A Very Long Story

The Pandorica Seen Through Time

118AD Taken back to Rome under armed guard
420AD Raided by the Franks
1120 Prized possession of the Knights Templar
1231 Donated to the Vatican
1280 Sold by Marco Polo
1281 Taken back by the Vatican after Marco Polo sold it without their permission.
1492 Given to Columbus as a good luck present. Left on the dock at Palos de la Frontera after proving to be too big to fit in the hold of the Santa Maria.
1493 Removed from the dock at Palos de la Frontera for being illegally parked.
1494 Sold at Palos de la Frontera City Auction, bought by Duke of Milan.
1496 Duke of Milan bribes a peasant to to take the Pandorica away and bury it after his wife refuses to have “that horrid thing” in the house.
1812 Dug up by archaeologists. Proclaimed to be part of the Great Pyramid of Milan.
1815 Disappointed and humiliated archaeologists donate the Pandorica to Bavarian Royal Family.
1865 Sentenced to be 'stoned to death' by King Ludwig II of Bavaria (pictured right) for refusing a royal command to open.
1887 Given to Queen Victoria as last minute Golden Jubilee present after all the shops had closed.
1902 Discovered being used as doorstop at Glamis Castle.
1907 Discovered again at Glamis Castle, now being used as occasional table.
1909 Taken for cleaning after Prince of Wales chalks,"George woz ere" on the side.
1912 Examined by Charles Fort who is investigating reports of someone hiding round the back. He walks around the Pandorica but finds nothing except a discarded pilum and caligae prints in the dust.
1913 Charles Fort creeps round the Pandorica the other way. The Roman Centurion standing round the back says he hasn't seen anything odd.
1914 Charles Fort declares the mystery of the Pandorica “unsolvable”.
1952 Left on Royal Train by absent minded maid. Subsequently sold at auction by British Rail Lost Property Department.
1961 Used as concert podium by Gladys Knight and the Pips (pictured right) during UK tour.
1970 Bought by the BBC Props Department. Seen on screen in The Onedin Line, The Tripods, Blankety Blank and Monty Python's How Not To Be Seen sketch.
1990 Donated to the National Museum.

General Sontar: He Speaks Sontar Listens

Are YOU Thinking What He's Thinking?*
*If you are not thinking what General Sontar is thinking then please report to Vat 69 for Genetic Reprocessing. Independent thought threatens the Sontaran race.
Typical! The Pandorica is barely closed and here comes the namby-pamby liberal non-Sontaran elite crawling out of the woodwork; again! “It’s cruel to imprison The Doctor in a box forever,” they moan. “There should have been another way,” they simper. Remind me, what was at stake here again? Oh yes, that’s right. Everything! Well, I don’t know about you but I happen to like living in the universe!

Why should we feel sorry for the Doctor? What sort of holiday camp prison are do-gooders expecting for someone who was going to blow up all of space? Do you care if there is no television, toilet or hypernet access? I don't. The Pandorica has air. It has something to sit on. Frankly I think we’ve been more than generous.

Four times! That's how often the Doctor has interfered in legitimate Sontaran actions across the galaxy. Four! And yet we're the ones being unreasonable. You couldn't make it up. "Don't forget the Doctor has also killed Rutans," the Politically Correct Czars demand I add in the name of balance. Killed Rutans? He blew up one spaceship! One, compared to the four times he has taken action against our bold boys defending legitimate Sontaran interests across the Galaxy. From where I'm standing that makes him a Rutan Lover! And that means I don’t love him at all!

So I say three cheers to the coalition that put this intergalactic menace where he deserves to be; in a box, forever. Three cheers for our brave Sontaran troops who will soon be attacking our so-called coalition allies while their guard is down. Three cheers for those keen sighted enough to see that nothing is more important than the future existence of everything we know, love, and deserve to conquer for the greater glory of the Sontaran race.

Funny, I thought I heard a noise outsi

Read General Sontar every week in The Sontaran Standard; although possibly not next week.

Is YOUR Neighbour A Dalek?

Ten Questions That Cut To The Chase1. Some leaves have fallen into your garden from your neighbours tree. You go round to complain. What do they do?
a) apologise and offer to sweep the leaves up.
b) slam the door in your face.
c) try and turn you into a Roboman.

2. The sewer in your street is blocked. When the council come round to investigate what do they find it is full of?
a) incorrectly disposed of foodstuff; rice, fat and tea leaves.
b) tree roots.
c) hideous mutant embryos, flushed into the sewers for not conforming to strict purity standards.

3. What do your neighbours listen to on the radio?
a) Radio One.
b) The Archers.
c) Dalek propaganda.

4. Your neighbour's cat has gone missing, how do they react?
a) put up posters.
b) get a new cat
c) trundle around the garden shrieking,”prisoner has escaped! I have failed! I have failed! Self destruct! I have failed - destruct! I have failed - destruct! Failed! Failed! Failed!” and then exploding.

5.What shape is your neighbour's body?
6. Your neighbour says they are going out to get a funky new look, do they come back with
a) a trendy perm like Paul Michael Glaser.
b) something from Marks and Spencer.
c) a brightly coloured, glossy paint job and a bigger, bulkier frame.

7. What does your neighbour drive?
a) a Ford Fiesta.
b) they don't have a car.
c) a giant flying saucer

8. What is your neighbour's idea of a good night out?
a) go down the pub
b) a trip to the cinema, and then out for a meal.
c) hanging around Canary Wharf fighting with Cybermen.

9.You are dancing with your neighbour at a party when your cardigan becomes wrapped around their head. How does your neighbour react, do they?
a) laugh it off and say accidents will happen.
b) ask you to be more careful.
c) start shrieking “my vision is impaired, I cannot see!” and blunder around crashing into the furniture before finally falling out of the window and exploding again.

10. What are your neighbour's etheric beam locators like?
a) unremarkable.
b) medium.
c) round, firm, and able to locate etheric beam emissions at a distance of up to 20,000 light years.

Scores:
A=1, B=2, C=3, D=You must have been filling in another quiz

Less than 10: Nothing to worry about here. Your neighbour is definitely not a Dalek.
10-20: Your neighbour is probably okay. You can sleep safe in your bed without worrying about being exterminated, or turned into a pig slave.
20-30: There is something fishy about your neighbour. He may not be a Dalek but for safety you may want to try completing another of our other quizes: Is Your Neighbour A Silurian, Is Your Neighbour Kroll, or Is Your Neighbour a Vashta Nerada.
30: Panic! Your neighbour is a Dalek. Evacuate the area immediately and notify the local anti-Dalek Force.
TOMORROW: Is Your Lodger A Time Lord?

I See Through You

Last week Shouting Into A Well gave you the first in a set of splendid Doctor Who Invisible Characters And Spaceships Trading Cards and showed you how to build a display stand for those cards as a fun family project (pictured above).

Your next two cards are shown below

There are seven cards to collect in all. Refusians from the story The Ark; Visians from The Daleks' Masterplan; Spiridons from Planet Of The Daleks; Xoanon's Projections from The Face Of Evil; Krafayis from Vincent And The Doctor; Skagra's invisible spaceship from Shada; and the Family's invisible spaceship from Family Of Blood.

Thanks to a cunning random generating algorithm no two people who view this page will get the same cards, so why not print them out and try trading cards with friends to see if you can complete the whole set.

(above) SWAP SHOP: In the Invisible City of Kitezh fans hold up duplicate Invisible Character Cards for exchange. In the background the invisible man, invisible woman and invisible dog form a pyramid as Sue Storm and the Martian Manhunter (J'onn J'onzz ) use their powers of invisibility while performing a daring high-wire act. To the left of the frame Predator uses his cloaking device while balancing on the top of James Bond's car from Die Another Day. Overhead Wonder Woman does barrel rolls in her invisible plane along with a cloaked Romulan Warbird. Not pictured, Hades wearing his helmet of invisiblity.

It's Reciprocal Links Friday!

Just like Apollo-Soyuz, or the fictional “Hands Across Space” mission between the United States and Soviet Union in the 1979 Quatermass serial*, Shouting Into A Well has joined forces with fanzine Venusian Spearmint. In it's latest issue Venusian Spearmint was good enough to print a plug for this blog and your big-hearted Shouting Into A Well publisher has agreed to cross-pollinate in return [sub:please check that last phrase].

Venusian Spearmint is an A4 fanzine that covers everything from Doctor Who, to Law And Order, to Neil's Heavy Concept Album, to Lost. Being edited by an American living in London the fanzine brings a different perspective to things that it's easy for UK viewers to take for granted, like not being able to see Genesis Of The Daleks as anything except a two and a half hour movie. In these twenty-four-hour-internet-only-retweeted-blog-days it's really good to see people continuing the proper printed fanzine traditions...

and it's free!

To get a copy simply drop an email to this address.
That's venusianspearmint at yahoo dot com (in your face spambots!)
For the full effect you'll need to print it out; obviously.

*hopefully not exactly like the Hands Across Space Mission, what with everyone concerned dying horribly when that mission is zapped by alien space-lightning.

That's The Problem With Second Hand Planets