Silence Will Eat

I apologise for the scruffiness of this cartoon. I thought of/drew/coloured this in literally five minutes as I'm about to go out and I wanted to get the idea down before I forgot it. I've just watched the jaw-droppingly fantastic Doctor Who episode 'Day of the Moon' (likely now my favourite Doctor Who episode, and that includes the classic series), featuring the terrifying Silence. They're a species with a clever trick: the minute you look away from them you forget everything about them, even that you saw them in the first place. They've been on our planet since "The wheel and the fire" apparently - so quite a while then - but how on earth did they find stuff to eat? Maybe this cartoon will help explain...

Wine Not?

Really, sorry for the pun.

Anyway, nothing to do with cartoons as the tag says, but I've started a wine blog. It's something I've wanted to do for years but just never got round to doing. It's a place where there's wine reviews and just a general exploration and de-mystification of the often confusing and (sadly, snobbish) world of wine. If you're interested, head on over to The Corkscrew Review. If not, then just stick around here, where all the cartoons hang out. There'll be some new ones very soon.

-Rob

A Doctor a Day 8: "Timing malfunction..."

The 8th Doctor & The 4th Master

Ah the 8th Doctor...he never got a fair shake really. Or did he? 'Doctor Who: The Movie", his first and only televised appearance, was placed in the US schedules against the final ever episode of 'Roseanne' and so never stood a chance ratings-wise. It's a shame. The movie certainly isn't a brilliant Doctor Who story, but it's nowhere near the worst. It just wasn't the right way to kick off a reboot (for the right way, see 'Rose' or 'The Eleventh Hour'). But that TV failure didn't mean the death of Paul McGann's time traveller. The 8th Doctor has thankfully lived on and on in a very successful line of audiobooks and graphic novels. So while we never really got to know the 8th Doctor on TV, he's undergone the same sort of emotional development seen in every other Doctor, just in audio form. He's even gone through a change of costume, ditching the frock coat in favour of a leather jacket and moving towards what he's destined to be; the man who'll one day commit genocide to save the Universe.

Dressed in a stolen wild west costume, Paul McGann initially played the Doctor as a wide-eyed romantic, amused by everything and prone to letting slip what was to happen in the future. His frock coat and waistcoat remind you of the 1st Doctor, but personality-wise he couldn't be much further from him. Until the 10th Doctor came along his was the most human and vulnerable portrayal of the Time Lord, and McGann's portrayal marks the start of the 'romantic hero Doctor' motif that has been kept up through the revived series. In his audio adventures his lightness has been tempered by more than a few setbacks, allowing McGann to explore the darker side of the Time Lord, something that flows into Ecclestone's 9th Doctor.

(Fans of continuity may notice the 8th Doctor's holding his chameleon arch pocket watch, introduced in the 10th Doctor (or 7th if you read the book) story 'Human Nature'. Don't worry, the 8th Doctor also mentions using one in 'The Forgotten', which s actually quite a good multi-Doctor graphic novel)

Awkward

I'm a huge Dilbert fan, but even I had a big ol' cringe at this article, which reveals that the creator of the curvy-tied office drone, Scott Adams, had been pretending to be a fan on his own and other message boards. It's like something The Pointy-Haired Boss would do. Really, I have to wonder why a cartoonist as successful as Adams, whose work is syndicated to and loved by hordes across the world, would need to do something like this. Unless he's being forced to do it by evil Head of H.R, Catbert... I hope so. How desperate and insecure would you have to be to comment secretly on your own posts?

Update

Blimey! Sorry, I was in the middle of 'A Doctor A Day' and then all hell broke loose and everything sort of happened at once. Life got in the way, as someone might have once said in a movie (if they did then let me know which one). Anyway, everything is back to normal, and Doctors (and other cartoons) will start appearing before this week is out.