Scheduling conflicts

Assuming my current flat purchase goes ahead successfully, one thing I will definitely not miss about living with my parents is the way they'll completely mess up an evening without ever discussing it.

Take this evening, when the new series of Doctor Who starts. After a lacklustre preview after the lacklustre Christmas 'special' (why, oh why did we not realise it would be bad as soon as the involvement of Kylie Minogue was announced? The didn't even use her in a worthwhile way. She's a singer now... Don't make her a bloody waitress, give her a musical number, for crying out loud!) the cinema trailers actually made it look very promising, and I have been looking forward to it since its arrival this weekend was announced.

So, imagine my surprise when I popped downstairs at 6.30, wondering what time it was starting, only to see that it had started 10 minutes previously, and to be told that it's being recorded because my sister is paying a short visit on her way home.

Considering how much of a recorded television backlog we have, why on Earth are we recording more?

Grr.

In other news, it would appear that not only have the company behind BotCon woefully underestimated the top-dollar attendance for this year (leading to the supplies of the box set running dry about a week after registration opened), but they've also underestimated attendance in total to the point that they've just announced that supplies of the figure given free to all attendees (dealers and punters) are now all accounted for.

Plus side: Huge attendance, no doubt driven partly by the success of the movie. High attendance means higher profit, which should be ploughed back into the company, the Club and the Convention. Easily the quickest selling-out of a BotCon box set in the history of the current management.

Minus side: Some attendees won't be getting part of what they wanted out of the show (BotCon.com is still advertising the box set, despite not having any more to offer registrants). It is unclear how they could have underestimated to this degree... Surely they planned for greater attendance than last year? While this debacle plays out, the Club's exclusives have been delayed over and over again... I'm not interested in the Seacons, but I'd quite like to see Nightbeat sometime soon, considering last year's exclusives were - technically - 2006's figures, and the Club has a history of long delays with little to show for them.

I understand some of this, I really do. 'Fan Clubs' have come a long way - by necessity - since the days of teenagers running fan clubs from their bedrooms by producing a monthly 'newsletter' on their ZX Spectrum, which is then photocopied and sent out to members who've paid £5 for a membership badge and send stamped, self-addressed envelopes each month so they can get the latest news from someone who actually knows nothing more than they do, but has a talent for phrasing it well.

These days, a 'Fan Club' has to compete with the internet, in which there are already myriad fan sites set up by fans, for fans who regularly trawl all the same websites. There are forums. There are communities. News spreads far faster by email than it ever could by a monthly mail shot.

So the TFCC, against all logic, treats itself as separate from BotCon, despite being run by the same company and in spite of the fact that the organisation of an annual BotCon has a consistently detrimental effect on the running of the Club for its members. Those who join before mid-March each year are eligible for the year's free membership figure... which then takes several months to arrive (personally, I'd put the cut-off point some months closer to the mail-0ut date of the figure to eligible members). The Club Exclusives from 2006 somehow merged into 2007, so there was nothing Club-wise that linked to 2007's much talked-about BotCon box set. And because of the licensing issues surrounding the movie toys, this year's Club Exclusives are a repainted gestalt set from Gen 1 (making them near enough 20 years old, if not more) and a repaint of a mediocre mold from 2004 with a new head, billed as a 'fan favourite', but actually a fairly obscure character.

I'm sure it's a tough job, getting all of this arranged... but at some point, one must start meeting the expectations of the paying members. Many frequently express their disappointment at coming second to the requirements of BotCon, but if the company running both can't even predict its attendance numbers with reasonable accuracy, they're going to have a huge number of extremely disappointed attendees who, most likely, will not be interested in joining a club which already plays second fiddle to the convention.

And, hey, I think the current members would like their 2008 exclusives in 2008, if at all possible.

Preferably not after they're sold at BotCon.