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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

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DAYS TO DOCTOR WHO IN THE US: 5

At long last, The Doctor is making his way across the Atlantic in the premiere of the Fifth Series of Doctor Who, coming to BBC America this Saturday the 17th at 9PM EST! I know that our British readers are already two episodes into the new series, and I know that many of our American readers are, too, though I don’t know how they can enjoy the show whilst wearing eye patches and letting parrots rest on their shoulders. I, however, have not yet seen the series, so NO SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS PLEASE! The way I see it, I’ve waited this long for new Who, I can wait until two weeks after the UK gets it.

Now, new Who is finally almost upon us, and so I’ll be counting down to “The Eleventh Doctor” all this week! Here’s what you’ll have to look forward to:

TUESDAY—the final Moffat’s Women column devoted to River Song and the other women of Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

WEDNESDAY – coverage of the Doctor Who event at the Apple Store in SoHo, NYC, as well as Part One of an interview with writer PAUL CORNELL

THURSDAY – coverage of the Doctor Who event at the Village East Cinema in NYC, as well as Part Two of the PAUL CORNELL interview

FRIDAY – interview with current Doctor Who showrunner, STEVEN MOFFAT

But right now, check out my review of Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, the recently-released anthology edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea.

I was introduced to Doctor Who by a female friend. And whereas most of my geeky interests were introduced to me by male relatives or friends (my brother introduced me to Star Trek; my friend Adam introduced me to comics), Doctor Who was the first thing I’ve ever gotten to introduce to male friends. In the United States – unlike the UK, where Who fandom is still male-dominated – Doctor Who fandom is and always has been mostly female, which makes Chicks Dig Time Lords a long overdue volume.

It’s also a great read!

The best thing about Chicks Dig Time Lords is the fact that no matter what the essays contained within it discuss—there are essays that address the positive and the negative in Doctor Who—they are all written from a place of intense love of and enthusiasm for the show. Or, as I like to put it, it’s a book that is entirely devoted to *squee*! The cover alone made me giddy.

The essays come from fans and Doctor Who professionals alike. Aside from great behind-the-scenes fandom essays by Thomas and O’Shea, there’s a wonderful essay on a mother introducing her daughter to Who fandom by Amy Fritsch. Kathryn Sullivan’s “The Fanzine Factor” is an interesting look at a writer’s rise through the ranks of Who fandom, Christa Dickson’s “In Defense of Smut” is a valuable look at the importance of sex in Doctor Who fan-fiction, and Catherynne M. Valente’s “Regeneration X” is a beautifully written description of how Doctor Who grows and changes along with its fans. And then there’s Tammy Garrison and Katy Shuttleworth’s “Behind the Scenes,” an adorable essay in comic form about how they created their online comic, Torchwood Babiez.

There are a couple of essays that I think missed the mark. Shoshana Magnet and Robert Smith’s “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Have We Really Come That Far?” seems to be working really hard to make the show fit neatly into their thesis, and I don’t think K. Tempest Bradford watched the same Martha Jones I watched based on her essay, “Martha Jones: Fangirl Blues.” However, even these essays are worthwhile in that they address important issues of sexuality, gender, and race that desperately need discussing, and often!

This book is a well-organized, fun, intelligent read that both female and male fans of Doctor Who will love!

Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It is available now, and can be purchased directly from the Mad Norwegian Press website.


Teresa Jusino was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so. She is a contributor to PinkRaygun.com, a webzine examining geekery from a feminine perspective. Her work has also been seen on PopMatters.com, on the sadly-defunct literary site CentralBooking.com, edited by Kevin Smokler, and in the Elmont Life community newspaper. She is currently writing a web series for Pareidolia Films called The Pack, which is set to debut Fall 2010! Get Twitterpated with Teresa, Follow The Pack or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.

About the Author

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Teresa Jusino

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Teresa Jusino was born the day Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn't think so. A native New Yorker, Jusino has been telling stories since she was three years old, and she wrote a picture book in crayon in nursery school. However, nursery school also found her playing the angel Gabriel in a Christmas pageant, and so her competing love of performing existed from an early age. Her two great loves competed all the way through early adulthood. She attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where she majored in Drama and English Literature, after which she focused on acting, performing in countless plays and musicals in and around New York City, as well as short films, feature length independent films, and the one time she got to play an FBI agent in a PBS thing, which she thought was really cool, because she got to wear sunglasses and a dark suit and look badass. Eventually, producing was thrown into the mix. For four years, she was a company member and associate producer for a theater company called Stone Soup Theater Arts. She also produced a musical in which she also performed at Theater For the New City called Emergency Contraception: The Musical! by Sara Cooper, during which she ended every performance covered in fake blood. Don't ask. After eight years of acting, Jusino decided that she missed her first love – writing – and in 2008 decided to devote herself wholly to that pursuit. She has since brought her "feminist brown person" perspective to pop culture criticism at such diverse sites as Tor.com, ChinaShop Magazine, PopMatters, Newsarama, Pink Raygun, as well as her own blog, The Teresa Jusino Experience (teresajusino.wordpress.com), and her Tumblr for feminist criticism, The Gender Blender (tumblwithteresa.tumblr.com). She is also the editor of a Caprica fan fiction site called Beginning of Line (beginningofline.weebly.com), because dammit, that was a good show, and if SyFy won't tell any more of those characters' stories, she'll do it herself. Her travel-writer alter ego is Geek Girl Traveler, and her travel articles can be followed at ChinaShop while she herself can be followed on Twitter (@teresajusino). Her essay, "Why Joss is More Important Than His 'Verse" can be found in the book Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon By the Women Who Love Them (Mad Norwegian Press). In addition to her non-fiction, Jusino is also a writer of fiction. Her short story, December, was published in Issue #24 of the sci-fi literary journal, Crossed Genres. A writer of both prose and film/television scripts, she relocated to Los Angeles in September 2011 to give the whole television thing a whirl. She'll let you know how that goes just as soon as she stops writing bios about herself in the third person.
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