Octannual Update
Happy Spring Equinox!
Spring is officially here, the long slow climb out of winter is behind us - and it’s almost time for the paperback release of Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who. This will be out on April 9th, a few days after two long lost episodes of Daleks’ Master Plan arrive on the BBC iPlayer.
It arrives as the series is in a much more uncertain place than when the book was written. I originally pitched it in the early days of the Disney deal, when there was hope that Doctor Who would become a global brand. Alas, the series has proved to be much too weird and British for that, and as a result the book is still only available in the UK. And yet, unexpectedly but pleasingly, the book is now being translated into… Chinese! I had no idea that there was a Chinese Who scene, I would love to know more about that.
A new paperback edition gives me a chance to fix errors or make changes. This meant that I spent ages agonising about whether I should change Ncuti Gatwa’s dates from “2024 - ?” to “2024-2025”, given what has happened after the hardback came out. In the end I left the question mark, due to an unshakeable hunch, based on nothing factual, that we would see him again at Christmas. And if I’m wrong, at least a question mark is pleasingly on-brand.
If you are after a signed copy of the paperback, you can now pre-order one from Resident Records - who ship worldwide. You can order those here.
I hope you all managed to catch the Doctor on their recent club tour of the UK fronting an indie rock band - it was truly excellent. Judging by the length of their hair, I think this was between series 8 and 9, from their perspective.
Before the paperback arrives, I still have a couple more Lynchian events to do. I’ll be at Laugharne in South Wales on Saturday - that’s sold out - and at the Heath Bookshop Literature and Music Festival in Birmingham on 18 April. Tickets for that are here.
FILM CLUBS AND FESTIVALS
The guest curator of this year’s Bridport ‘From Page to Screen’ Film Festival is Chris Chibnall - and I’ll be interviewing him about his film choices on 22 April. Tickets and more details can be found here. There’s a lot of good stuff in the festival, including screenings of Airplane and 2001, but the highlight is surely the gala night screening of Casino Royale with long-term Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade plus composer David Arnold.
The East Sussex Psychedelic Film Club (ESP-FC) has gone into reverse hibernation and shut up shop for the summer, but other strange film clubs are emerging. The Sheffield Psyko Dalek Film Club opens a week on Sunday with a screening of Betrand Mandico’s excellent After Blue. Details and tickets here.
There’s some very committed aesthetic choices in that poster, I suspect those nights could be quite something. Enjoy!
ELSEWHERE
Great news for Blakeans - James Murray White’s film Finding Blake, about finding and marking Blake’s grave, is now up on YouTube. More details about that are here.
Here’s a couple of very special things coming from a similar DIY analogue attitude - we’ll see more of this, I think, as people increasingly want more than what the digital world offers. On the left, Ben Wheatley’s microbudget reality-shattering sci-fi film Bulk is now available on Blu Ray and 4K. For all that it sold out the BFI IMAX, it’s still more like a punk fanzine than it is a Hollywood movie. Unexpect the Expected!
And on the right, the overdue but very welcome 2025 edition of the Mycelium Parish News has arrived. This is a catalogue of that year’s books, podcasts, fanzines, mailing lists, events etc, that come from alternative or Discordian- adjacent creators. There’s a micro-essay from me in there also. Vital communal stuff for all left cold by tech-bro culture. You can find it here.
Until next time!
jhx







Nicholas Whyte (nwhyte on BlueSky and other non-X Social media) is the person to chat to for an informed perspective on Chinese Who fandom. Been to a few cons over there and talked to plenty of fans. Really is fascinating as to why they click with the show.