Very pleased to announce my essay on Doctor Who, “Invisible Women, Bikinis and Yellowface: Minorities in the Fourteenth Season of Doctor Who”, will appear in the anthology Chicks Unravel Time, alongside luminaries like Diana Galbadon, Martha Wells and Seanan McGuire. Many thanks to Deborah Stanish and L.M. Myles for the invite, and for the fact-checking. The anthology is now up for preorder on Amazon, if you’re so inclined.

The sister book to the 2011 Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords…

In Chicks Unravel Time, editors Deborah Stanish (Whedonistas) and L.M. Myles bring together a host of award-winning female writers, media professionals and scientists to examine each season of new and classicDoctor Who from their unique perspectives.

Diana Gabaldon discusses how Jamie McCrimmon inspired her best-selling Outlander series, and Barbara Hambly (Benjamin January Mysteries) examines the delicate balance of rebooting a TV show. Seanan McGuire (Toby Daye series) reveals the power and pain of waiting in Series 5, and Una McCormack (The King’s Dragon) argues that Sylvester McCoy’s final year of Doctor Who is the show’s best season ever.

Other contributors include Juliet E. McKenna (Einarrin series), Tansy Rayner Roberts (Power and Majesty), Sarah Lotz (The Mall), Martha Wells (The Cloud Roads), Joan Frances Turner (Dust), Rachel Swirsky (“Fields of Gold”) and Aliette de Bodard (Obsidian and Blood series).

In case you have doubts: yes, this isn’t an entirely nice essay. Some of the eps were a good load of fun (particularly the one on Gallifrey, which had a nice plot in addition to awesome costumes), but Season 14 unfortunately included the infamous “Talons of Weng Chiang”, aka OMG. I’d been warned was full of fail, but hadn’t expected to be quite *that* bad. Watching it was pretty much like watching a train wreck in progress. Guess we can say it’s a product of its time (considering TV shows of the time on British TV, you can actually argue it’s more advanced, which is kind of scary), but I’m really glad we don’t live in those times anymore…