One Great Thing: The Best Show You May Not Even Know is On...

We now know there is a swimming pool inside.

Everyone in the world has heard of "Doctor Who."  The story of an alien "Doctor" who travels time and space in little blue box which is "bigger on the inside."  The show has been an institution of British television since 1963.  In the 70's, while a generation of Americans turned to PBS with mouths agape at the absurd comedy and the tantalizing possibility of brief nudity on "Monty Python's Flying Circus," some  also caught on to a little Sci-Fi show that was at once astonishingly smart and ridiculously campy - somewhere in between Isaac Asimov and "Sigmund & the Sea Monsters."  "Doctor Who" was, as with so much of British television, just too much for mainstream America.  Too clever, too silly, too difficult to understand the dialogue through the accents... too much something.

The BBC ran the show until 1989.  It went away for little while, then came back in a big way in 2005.  I've been watching the new version(s) of the show since then.  I'm writing about this now for one reason...  I think there are millions of Americans out there who would absolutely lose their minds over this show, but they don't know that it's on.

You won't need to dress up as these characters,
although some folks choose to.

BBC America is a cable channel watched by literally hundreds of Americans.  And that's too bad because it's awesome (if you are a man and you haven't seen "Top Gear" (the real one with the British guys), then, congratulations, I just gave you years of programming for the widescreen in your basement). The best hour of Sci-Fi currently produced also runs on BBC America.  It stars Matt Smith as the funniest and possibly most engaging version of the "Doctor" we've seen, and it's written by Steven Moffit who, speaking as a writer myself, makes me dizzy with his creativity.  The stories for the show... after nearly 50 years of material to try to top, are mind-blowingly creative.  The twists and turns of any given episode often send me through a progression of reactions like this: 1) that's clever, 2) oh, that's more clever than I thought, 3) wow, how long can they keep twisting this premise, 4) I sit up straight and the goofy smile on my face fades into the slow head-shake of admiration at Moffit's latest high wire act.

At any given moment in any given episode, laughter and the generally light feel of the show can turn to something genuinely frightening.  I don't mean "frightening" as in "oh, it's another vampire or some other monster we've seen a thousand times before."  I'm talking about something that will freak you out.  You're alone in dimly lit courtyard and standing near the trees is a statue of a weeping angel.  Or for fans of the show, a "Weeping F'ing Angel!"  Just like the statues they resemble, a Weeping Angel can't move... as long as you're looking at it.  You blink, it turns toward you.  Blink again, it takes a step.  Blink, it's half way to you.  Turn your back to run... it's got you.

Seriously, you could be laughing at the show one minute, having a grand old time, then...  here don't take my word for it.  Check out this security camera footage for yourself.

So, let's see...  funny, scary, clever, sometimes brilliant, it's got all that.  What else?  Oh!  Sentimental.  It can make your heart grow three sizes in a day.

The first episode of the current series, Matt Smith's first fifteen minutes as the Doctor, was like one of those books your mom read to you when you were little that just stuck with you forever.  It was that good.  "Where the Wild Things Are" good.

The Doctor's time/space machine crash-lands in the back yard of small house.  Inside the house is a lonely little girl about 7-years-old, named Amelia Pond.  Amelia rushes outside into the dark to investigate, and finds this wacky character straight out of the Wizard of Oz or a good Disney movie - a fast talking, hilariously goofy Doctor with a damaged Time Machine.  He promises to take her on an adventure, but he's got to fix his machine first.

"Be back soon," he says.

Right away, Amelia gets suspicious.  Amelia, you see is living with her Aunt these days, because...

"That's what everybody says."

The Doctor promises an adventure one more time.  "Five minutes," he asks.  "Wait right here."  Amelia watches the Tardis disappear, runs into the house to pack her little suitcase, then sits back down, right where she found him.  And she waits.  And waits.

Now "five minutes" doesn't mean a whole lot to a time traveller.  Sometimes he can miss the mark.  Twelve years later, the Doctor returns to find Amelia all grown up, and believed to be quite looney for her twelve year long insistence that a time traveling Doctor had visited her in his space ship.  

I might not be doing the scene justice.  I promise it was more than a little bit touching, but here, don't take my word for it.  Check out this homemade music video I found on the web from  MissxUnderstoodx ...

I could go on and on, but this is probably plenty.

But just to be sure, here's another picture of Karen Gillan as Amy Pond

To Sum up: If you have any geek in you at all and you haven't seen this show yet, go watch "Doctor Who."

Writers need to research... It's all right here!

I want to plug one of my favorite sites.

All writers need to research. Here's where I go.  
And it as it turns out, they need money to stay up and running.   Actually, they need people to buy their amazing DVD containing the entire archive, not make a donation.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/

The Internet Sacred Text Archive has been one of my favorite sites and certainly one of the most useful tools in my writing for years.  I write about many topics which, if this were say, 1980, I would basically need to live in a library to understand.  Now, through the miracle of technology and the dedication and hard work of Mr. Hare... that library is suddenly in my home office.  Or even in my iPad.  Hell, it's even on my phone at this point.

Any writers out there whose work touches on any kind of esoterica, history, historical fiction, occult, world religion, world mythology, Fortean stuff, legends and sagas, Atlantis, Gnosticism, Theosophy, Alchemy, American, the Bible (and especially lost Gospels and apocrypha),Freemasaonry, Gothic subjects, Book of Shadows, Book of the Dead, Earth Mysteries, Celtic legends, Age of Reason, Legendary Creatures (early writings on bigfoot and Nessie!), prophecy, shakespeare, Wisdom of the East, UFOs, Utopia... 

And it goes on and on.  All complete texts you can read online.

If you write and research, check this place out.  And if you can, buy their DVD to help keep them going.

From the site's tribute to its late founder, John Bruno Hare...

John Bruno Hare (JBH or Bruno), the founder and architect of ISTA (Internet Sacred Text Archive) passed away on April 27, 2010 after a four-year battle with Melanoma. JBH’s life mission was to keep the archive free and available worldwide, forever, and ISTA is his legacy. Bruno’s efforts placed this website, sacred-texts.com, among the top 10,000 read websites in the United States, and among the top 20,000 read websites of the entire Internet.He dedicated ISTA to religious tolerance and scholarship, calling it a “quiet place in cyberspace."

A colleague of JBH’s once remarked, “If the only thing Mr. Hare had ever accomplished was to create sacred-texts.com he would be deserving of the highest praise and our sincerest gratitude.” 

It goes on, and everything here is worth reading, but I'll just jump in here to say "Amen," and "Thank you."

Thoughts on Reincarnation...

The following is excerpted from an author interview with Tishia, the excellent book reviewer and blogger at Paranormal Opinion.  You can read the rest of the interview HERE.  But these are the parts about today's topic...

Paranormal Opinion: King’s X is about reincarnation.  Do you think reincarnation is real?

STH:  Well, I don’t know.  Part of what underlies the whole book is the fact that no one knows for sure.  What we do know is that everybody in the world dies at some point.  We can all agree on that.  But the question of what happens afterwards is all guess work.  We are forced to choose something to believe in and stick with it.  Whether you choose a religion, atheism, or anything in between – it’s still an “ism,” still just “what you believe.”  And without the comfort of real knowledge, those beliefs become very, very important to people.  Important enough to go to war, to kill for, etc.

That said, I do think that the idea of reincarnation makes a lot of sense.  Because it implies something we can observe about the world we live in, namely that things evolve. Evolution implies always getting a little bit better over time.  And if evolution is the way the universe operates, then it should apply to everything.  Including the spirit.  Again, I don’t “know” for sure, but my observational skills tell me that the human race is evolving on more than just a physical level.  Our thoughts, our imagination, our ability to empathize, to care for others above ourselves (not that we always do these things of course, but that we CAN), all points toward spiritual growth, spiritual evolution taking place in real time.  When I think about it like that, the idea of something much more powerful and important that my measly little body, coming back over and over again to learn and grow like a child going from nursery school to K-12 makes a lot of sense.  

Paranormal Opinion: So how does reincarnation work for the characters in King’s X?

STH: Well, the idea is that everyone in the world, including you and me, are immortal spirits. Just like you’ve heard many times, but no one can prove beyond doubt.  But through the mysterious power of the King’s X itself, some of these characters do know it.  They remember several lifetimes worth of knowledge and experience.  From that point, it occurred to me, wow, if you could actually KNOW that this was the case, if you could clearly remember your past lifetimes… how different would you be right now?  First of all, how smart would you be?  Imagine 3 lifetimes worth of playing the piano.  Maybe you’d be Mozart, writing entire operas by age 6.  Maybe that’s what “genius” really is – a person who for some reason is able to tap into something that he or she had done before.  But beyond all the knowledge and skill you might have if you could remember clearly… what would you be doing, right now?  If you weren’t afraid of dying because you KNEW for a  fact that you were just going to sleep for a while, what would your interests be?  Could you truly have a “soulmate” someone you meet again and again?  What work would you do?  How freakin’ awesome would you be?

And of course, if you were evil, if you were greedy and prideful, how scary would you be?  The villains in King’s X are unique and, when you look around at the way the real world seems to work, they are quite believable.  What if some mysterious person or persons knew the truth, and carried the knowledge of many lifetimes through to the present, but kept you and me ignorant on purpose?  What if there are people who simply don’t want us to know who and what we really are?  That we are supposed to be learning, not scared out of our minds that we will run out of life, or land, or oil, or whatever?  What if the entire reason the world seems locked in a cycle suspicion, hatred and violence, is because someone very powerful wants it that way?

On the other hand - what if you were the only person who knew all of this?  How could you fight them?  And if they knew who you were and what you knew, how could you ever escape them?

Paranormal Opinion: How did you come up with the title of your books?

STH:  When you were a kid, crossing your fingers and holding them behind your back meant that you didn’t have to do what you said. You could lie to a parent, or a teacher, or another kid and somehow that was all right because you crossed your fingers.  Well, that sign used to have a name.  Kids on playgrounds everywhere called it “King’s X.”  You could also say it out loud and it would protect you from being “It” in a game of Hide and Seek.  Anyway, I thought that was very strange and I looked deeper into it.  Where did this expression come from?  Why does it mean the bizarre things that it means?  The answer is a spoiler so you’ll have to read the book to find out.