guide I would’ve sworn at you and summoned nurses. The biggest failure of the last year was what was supposed to have been the Big Anniversary Surprise™. Having read a couple of collections of Peter Cook’s work I decided to write a Live! stage show script featuring the Vervoid characters. Paul and Gary, Dennis Brent, Ian Devine, Butch Maitland and the man John, little Dennis Junior, the natives of Little Skaro, and more besides. But while the ideas were willing, the flesh was not and I hadn’t got the energy to actually do it. Maybe one day. Now, with the anniversary out of the way, I can get on with that most foolish of endeavours – the annual "Brenty Four" serial. I’ve got away with it three times – will I make it four in a row or will the absurd enormity of the task finally beat me? Thus far I have two out of the tens of thousands of words needed to make a 24 part serial. And they aren’t even my words, they are from a man who doesn’t like me. What can I promise you for the future? Well, Bus is working on a Thunderbirds episode guide, an Allo Allo series is in the pipeline, Flash Gordon will be trying to pick up the baton left behind by Crash Corrigan and I’ll be building a slightly sinister shrine to the lovely Nicola Walker. But the latter is in my bedroom and so shouldn’t inconvenience you too much.
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