(Part one of this series is here, part two is here, and part three is here.)

When we first meet Meg Murry, in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (1962), she’s sporting an incipient black eye and a torn blouse, after attacking older boys who are taunting her younger brother.

So it’s hardly surprising that she’s in this list, is it?

A Wrinkle in Time is a book for which I have a perpetual soft spot, because, while I’m not convinced that it was the first science-fiction book I ever read, it’s certainly the first one I remember reading.

It’s also the first book in which I came across a woman with a Ph.D. Well, Dr Murry had two Ph.Ds, actually. And a Nobel Prize. She was was also staggeringly beautiful, but that was less compelling to me than the Ph.Ds. It seemed both more probable that I could manage a Ph.D. than that I could become staggeringly beautiful—and also that it would be more interesting. Perhaps I’ve been underachieving, and should have tried for both—and another Ph.D.

No: too tiring.

(Anyway, none of that is important right now, but then that is rather a pattern on this blog. And I did consider the feelings of my lovely readers when I decided not to blog the conversation I had with my best friend earlier today, in which we discussed whether fancying the protagonists of teen fiction is inappropriate if you only feel sixteen in your head, instead of old enough to be the character’s mother.)

To get back to my original point, though, Meg does become distinctly less interesting to me as the series progresses: by the time we get to A Swiftly Tilting Planet, she’s much blander and more domesticated than in the original book—and that’s fine, if Meg is seeking a comfortable domesticity. I like Meg enough that I want her to be happy outside the confines of the page.

But she doesn’t interest me as much.

I like Meg when she’s stroppy and intelligent in the first book.

I like Meg when she’s violent because she’s young and undiplomatic.

I like Meg when she’s uncertain about who and what she is—when she’s driven by the kind of incandescent fury at the unfairness and the brutality of life that she will shout defiance at the dictator who is over-powering even the most powerful people in her life.

And if all that leads her to a comfortable life with the lovely Calvin, then I’m happy for her.

But it’s still going to be A Wrinkle in Time that I come back to.

NICK: But is she doing it deliberately? I mean, does she know she’s being a complete nimrod?
ME: I don’t think so. And, anyway, Nimrod was a great king of men.
NICK: I was thinking more of the Marvel character.

ME: When did you buy a copy of Writing and Difference?
NICK: Oh, ages ago. I should probably get around to reading it one of these days.
ME: Well, you’re not to tell people in the street that you haven’t read Derrida. I’d die of shame.

ME: I’m worried about my novel.
NICK: Oh, you don’t need another thing in your life to worry about. Anyway, it sounds as though it’s going very smoothly.
ME: That’s what’s worrying me.
NICK: The thing you have to remember is this. First. Draft. You need to turn off your inner editor for this.
ME: No! Do I?
NICK: But you know this!
ME: I know I do. That’s why I was being sarcastic with you.
NICK: But you act as thought you don’t know it! So I have to tell you! So I was right all along! So there!
ME: You suck so much.
NICK: No, I don’t. I’m adorable.

ME: I was wondering . . .
NICK: Yes?
ME: No, never mind.
NICK: No, what is it?
ME: I’ve decided not to ask any more questions.
NICK: Ever?
ME: Well, that would be silly.
NICK: I didn’t think you’d be able to keep that up.
ME: Thank you. No, I’ve just decided not to ask any more questions about why there’s a bag of onions on my death chair.
NICK: Ah. Well, there’s an explanation for that . . .
ME: Let me guess. They started out as milk?
NICK: And time makes fools of us all.
ME: Well, it certainly makes a fool of you with startling regularity.
NICK: Bloody hell!

I’m quite pleased, as I think I’ve mentioned before, that ABC2 has brought these episodes back on, because there are two particular episodes coming up that I’m keen to live-blog and discuss (should people feel so inclined) because I found them highly problematic.

This, however, is not one of those episodes. I found this one sincerely creepy, mostly because I’m easily frightened by stories with demonic aspect. (Oh, come now: that’s not a spoiler. You can’t spoil an episode that aired three years ago, and, anyway, the next episode is called “The Satan Pit.”)

I’m hoping that I won’t actually be overly frightened this time around, since this is maybe the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen it.

I’m also thinking that I should probably have taken off the ridiculously large plastic rings I’m wearing on each hand before I started typing, since they’re really starting to annoy me. So I might get on with that now.

Once again, I have started live-blogging too early. I always panic, thinking that I’m going to miss the start of the episode, and then I spent fifteen minutes waffling on about costume jewelry and the like. Still, it’s a fairly accurate representation of my actual conversational style.

And now the TARDIS materialises. I miss you, TARDIS! Have I mentioned that?

The Doctor’s worried about the TARDIS: he says she’s sounding a little queasy. They’ve landed in a cupboard, the Doctor says—while opening door after door. He knows they’re in a base, but doesn’t know whether it’s a sea base or what, until they come out into a bigger room.

“Oh, it’s a sanctuary base!” he exclaims, in monkey-with-a-tambourine mode.

“Welcome to Hell!” says Rose. The Doctor says it’s not that bad, but she points out that it’s written on the wall, and, under it, some writing that the TARDIS translation circuits haven’t translated—which, the Doctor says, means it’s “impossibly old.” He wants to find someone to explain it, but before they can, they’re confronted by a group of Ood (spoiler!), walking forwards chanting “We must feed!”

But after the opening credits, it’s revealed as a cheat, as the Ood taps his speech bubble, and repeats, “We must feed . . . you, if you are hungry.”

More importantly for the plot, the people on the base are astonished to see Rose and the Doctor (and equally astonished to find that they don’t know where they are). But there’s no time to worry about it now, because there’s “incoming”—whatever that means. Everyone’s strapped in, except Rose and the Doctor, who are just clinging on to things as the room explodes.

NICK: Yes, no—flames should not be coming out of your control panel! Sparks are bad enough!

The sanctuary-base staff are astonished—now they have time—that Rose and the Doctor don’t know where they are. Apparently, the “sight of it sends some people mad,” the acting Captain says, as the science officer opens the roof of the room to show that they’re in perpetual geostationary orbit around a black hole.

The Doctor can’t cope with this, because they’re not being sucked in, when everything else is—including time. And you know how the Doctor feels about time.

But that at least explains the buffeting the base is taking, as we’re pulled out to a lovely CGI shot of the base on its asteroid, with the dead constellations streaming into the black hole behind it.

Meanwhile, Toby (the archaeologist), who has been sent to assess damage, is hearing mysterious voices chanting his name. That’s where I start to find it creepy.

Though it’s balanced by the technobabble in the next scene, explaining how they managed to successfully land on the planet in the first place. I can’t recap that—except that if the “gravity tunnel” down which they flew the ship ever closes, they cannot escape from this asteroid. I think that might be significant, later.

Rose is trying to make friends with the Ood, and is slightly worried to find out that the Ood are a slave race. The ethics officer (who pointed out earlier that it’s not as boring a job as it sounds, and we start to see why, here), says that the Ood offer themselves as slaves, that if they aren’t given orders, they pine away and die.

Toby is talking about what’s buried away in the deeps of the planet and what it might mean.

ROSE: What’s your job? Chief Dramatist?

The Doctor’s in serious monkey-with-a-tambourine mode in this episode—watch him and the Captain having a lovely cuddle at this point, while the Doctor’s ranting about how much he loves humans.

He slips into a less cheerful mode, though, once he realises that he parked in Storage Six, and the Captain said that Storage 5 to 8 were damaged during the earthquake—the section in which the TARDIS was parked has collapsed into a void. The ground gave way, and the TARDIS is in the centre of the planet somewhere.

The Doctor wants them to divert the drills that are working down towards the power supply, hidden in the planet, that is keeping them from falling into the black hole, but the Captain refuses: he says they only have the resources for one tunnel.

So the Doctor and Rose are trapped: Ida, the science officer, says she’ll sort out the duty roster, since they need someone in the laundry.

Now we get a series of short scenes showing the various staff at work: Scooty (maintenance) [and, damn, I’ve spelt her name wrong all the way through this] outside drilling things, Danny (ethics officer) overseeing the change in Ood shift, and Toby (archaeologist) being haunted by creepy voices while reading scraps of the mysterious writing. Toby thinks Danny is doing it, which, as Nick points out, is an unfortunate reputation for your ethics officer to have.

Meanwhile, Rose is getting dinner from an Ood server, who, as she tries to talk to him about his pay conditions, says, “The Beast and his armies will rise from the pit to make war with God.”

While the Captain is working, we see a demonic face appear in the display behind him.

And while Danny is closing doors, the electronic door voice says, “He is awake.”

And then we’re back with Toby, who hears a voice directly behind him, but is warned not to look: “One look, and you will die.” Meanwhile, the voice is claiming to be getting closer and closer, and to be able to touch Toby—but when Toby turns, there’s nothing there.

On the other hand, the mysterious script he’s been reading is now printed all over his hands and face, and his eyes are bright red. He collapses on the floor of his room.

Back in the control room, they watch a star system—once home to a mighty civilisation spanning a million years—being sucked into the black hole. Ida sends Scooty out to check out the lock-down, and Jefferson (security) to check the seals.

Rose and the Doctor chat, and Rose notes that her phone is out of range, for the first time. He tells Rose that TARDISs are grown, not built, so they’re stuck. The Doctor just freaks out about the idea of having a house, with doors and carpets—until Rose suggests the two of them getting “the same mortgage,” and it turns into just one of those terribly awkward and sweet conversations that these two do so well.

Then Rose’s phone rings—and a voice says “He’s awake.”

Coincidentally, Toby is awake.

So Rose and the Doctor trot down to the Ood habitat, to ask Danny how the Ood communicate—he says they’re basic empaths, but that the telepathic field is monitored at all times. He says they should only be registering Basic 5, but they’re registering Basic 30—which means they’re screaming in their heads.

When Rose admits that her phone said “He is awake,” the Ood turn simultaneously and say, “And you will worship him.”

Scooty, heading down to Toby’s quarters, hears the computer insist that someone has gone outside, but that no spacesuits have been released. Scooty can’t get in contact with Zach (the captain), and all the door will say is “He is awake. He bathes in the black sun.”

But as Scooty backs up to a window, she sees Toby—still covered in writing—standing outside without a spacesuit. He smiles at her, and gestures—and the glass smashes, while Scooty is pleading with the computer to open the door for her.

The staff (and the Doctor and Rose) race back through the base—including Toby, who is the last through the last safe door. The hull breach is contained, but there’s no word from Scooty. According to her bio-chip, she’s in Habitation 3. But she’s not responding, so they go down to check whether or not she’s unconscious.

But, in fact, Scooty is not in Habitation 3—until the Doctor looks up, and sees her body floating past the skylight. She floats towards the black hole as the Ida closes the skylight, and Jefferson quotes one of Macauley’s Lays of Ancient Rome:

For how should man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his father
And the temples of his gods.

And just at that point, the drilling stops. The Doctor begs permission to go down into the shaft, and is given permission (though the Captain wants to go himself, the Doctor convinces him to stay with the ship). So the Doctor suits up and, despite Rose’s reservations—because she’s entirely dependent on the Doctor now, in the absence of the TARDIS and of her mobile-phone connection to her mother—heads down in the elevator with Ida.

The shaft extends beyond the oxygen field of the ship, so they’re entirely dependent on their suits.

In the interim, Danny orders the Ood to stay exactly where they are, and tells them that no other order can over-ride his. But it doesn’t look as though they are inclined to behave themselves.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ida have reached the bottom of the shaft, and it’s a clearly man-made hall, with massive statuary and carved columns.

IDA: Well, we’ve come this far.
DOCTOR: Oh, did you have to? “We’ve come this far”? That’s nearly as bad as “Nothing can possibly go wrong.”

Meanwhile, Danny says the Ood are at Basic 100 (which should mean brain death) and that they’re “staring at him.” He’s told them to stop, but they won’t. The Captain tells him to stay where he is, and sends Jefferson (and a man-at-arms) to keep an eye on them.

Down in the pit, the Doctor and Ida have found a seal covered in the mysterious writing. But when, back on the base, they ask Toby if he’s decoded the writing, Toby stands up slowly, and shows that he’s covered again in the mysterious writing. Walking slowly towards them he asks Jefferson, “Did you wife ever forgive you?” and assures him that, in fact, his wife never did forgive him.

Jefferson, looking distinctly rattled, tells Toby to stand down and be confined, but Toby, somehow, infects the Ood—who stand and declare themselves the “legion of the beast,” electrocuting the man standing by Danny with their speech bubbles. They declare that the “beast” is called, by some, Satan, as the base staff (with Rose) flee, and the seal in the pit begins to open.

Back on the base, the Captain says the gravity field is going, and they’re losing orbit—they’re going to fall into the black hole.

And we have a final shot—as the beast gloats, “The pit is open, and I am free!”—of the Doctor and Ida staring down into the abyss.

I suppose that would explain the title of next week’s episode: “The Satan Pit.”

I’ve been out of the blogging loop while interstate for the job interview, and have now come to Brisbane again just in time to hit a deadline for a conference paper (as you do), which is making it a little tricky to get back into the blogging groove. (And, apparently, has had an appalling effect on my writing. I really should apologise for using the term “blogging groove” in cold blood, there. Sorry about that!)

So, the ABC has decided to come to my assistance, and start replaying season two of the new Doctor Who. Maybe they heard my bemoaning about them cancelling it before I managed to live-blog the episodes that really annoyed me?

This, then, is a late reminder for anyone reading the Doctor Who live-blogging: season two starts again on ABC2 tonight at 9:30 and the live-blogging starts here at, coincidentally, exactly the same time.

There are some deeply flawed episodes coming up, so it’s worth checking in. (And that opinion is, of course, entirely objective and not the slightest bit self-interested.)

NICK: Well, I need to get my butt into gear.
ME: Yep.
NICK: My butt does not get naturally into gear.
ME: Nope.
NICK: It has some problems in that regard.
ME: Yep, I know. Perhaps we should have its gear-box replaced?
NICK (wandering off): Maybe.
(Pause)
NICK (from the kitchen): REPLACE YOUR BUTT GEARS!
(Pause)
ME: Well, that went to a weird place.
NICK: Yes. Yes, it did.

So this is the episode I’ve been calling the Sapphire and Steel-style one. I don’t quite know why it reminds me so much of Sapphire and Steel, but there’s something about the eerie tone of the story that reminds me of David McCallum.

On a slightly related note, I’ve flown back from Sydney today, still with a fairly unpleasant cold that I’ve had for a week now, and I’ve been self-medicating with a rather nice riesling, so be prepared for a slightly surreal (and possibly rather delayed) live-blogging experience.

In the interim, I’m watching the end of Clone, which I intended to watch all the way through, but didn’t. Can’t say I feel at this stage as though I’ve missed much.

Okay, I tell a lie. I have giggled a couple of times in the last minute or so. Plus, I like the red telephone box. My parents have one of those: my dad keeps his tools in it. Now I think about it, I posted a photograph of it at the beginning of the year, here.

And apparently they’re starting up season two of Doctor Who again! On ABC2! Wow, that’s going to be a lot of live-blogging, folks.

But here we are with Torchwood and Captain Jack’s monologue.

And Gwen and Owen running frantically, getting advice on where to run from Tosh, back at Torchwood HQ. Jack’s in the car, coming from the other direction. Tosh is trying to get a visual, as Gwen comes up on the suspected alien, even sliding under a descending door, which traps Jack and Owen, leaving Gwen as the only one chasing the suspect.

Gwen grabs the suspect. The man shrugs out of his jacket and escapes, but Tosh says she has whatever was causing the alien readings. Gwen rummages through the jacket and comes up with what looks like a computer mouse. Of course, being Gwen, she clicks the buttons on it—and suddenly she’s in a green-tinged railway station, talking to small boy, carrying a suitcase and a teddy bear, and dressed in fashions from fifty or sixty years ago.

The boy says he wants to go home: he’s lost and no one knows him here—as he walks away, Gwen snaps back to the modern railway station in which she caught the original suspect.

Back at Torchwood HQ, Gwen says she could hear what the little boy was thinking and feeling, as though she herself felt lost. Gwen says the boy had a tag around his neck, reading “Tom Erasmus Flanagan.” Jack says the unusual name will help them track him down—no matter how long it takes, they’ll track the boy down—just before Owen finds him in the phone book.

So Gwen and Owen turn up at the address in the phone book, to find a seventy-odd-year-old man, telling the story about how he was forgotten at the Cardiff railway station in 1941, when he was evacuated to the Welsh countryside from the East End of London. He was found again and evacuated to the home of a lovely, childless couple, so Gwen isn’t sure what she’s seen. Is it, she thinks, just a bit of him, left behind?

But we’re interrupted by a nagging phone call from Rhys, who wants to know if Gwen’s in or out tonight, and gets stroppy when she says she can’t say.

Back at Torchwood, Tosh and Jack have found that the boy with the alien device in his pocket is a Sean Harris, with some minor theft convictions.

According to Jack—who is speaking with his mouth full: thank you, Jack. That’s revolting! Swallow, then talk, like Ianto does—the alien device is gorgeous, with nano-technology that makes NASA look like Toys ‘R’ Us.

They can’t find Sean Harris anywhere, so Jack says they’ll go back to the railway station, and try and replicate the original results as far as possible. Wow, Jack is in a hell of a mood today.

But before they can come to a decision, Owen sees the device lighting up as Gwen said it had in the railway station. He clicks it—and flips into a green-tinted version of the bridge they’re under in the present. There’s a girl, dressed in a pink party dress, crying to herself and saying her Mam was right, and her boyfriend is a “bad one.”

Owen tries to talk to her, but she can’t hear him.

And, sure enough, here comes the boyfriend, calling her “Lizzie” in a singsong tone—“Liz-zie”—and saying he can see her the way she really is. He kisses her, and when she pulls back, he slaps her across the face—an open-handed slap—and pulls a knife out, telling her he doesn’t want to hurt her.

It’s fairly clear what happens next, but thankfully we’re given a tight close-up on Owen’s horrified face.

It’s interesting to me that it’s Owen who witnesses this—but I hope there’s some realisation for him about the consequences of his own behaviour.

Back in Torchwood HQ, Tosh finds the newspaper reports that show Lizzie was raped and murdered under the bridge some forty-odd years ago. No one was ever convicted of the crime.

Tosh is explaining what the device does, while Owen is paying no attention: he’s flipping through the file, trying to find something. He’s obsessed with the idea that he knows who did it: Ed Morgan the “bad news” boyfriend. But it’s not enough to re-open the case, as Jack points out.

Also? I’ve skipped over some technobabble about what the device does, in favour of watching the gun-porn scene with Gwen and Jack.

Gwen’s stunned:

GWEN: I’m sorry: I don’t even kill spiders in the bath.
JACK: Neither do I—not with a gun.

This is serious gun-porn—though the porn is more about Jack than it is about the gun. Well, it’s a little about the gun. There’s nothing subtle about the treatment of guns as phallic symbols in this scene.

I love it. Mostly because I love Jack and Gwen.

I also like the fact that the focus on guns here draws a sharp line between old-school (and also new-school) Doctor Who and Torchwood.

We also get the revelation here that Jack actually lives at the Torchwood Institute, and apparently can’t sleep any more than he can die.

Back home, Gwen listens to an answering-machine message from Rhys, who is at a mate’s house, and reveals that she snuck the alien device home. (Owen, home alone, is haunted by memories of Lizzie’s death.) Gwen, clicking the flashing device, sees memories of herself and Rhys when they first moved in, and then of Rhys in a suit with a broken zip, heading out to Gwen’s Mam’s sixtieth birthday. She’s feeling nostalgic just as Rhys comes home, and they make up.

Owen, meanwhile, has laid all the material relating to Lizzie’s death out on the floor of his apartment, and is working himself up into a serious state with the help of a bottle of whiskey.

The next morning, he heads over to a derelict house, whose address he has tracked down through the phone book, and finds a “Mr Morgan”—Owen is masquerading as a gas inspector. He induces Morgan to go into the living room, where he asks him about Lizzie Lewis, and watches Morgan’s hands start twitching.

He tells Morgan that he knows what happened that night—and Owen’s monologue is intercut with scenes of the attack on Lizzie. Morgan snaps, and Owen is so furious about the whole incident that he seems to have missed Morgan shouting “I told you before, you’ll get nothing from me!”

But he doesn’t miss Sean Harris, sitting on a park bench near Morgan’s house. He chases Sean, who is only nineteen, but doesn’t seem to be in as good shape as Owen is.

The advantage of a nice long chase sequence is that it gives me time to catch up with the narrative.

Sean says he and a mate were using a lock-up that used to belong to an old man who was a bit soft in the head. They’d thrown most of it out, but Sean thought that was maybe worth something—he took it home, and it started flashing. He could see real people, doing terrible things.

Because all the people are local, he’s been recognising them and blackmailing them with their secrets.

The Torchwood personnel start walking away, but Sean asks them whether they want the other half. (The box it was in was also full of alien coins and alien rocks.)

Sean says he’s scared of the other half—he used it once, and it showed him dead, not an old man, but young as he is now, and he wants to know if he’ll die soon.

Gwen chases Jack out to the car, to ask him about Sean, but she accidentally clicks the other half of the machine, and see herself clutching a knife, with her hands covered in blood—her future self says she “couldn’t stop it” and that “Owen had the knife.”

Back at Torchwood HQ, Jacks says it was only one future of many possible futures.

Tosh and Owen are sitting in a pub: Tosh says she found Ed Morgan by running a trace, and Owen admits he paid him a visit that morning and “put the fear of God into him.” He asks Tosh what she found, and she says she found the medical records: Morgan is paranoid, claustrophobic, and has barely left the house in years. And in this discussion, Owen reveals he heard what Morgan said about “I’ve told you, you won’t get any money from me.”

At the same time, Jack is remembering what Sean said about having seen Morgan’s attack on Lizzie.

Gwen has gone to see Sean. Meanwhile, Owen has admitted what he did to Morgan, to Jack. Jack’s thinking Morgan thought that Owen was part of the same blackmailing outfit as Sean.

Morgan, meanwhile, is walking towards Sean’s house. Sean has seen him and headed out—to the same road in which he saw himself dead in his earlier vision. Gwen dashes down, but Morgan is armed with a knife and raving about the fact that people knew his guilt. Jack and Owen are there, as well.

They disarm Morgan, but it’s Owen who disarms him. And Owen’s gone a little mad with the fact that he’s so close to the man whom he saw raping and killing a girl forty-odd years ago.

But Gwen takes the knife off Owen, and as she’s saying delightedly to Jack that no-one died this time, Morgan says, “I knew you’d come for me!” and throws himself onto the knife.

Frankly, I’m not thrilled about that. There’s some argument in Torchwood HQ about who is to blame, but I’m not recapping that because the scene seems a little implausible. Morgan looks as though he was trying to embrace Gwen, but how could he not have seen the knife? We could argue about his self-loathing misogyny, his conviction that people were out to get him, and his sense that women would destroy him, but the scene is still rather implausible.

It’s a shame—it’s a strong episode, otherwise.

Also, Jack and Gwen were talking at the end there, but I became distracted.

Oh, lord—I’ve just remembered what next week’s episode is about. Oh, I didn’t want to watch that one again. But see you next week! And before that, see you on Monday at 9:30, as we pick up our season two Doctor Who live-blogging where we left off, with “The Impossible Planet.”