Captainkalaa1 
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(7/20/06 7:59 am)
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 Admiral Mudd and Friends Site Ring Newsletter for July, 2006
Featured Members of the Month
Futurama Frenzy : A new site under development. Chatroom, guestbook, and coming soon, a fan fiction section. Check it Ouuuuuttt!!! URL: www.freewebs.com/donaldandkenny/index.htm
Battlestar Galactica Database is full of Episode guides, Reviews, Downloads, images, Screengrabs and forums. URL: www.taranatar.co.uk
Our First Annual Doctor Who Quiz
The Doctor Who Group , and the Doctor Who Message Board , in association with The Action Figure Theatre is sponsoring our first annual Doctor Who Quiz . First prize is a Tenth Doctor Action Figure AND a new series Sonic Screwdriver . Second prize is a choice of a TDWG, DWMB, or AFT T-shirt OR mug. Third prize is a TDWG, DW Message Board, or Action Figure Theatre Mousemat. This contest will end September 21, 2006. To find out more information, or to be sent the Quiz, please email us at kinda@msn.com.
Editorials and Special Interest Articles
Looking Back or Forward by Amy Lynn
After several years of putting up with people asking me about the past of the StarFleet Lounge I have come to finally put it point blank simple. I'm shocked that so very many Trekkies or Trekkers are stuck on memories not to mention various issues of the past. Isn't Star Trek about the future? Shouldn't we be looking forward to what is to come, not to what once was? If Gene Roddenberry had been looking into the past, Star Trek would of never come about. And where would we be now? This article wouldn't even exist. And I would not have met so very many interesting people.
Yes I know sometimes the Enterprise found themselves in the past. But even then they were looking forward, like how far we have come and what all we have done. An example of that is when Quark, Nog, and Rom came back to 1949 Roswell New Mexico. They weren't in the past looking further into the past. And even Picard said "What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived." Seeing as it's been forty years behind us of Star Trek, I'm looking forward to the film in 2008. I don't look forward to looking back, but to what is to come. So grab your glass and raise it high in and join me in a toast to "Things to come". ::Clinking of glasses::
Amy Lynn is a regular contributor to the Admiral Mudd and Friends Site Ring Newsletter. To read more of her stellar work, take a look at Annika's.
Captain k'alaa's Corner
I have recently had a family loss. I have had several in the past ten years, and none more expected or dreaded than this one. And, at times like this, I lean on friends and family for comfort, sympathy, and understanding. Some of these friends and family are books.
I have known people personally who have mentioned how close he or she felt to books, sometimes even feeling closer to them than any fellow human can be. Sharing a mental space with bound, printed paper has been a past time since the Middle Ages. Of course, it is nothing new.
However, in many people's eyes, this activity actually isolates one from his or her fellow humans. Many feel the worst thing you can do at a time like this is to "shut yourself away with a book." But what many of these people do not understand is that when your loss is especially profound, many times you may feel a piece of yourself torn away. Bereavement leaves you torn up at the roots, somewhat like a half-planted petunia. If you can bring some semblance of regularity and peace of mind back into your life by reading, then so much the better.
Reading is cheap, and often free. Reading is not an objectionable activity (to most people, at any rate). Reading can be done at any spare moment, and does not even require your full attention to do. It can be done online, offline, and while doing almost everything (except driving). There are almost as many subjects to read about as there are people.
But what kind of book should I use, someone might ask. Whatever feels the best for you. Everyone is different, and individual hearts yearn for different things. My own personal leanings are toward C.S. Lewis and science fiction, but I have read so many different types of books, that I can honestly say any subject and any type of book will do. It all depends upon your personal look on life and where your "reading hunger" will take you.
I could leave my opinion at this and end this article. And yet, for some reason I am compelled strongly to write this: If you have had a profound personal loss, I do have a book to recommend: C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed. At perhaps the lowest, and possibly the hardest time in my life, when I lost a child (a death neither expected nor prepared for), I was floundering. I felt I was on the brink of madness. This book brought me away from the bitter depths of loss and helped me truly realize I was not alone. When nothing anyone could say was enough, Lewis's words were. I would call it "a life preserver of the soul".
*In Memory Of Janet Sinclair (1940 - 2006)
Reviewer's Retreat
This month, another in a series of Drew's Reviews : Who Is Sarah Jane Smith?
In April this year, in the episode School Reunion, Sarah Jane Smith made a return to Doctor Who, after she originally left the show thirty years ago (after she literarily walked away from the TARDIS). She was the first former companion to make a return appearance on Doctor Who, even for just for one episode. So why was Sarah Jane Smith given this return visit?
The simple answer is that she was one of the most popular of companions. When Elizabeth Sladen, playing Sarah Jane Smith, read her first line at the read through for School Reunion a hush fell over the room; as the assembled people there suddenly returned to their childhood. To many adults Sarah Jane is one of their lasting memories of Doctor Who, one of those characters who are fondly remembered. Ask anyone, of “that” age, what their favourite Doctor Who memories are and Sarah Jane would be up there with long scarves, Daleks and Loch Ness Monsters. But the character’s appeal is more then just nostalgic.
Barry Letts (Former Doctor Who Producer and Writer), who introduced Sarah Jane Smith and cast Elisabeth Sladen, has said when they created the character they felt they were riding the “crest of a feminist wave”. They didn’t just want an assistant who’d stand next to the Doctor, asking “What’s this?” and then wait to be rescued by him. They wanted to create a newer and more dynamic role for the companion. With this in mind they also made her a journalist, onto which they hung an inquisitive mind.
On the surface she didn’t seem much of a feminist, apart from one speech in The Monster of Peladon about women being just as good as men, but underneath her character moved the role of women on Doctor Who forward. She didn’t just tag along behind the Doctor, screaming when the monsters turned up. She would often have storylines of her own within the overall arc of the plot – Invasion of The Dinosaurs and Genesis of The Daleks being prime examples of this. Yes, from time to time Sarah Jane would need rescuing but this was often because she went charging into danger, often to help or even rescue the Doctor, and not because she was a weak female. Often Sarah Jane fought back, lead revolts, set off bombs and crawled through ventilation ducts. The writers certainly rose to the challenge of Sarah Jane, making her an integral part of the plot.
Certainly there had been intelligent female companions before Sarah Jane, companions who could hold their own against the Doctor, but rarely were they given such a dynamic role in the stories as she was. Her character lifted the female assistant out of the “Perils of Pauline” role and into that of equal companion – unfortunately this trend was not always kept to in the later years.
A lot of the success of the character must also be laid at the feet of Elisabeth Sladen. Her performance perfectly captured what was needed for Sarah Jane. She balanced an inquisitive nature with a strong loyalty to the Doctor, topped by an attractive charm. She also played the character as having a deep friendship with the Doctor, she has described the Doctor as Sarah Jane’s best friend. This invested an emotional side to the character’s relationship, which many viewers could recognise. Though not the deep relationships we are given with The Tenth Doctor and Rose, this was still a step forward for the show.
Elisabeth Sladen, in the many interviews she’s given over the years, has shown that she perfectly understood what was required to make the program work. She understood that it was an adventure series, for that there was a need for violence but the gruesome nature of it had to be reigned in, though not the emotional impact of that violence. She has also been very loyal to the character of Sarah Jane, over the years, and spoken very fondly of the character.
But Sarah Jane hasn’t remained silent since she left the TARDIS. She’s been featured in many Virgin and BBC novels, but also had two series of her own Big Finish audio adventures – seeing Elisabeth Sladen’s return to the character. But School Reunion saw Sarah Jane’s long overdue reunion with the Doctor, which soon turned into the emotional heart of the story. Here Sarah Jane and the Doctor were given the emotional closure, the ending and goodbye to their relationship they never had back in 1976 when she left the TARDIS. Elisabeth Sladen and David Tennant memorably rose to the occasion.
Sarah Jane Smith was certainly one of the memorable characters of the original series of Doctor Who, fondly remembered by many, and certainly brought all those other memorable characters from television, her success wasn’t due to any one factor, it was a combination of all of them. A combination of writing (the writers giving her more of a central role), direction, acting (Elisabeth Sladen’s assured performance) and timing, the 1970’s were the time we saw the social change that had only been promised in the 1960’s. In her character we can see so many embryonic factors that came out in Rose Tyler, many years later.
One last thing, if anyone from the BBC might be reading this, please, please bring back Sarah Jane Smith – if only for Elisabeth Sladen’s sparkling performance…
To read more of Drew's interesting work, go to Drew's Doctor Who Zone, at:
www.drewpayne.co.uk/pages/07_doctor_who_zonepag.html
Member's Announcements
This month, in the Action Figure Theatre :
DOCTOR WHO: THE MIND OF THE GARGOLQUIN
Ace's first trip in the TARDIS is interrupted by the appearance of a being made of ice.
STAR WARS: THE INSIDIOUS THREAT chapter 8
The battle of Sarrisari begins.
TORCHWOOD: CHASING SHADOWS
Torchwood and Milly find someone else who is missing their shadow.
...and, in AUGUST...
DOCTOR WHO: SYMPHONY FIVE
Vienna 1805. "Ludvig Van Beethoven. You are the enemy of the Daleks. You will be exterminated!"
STAR WARS: THE INSIDIOUS THREAT chapter 9
Obi Wan discovers the shocking truth about the Separatist control droid.
Every month more fun and adventure! Every month several new stories! Come check them out for yourself at the AFT! URL: www.actionfiguretheatre.co.uk/
   
"You're speaking with Empress Sato. Prepare to receive instructions." -- Hoshi Sato (Linda Park), Star Trek: Enterprise - In a Mirror, Darkly, part 2
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