People are starting to check in. Heard from Jim, Doug, Nina, Jennifer, and Dawn in the last few days, only one of whom appears to have moved on me. Trying to spiff up the content on the northwestern page (which can be accessed directly at northwestern.markbartlett.net if you want to bypass all this other fluff). The list of everyone's current whereabouts is part factual and part tongue in cheek. Still have a photo column to fill in, but since I don't have recent pictures of most of them I would expect there will be some substitutions made along the way. Still need to re-scan the old pictures from the former web site, too.



Last week I was watching Planet of the Daleks, which I got for Christmas probably two years ago, but was just getting to now because I've been watching the Pertwee episodes in order and reading the novelizations in between and what with everything else there is to watch like the Tour de France or read like the Hugo nominees, it's taken a while to get this far. Anyway, the only reason to point it out at all, as its not exactly the greatest of episodes, is that the video contains Episode 3, which was never shown on PBS because it exists only in black and white. I probably watched the thing five times over the years on tv before I realized there was a whole episode missing (plus actually the first few minutes of episode 4 so that the cliffhanger is not picked up in the middle). And the only reason to point this is out is that I believe this makes the last extant episode of Doctor Who that I had never seen (although parts of the Mutants didn't look very familiar either). So unless they dig up some more missing episodes in Ghana or Hong Kong or someplace, every DW episode from now on will be a rerun for me. Not counting the new ones when they finally appear, but they won't really be Doctor Who, just like the Battlestar Galactica miniseries a few weeks ago wasn't really Battlestar Galactica.



For the same reason, there's still a couple of seasons (probably 50 episodes worth) of MST3K that I haven't seen yet, and I'm in no rush to acquire them all and watch them in a big hurry, because once I get to the last one then I'll have seen them all. Not that you can't go back and watch them again and again, but there's something about being able to watch it for the first time. It's not just tv either, usually at the first rehearsal for a new concert with the Chorale, Allen would ask for a show of hands of how many people had never sung the piece before, and I think he and many others are in some ways envious of those who are coming to some of the biggies like the Verdi Requiem or Brahms Requiem for the first time.



It's really only that first time watching a movie or tv show or hearing a particular piece of music or reading a particular story or book that you can have the chance to be blown away or have some sort of life-changing experience as a result of it. After that other things present themselves, you can find more in it, things you didn't catch the first time, which make re-watching or -listening or -reading just as valid. But that "first contact" is what has the most potential to have something special about it. In case anyone's keeping score, with Planet of the Daleks episode three, there was no life-changing experience to be had by waiting until the age of 40 to see it. But you never know.