Doctor Who: The Lost Stories

Big Finish Productions have announced “Doctor Who: The Lost Season”, recreating the original, never produced, season 23 with Colin Baker (The Doctor) and Nicola Bryant (Peri).

Doctor Who: The Lost StoriesLong, long ago (1985) the BBC put Doctor Who (then staring Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor) on “hiatus” while pre-production was underway for it’s 23rd season. When the show came back 18 months later an entirely different Season 23 was produced. A few of the stories from the “lost” season 23 have been novelized but most have not.

Now Big Finish Productions (who have been producing amazing audio drama for years) announced that they’re going to be recreating the entire season on audio, including one previously unknown story.

Links of Interest (February 5th 2009 through February 24th 2009)

Plugin Authors, Are you making the best of Readme.txt?
A comprehensive guide to where the WordPress Plugin Directory pulls the data it displays. A must read for plugin developers. Especially important with the recent changes to the directory's search capabilities.

Cross-Browser Inline-Block
If you've ever tried to create a flexible gallery style layout of elements of varying heights, then this is for you.

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet
A compact reference for HTML5 canvas element.

Dalek War Boxset
This Doctor Who Restoration Team article detais the process of restoring color to "Planet of the Daleks" episode 3. It was theorized some years ago that interference on the surviving 16mm B&W telerecording (made by essentially pointing a film camera at a TV) might contain some valid PAL color subcarrier information. Unable to get funding to investigate the idea (which sounds a bit more far fetched than Dalek's to me), the informal Colour Recovery Working Group was started up online. The group succeeded in recovering color information from the telerecording. Meanwhile the Restoration Team commissioned Legend Films to colorize the episode (a process that's come a long way since Turner, but can still look a bit flat in the end). The finished version blends these two sources together, then processes them via VidFIRE (the process of restoring the original 50 field per second interlaced image from a telecline, another process developed during restoration of Doctor Who episodes).

Bacon Stupidity
For the month of February, Michael J. Nelson (MST3k, Rifftrax) has pledged to eat nothing but bacon. Yup, bacon. All month. Just bacon.

Is the Audiobook Industry Broken?

Evo Terra over at Podiobooks.com feels that the audiobook industry is broken. It’s not the first time I’ve seen him mention it, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

NOTE: Before going on I feel I should mention that I am an affiliate for Audible.com as well as a long time customer. That is in no way my motivation for posting this ((In the years I’ve been an affiliate I don’t think I’ve hit three digits yet, total, so honestly the money doesn’t enter into it here)) , but I figured I should mention it. The opinions are mine, as always.

Overdrive and the MP3 Audiobook Bait and Switch

Evo starts off pointing to points to Borders offering downloadable DRM ((What’s DRM? TIME magazine’s The Battle Over Music Piracy may help you understand.)) free MP3 audiobooks. The problem is they aren’t offering downloadable MP3s at all. All Borders is doing is putting yet another new front on Overdrive ((aka SimplyAudiobooks.)) . Overdrive is everywhere ((Like Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts, but without any hot beverages.)) . If your library offers free audiobook downloads, chances are they’re Overdrive.

Overdrive very carefully words things to say their product works with most MP3 players. Until recently they didn’t technically work with any MP3 players. They were all DRM protected WMA, and if your device doesn’t play WMA ((like that iPod thing)) then you are out of luck.

What really left a bad taste in my mouth was the slimy marketing they used to defend this. They used to have literature all over their sites decrying Apple for only supporting DRM on proprietary formats, all the while using Microsoft’s DRM laden proprietary format, which cut non-Windows users out of the loop all together. This lead to my local library posting information that was practically correct, but technically bogus as to why you couldn’t use your iPod to hear the MP3 audiobooks they offered. In reality they didn’t offer MP3s at all.

More recently they’ve started offering files in MP3, or so they claim. They still package the files in some container format, and you need to use their software to get the “DRM free” MP3s out. The software only runs on Windows, so Mac users are out in the cold. I can not comprehend how an action that seems to have been taken primarily to support the Apple iPod doesn’t support users of Apple computers.

Evo’s Four Reasons

Evo offered four reasons for why he thinks the audibook industry is broken, and I’m going to respond point by point.

Availability

Publishers aren’t willing to make the additional investment required to turn every book into an audiobook.

This is generally true. Not every book receives an audiobook release. How I wish this weren’t so. Audible.com , at least in the realms of Science Fiction and Fantasy, is doing their best to rectify this ((As are folks like Scott Brick who is independently producing Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant Books)) .

[Podiobooks.com’s] goal is to leverage something the other audio houses haven’t thought of or are only experimenting with — letting the authors do much of the heavy lifting.

Author’s reading their own books was common practice for some time. I have many audiobooks on cassette read by the authors. These are more rare today, because audiobook consumers voted with their wallets and pro-narration won out.

I realize Evo is referring to authors recording and editing their own readings their own works for the publisher if the publisher would just take and release the files, but I’m almost certain it’s not that simple ((Although Scott Sigler’s Infected shows that it is at least allowable.)) . I’m sure many authors would have no problems, but just as many wouldn’t bother because they wouldn’t know where to begin. Also some authors are openly hostile to the idea of audiobooks, and don’t think people who have listened to them have “read” their books ((more on this lunacy here)) .

Usability

The act of listening to an audiobook is, well, difficult.

No huge argument there from me. In fact Random House’s recent split with Audible.com is a great example. To listen to Scott Sigler’s Infected on my iPod I had to rip the CDs and merge them into an audiobook file. It’s not something I’m willing to do again. I don’t really care who is at fault in this one. The fact that the parties involved can’t suck it up and come to some agreement is childish. It’s costing them both money (Audible.com because they can’t sell me the books I want, and Random House because they don’t offer a viable alternative).

DRM is a huge part of the inconvenience, but not all of it. Audible.com uses DRM, and I wish they didn’t, but the way they deliver their books, and how the work on devices is damn close to my idea of audiobook nirvana. I only have one or two files to stick on my device, and it’s broken up into chapters for navigation, has cover art ((although it really needs a resolution face lift)) , bookmarks where I left off ((some devices offer a way to drop in your own bookmarks as well, but the iPod does not)) , and just generally works for me. Basically the other conveniences, for me, outweigh the DRM issue (for now) ((Audible’s management software has CD burning support so if you can get DRM free access to your purchases, it’s just a bit of a pain.)) .

Most of the DRM free options are not so convenient a listening experience. I have to jump through hoops to make the books work for me. It’s a pain.

Low bit rates are the norm in the download space, and it’s really unnecessary in a world where bandwidth and storage space are anything but scarce

I couldn’t more strongly disagree on this one. You can ask anyone who knows me, I’m very picky about audio quality, but I cringe when I see audiobook files at high bitrates. Last time I checked my audible library was about 25GB for just under 11 weeks of audio, all of which sounds better than my cassette based audiobooks ever did ((Audible.com does offer BBC Radio Dramas, which I will not buy because of the bitrate, and lack of stereo support)) .

Accessibility

It’s not uncommon for audiobooks to cost more than twice their hardcover counterparts and be an order of magnitude higher in price than the paperback version. […] Things are different for disc-distribution. It may cost more to stamp out 20 discs than it does to print 400 pages. But when looking at a digital download, the cost to distribute approaches zero.

I was used to audiobooks costing a lot, but you have to look at the length of the content. I have audiobooks that are 24+ hours and cost less than a DVD Season Box Set from HBO. I value books higher than I value TV, so I pay for it ((Truth is I end up paying ~$10 per audiobook currently, but I used to pay the cover price.)) . My understanding is that CDs are cheap as dirt, so if you think you’re paying for the physical medium you’re being ripped off just the same.

Profitability ((Couldn’t find a good pullquote, you should have read Evo’s article anyhow.))

It seems downloadable audiobook companies apparently don’t pay out great royalties. I assume this comes down to the fact that most non-casual purchasers buy books with membership credits, so while the cover price may be $80+, the customer only ended up paying around $10 ((actual transaction)) . I believe it was Orson Scott Card who mentioned that by recording some extra audio content for all his books he gets paid twice (book royalty and performance royalty). I don’t know how solvable this is for traditional publishing.

So Is it Broken?

All the numbers I’ve seen point to the audibook industry booming like it never has before. Sales were estimated at $923 million in 2006. While all the issues mentioned above are real, they don’t seem to be slowing things down enough that I expect any big changes any time soon. Maybe I’m missing something obvious, or I’m living in a bubble.

From where I’m sitting this is the Audiobook Golden Age. Most pro-audiobooks are unabridged, and there are more audibooks available than ever before. There are some really great places like Podiobooks.com and Librivox offering free content.

Do I wish things were different? Sure. I wish Audible would drop DRM, at least at the publisher’s request. I wish Overdrive would go jump in a lake and get out of my library, or change their tactics to be less slimy. I wish Podiobooks.com offered convenient audiobook-listener friendly formatted files ((which I would be happy to pay for)) . So, from where I sit it’s a bit broken, but it’s better than it’s ever been before.

Links of Interest (January 31st 2008 through February 19th 2008)

Crime podcast novel gets HUGE boost in advertising
Video of a digital billboard advertising for Seth Harwood’s “Jack Wakes Up”

The parseInt gotcha
I’m pretty sure once you’ve been hit by this parseInt() behavior in javascript you never forget it, but if you haven’t you should learn about it now before you do.

CSS Tools: Reset CSS
Eric Meyer’s Reset style-sheet (now in its permanent home, with versions numbers). Including this should reduce browser inconsistencies, and help you not to rely on undefined default behaviors.

CSS Tools: Diagnostic CSS
Eric Meyer’s diagnostic.css (now in its permanent home). Including this stylesheet will highlight elements that are incomplete and may be degrading the user experience.

Jason Bateman Confirms “Arrested Development” Movie Talks
I cannot begin to express how much I hope this comes to pass.

Amazon acquires Audible for $300 million
This caught be by surprise. Hopefully it will remain mostly unchanged, although adding stereo support to all the stereo BBC programs they carry would be nice.

The End of an Era

Product Image: Doctor Who: The Gallifrey Chronicles (by Lance Parkin)

After the last book I read, I needed to read something a bit… shorter. This just so happened to show up at my door at just the right time. I have (almost) all of the BBC Doctor Who novels, but I haven’t read most of them. I hope to some day, but it’s mainly a collection at this point.

This one I really wanted to read, for a number of reasons. This book is the end of the block of continuity that started back in August 2000 with The Burning, where the Doctor has lost all of his past memories; I’ve had a renewed interest in Doctor Who due to the show finally coming back to BBC TV (warning, link contains spoilers for the 2005 season of Doctor Who); the book was supposed to make sense to people who have never read any of the 100s of previews Doctor Who novels; most importantly, for me, it was written by Lance Parkin.

The book, while not exactly what I expected, made good on it’s promises. It tied up the continuity from the ongoing book series in such a way that it can lead into the new TV series, without explicitly going there (or even starting down that path). In fact, that part of the book, while fascinating, is almost regulated to the sidelines of a rip roaring adventure.

Another Time Lord, Marnal, trapped on earth discovers that Gallifrey has been destroyed, and that the Doctor was responsible. He sets a trap for the Doctor, with the intent of making him pay for his crimes against their people. Marnal is a bit disheartened to find the Doctor has no idea what he is talking about, although he doesn’t quite believe it. The Doctor ends up finding out what happened to his memories, and why.

While the Doctor is occupied with that, the earth is overrun by the Vore, an insectoid alien race that jumps through disturbances in space-time, and seems to be intent on whiping out the population of earth.

The Vore are a great alien threat, because they are so alien. No one can communicate with them, they seem to have no idividual thoughts, and nobody can figure out what it is they are trying to do, or why. They just merrily go about decimating the population and move on to the next place. People are forced to move on and try to cope with death on a scale they can not even comprehend. They are unfathomable while being logicaly insect like.

I can’t really say much more about the plot without ruining it. Although some of the characters ment little to me, because they were obviously long time companions of the Doctor in books I did not read, by the end I really cared about them. There’s some great stuff in here, like when the Doctor first encounters a Vore:

The Doctor looked it up and down. ‘So you’re a Vore? I’ve heaerd the expression “time flies”, I’ve never actually met one before. Hello.’

Like all of Mr. Parkin’s books that I’ve read so far, the writing is top notch. There are lines in the book that refer to some aspect of fandom, or the series history outside of the fiction, but they are presented as part of the story. They’re like in-jokes, only more complex, and they never seem forced or out of place. There are comments that state what I believe to be the authors take on continuity (Doctor Who has spanned Television, comics, books, audio dramas, and more in it’s over forty year history). None of this ever detracts from the story in the slightest.

If you’re a Doctor Who fan at all, and especially and Eighth Doctor fan, I highly recommend you give this one a read.

My rating: 4 out of 5

Product Image: Doctor Who: The Gallifrey Chronicles (by Lance Parkin)

After the last book I read, I needed to read something a bit… shorter. This just so happened to show up at my door at just the right time. I have (almost) all of the BBC Doctor Who novels, but I haven’t read most of them. I hope to some day, but it’s mainly a collection at this point.

This one I really wanted to read, for a number of reasons. This book is the end of the block of continuity that started back in August 2000 with The Burning, where the Doctor has lost all of his past memories; I’ve had a renewed interest in Doctor Who due to the show finally coming back to BBC TV (warning, link contains spoilers for the 2005 season of Doctor Who); the book was supposed to make sense to people who have never read any of the 100s of previews Doctor Who novels; most importantly, for me, it was written by Lance Parkin.

Continue reading “The End of an Era”