Tag Archive: Monstrous Beauty

Scheduling Victorious III

Cpt 3

She crumples the paper into a compact wad and throws for the wastebasket, (both as anachronistic as can be: an Osirian Pyramid ship from the 35th century—one of the most technologically advanced pieces of starcraft ever created—and sitting in its gleaming white, high-tech, fully automated control room, an honest to goodness piece of paper and cylindrical metal can) sending it in a near-perfect arc across the room. The makeshift ball bounced once on the rim and out, skittering across the floor making that noise that was both satisfying and strangely unnerving.

She rolls her eyes. “Really? You couldn’t let me have that one?”

She melts upright off the couch and into a stretch, her lithe body arching beneath her white silk robes. Paradoxes aside, it was getting annoying to have to reschedule things every other week, even if she was just the mouthpiece. Sauntering over to the wastebasket, she nimbly plucks the wad of paper up and unsmooths it, re-reading the characters on the page. She shakes her head, inputs a few sequences on the panel before her, and hits the transmit button.

TTV #473 –Tales of the Dark Times #3 (Comic Maker), The Enemy of My Enemy (Big Finish Audio), Monstrous Beauty #3 (Comic)

Thanksgiving – OFF

TTV #474 – TLV: Daleks! #1 “The Archive of Islos”, #2 (Animated Series)

TTV #475 – TLV: Daleks! #3, #4 (Animated Series)

TTV #476 – TLV: Daleks! #5 (Animated Series), The Minds of Magnox (Audio Book)

That finished, (again), she crumples the paper and drops it without fanfare into the trash.

“You realize this is wrong, right?” She shakes her head. “I mean, you are aware of the inaccuracies here.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder toward the platform she spoke from not all that long ago. “I mean, aside from the fact that there is a ruined city outside that looks like it barely survived a nuclear blast—and granted, that may just be 2020 doing its thing—there’s a golden Pyramid ship sitting on top of it. Weird, right?”

She begins to pace, waving her hand around the room. “A 35th century Pyramid ship, you described it as. But the Osirians, are from the DARK TIMES. With one or two notable exceptions, they do not still exist today, and they certainly won’t exist in the 35th century to create this technological marvel that I’m currently shooting hoops in.” She moves back to the wastebasket and digs out the printout. “And look at this!” She cries out, holding the page aloft. “It’s ye ol’ green and white striped, tractor fed, DOT MATRIX paper!?! Could you get any more analog? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!?”

She collapses back on the couch, a sense of genuine worry about her.

“Are you off your game? I mean, I thought something was afoot last week when you named the post ‘Scheduling Victorious II’ and didn’t tag it with ‘Electric Boogaloo’ at the end. I know how you love that joke.” She pauses, the wheels in her sharp mind turning. “Unless… the Time Lord Victorious paradoxes… are they affecting you too? Is that even possible? I mean, you’re the author. The Narrator. You should be outside of these fictional events, but…” Her eyes travel skyward as if looking for god. “Hell, I’m self-aware, so who knows what your game plan is.”

Somewhere, the loud and abrasive grinding of the dot matrix printer started its insecticide chewing noise. It was only one line, and so mercifully short. She rose to pull the just printed page.

AS ALWAYS, THE SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

She re-reads the words several times as if imposing her own will on the text would cause it to change. But of course, it doesn’t. Instead, she wads the paper up and tosses it into the trash, where it makes a perfect basket, (nothing but net) thudding on the bottom of the can with a small echo.

“That isn’t reassuring.” She tells the author.

Scheduling Victorious II

Cpt 2

Deep within the pyramid that sat atop the ruined city, she lounges on a couch of black silk. The couch is in stark contrast to everything else in the room which gleamed white, from the sandblasted marble floors to her own white silk robes. She cradles her head in her hands, long, slender fingers absentmindedly play with an errant lock of her short, spiky blonde hair.

“Don’t do that.” She mutters. “I’m tired and frustrated. It’s been a long year that doesn’t show any signs of improving. I’m in no mood to have you describe my beauty just to make me feel better.”

But she was beautiful, tall and strong, with rounded features and bright eyes that sparkled with the depths of her intelligence.

“Okay, that wasn’t bad.” She admits. “At least my eyes aren’t piercing. What do you want anyway? Shouldn’t you be toppling a regime or sending a starship into a black hole or something?”

A wall panel within the pyramid illuminated suddenly. Words filled the glowing wall, words she barely payed attention to from her perch on the couch.

“Seriously? You’re still doing this? After the last batch was such a disaster?”

The words continued to flow across the wall screen.

“I mean, it’s not like we told people you were going bi-weekly and had to change it. OR that several of the dates were wrong and you had to issue a retraction. A retraction, I might add, that you simply uploaded to the website without calling attention to it. You sneaky bugger.”

The words paused, then in all capital letters spelled out, “AS ALWAYS THE SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE” then went back to their scrolling.

“Ooh, THAT hit a nerve. Look, don’t blame me. If you didn’t want to have these stimulating verbal debates, you wouldn’t have written me as self-aware.” She rises from the couch and considers the writing on the wall. “I’ll make the announcement.”

Nov
TTV #472 – Book Review – The Wintertime Paradox by David Rudden, TLV: Canaries (Short story)

TTV #473 – TLV: The Last Message (Short Story), Tales of the Dark Times #3 (Comic Maker), The Enemy of My Enemy (Big Finish Audio)

TTV #474 – TLV: Mission to the Known (Short Story), Monstrous Beauty #3 (Comic), Daleks! #1 “The Archive of Islos” (Animated Series)

TTV#475 – TLV: Daleks! #2 & #3 (Animated Series)

That taken care of, she returns to her place on the couch to contemplate her part in this mad story.

Episode 467 – Traveling the Victorious – Part 1 – Murder Toilets

We have arrived at the first of our reviews of the materials being released in the epic Time Lord Victorious event. We begin our adventure, mostly with comics. But first, we look at the recently released short story The Dawn of the Kotturuh by James Goss which was provided to readers through the official Doctor Who newsletter.

Then we move onto Titan Comic’s contribution, reviewing both issues of the Time Lord Victorious comic arc, Defender of the Daleks.

And lastly this week, we review the first part of the comic story, Monstrous Beauty #1, which accompanies issue 556 of Doctor Who Magazine.

Find out what we thought of these first stories.

Enjoy!

 

Links mentioned in the podcast:

Festival of Family Classics – Jack O’ Lantern (1972)

The TARDIS Wiki article for The Dawn of the Kotturuh (short story) with link and password

 

Scheduling Victorious

Dawn.

The sun’s rays have just begun to crest the horizon, illuminating a towering pyramid that looms over the desolate cityscape below. ‘Scenes from an apocalypse’ might be one way to describe the city. If it were a boxer, it would be beaten, bruised, and bloodied. The sprawling metropolis certainly had seen better days, but it was the people who still cowered in it that should be the focus. They too were broken and haunted, mere shadowy reflections of their former selves, for their eyes had seen horrors.

And yet they survived.

Atop the pyramid, a cloaked figure appears, gliding up to a stone podium that stands near the edge. Soft robes billow about her form as she lifts her hands aloft. The silence, which in reality was merely quiet, now becomes an eerie sound vacuum in anticipation of the words to follow. Breaths are held in that pause for attention, and she certainly has it.  Time stretches out into a thin stream of nothing in that heartbeat before she begins to orate, leaning into the strange device that can only be a microphone sending her voice booming into the valley below:

“Is this thing on?”

The cacophony of sudden noise startles her, and the bombastic feedback of her words causes a crumbling tower to finally give up its fight against gravity and collapse to the earth.

“Right. Here we go…

BEHOLD MORTALS:

A NEW DAY DAWNS.

A NEW FORMAT BEGINS.

TRAVELING THE VORTEX RETURNS.”

She pauses, looking thoughtful.

“Really? Is that it? Isn’t this an awful lot of pomp and circumstance just to announce your silly little podcast is coming back? I mean, I get it, you’ve been doing this pretty much non-stop, week after week for YEARS.” She draws out the word, adding more syllables to it than should be phonetically possible. “And then you take a little hiatus for a breather and suddenly that turns into a long hiatus because of a pandemic and…”

The author stares hard at her, projecting his will onto the flashing words that form on the screen. The meaning is clear.

“Oh fine, I’ll get on with it,” She mutters, not at all convinced the author wouldn’t carry out his threat to feed her to some horrible abomination in his next story. She coughs, attempting to get back into character.

“JOIN THE VORTEX BOYS IN THEIR NEW BI-WEEKLY FORMAT AS THEY REVIEW WHAT MAY BE THE MOST AMBITIOUS PROJECT IN DOCTOR WHO HISTORY:

THE MULTI-PART, MULTI-FORMAT TIME LORD VICTORIOUS!”

Words appear at the bottom of the screen, spelling out the upcoming schedule dates and topics:

Aug
8/31 TTV #465 – LOCKDOWN continued…

Sep
9/21 TTV #466 – Lost in Time: The Myth Makers (Recon and Novelization)

Oct
10/5 TTV #467 – TLV: A Dalek Awakens (Escape Room), Defender of the Daleks #1 (Comic), The Guide to the Dark Times (Annual 2021)

10/19 TTV #468 – TLV: Monstrous Beauty #1 (Comic), The Knight, The Fool and The Dead (Book)

and more to come!

“AS ALWAYS,” She concludes, looking rather exasperated by the whole ordeal, “THE SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE, BUT WE’LL TRY AND LET YOU KNOW!” With that, she turns in a flutter of robes and strides from the dais, muttering something about “real authors like Andy Frankham-Allen”.

And in the ruined city below, a faint sound reaches back up to the top of the pyramid. She could not be certain, of course, but it sounds like applause.