An experiment

[brin_bellway]

If you recognise and have non-negative associations with my username, you are invited to a group watching of Doctor Who (2005).

Time: Tuesday, September 10th, 2019, 23:30 UTC (Edit: WolframAlpha's geolocator seems like it might be outputting New York regardless of where you actually live. Please replace "in local time" with "in [insert name of a location in your timezone here]".)

Location: this Discord server

Episode: 1x01, "Rose"

How to obtain: I chose Doctor Who in large part because I suspect a lot of people already know where they personally can best get a copy, but if not, here's some possibilities:

• Amazon Prime Video


• Library and other rental DVDs


• Some place called Britbox (I did not get far enough into the free trial to see if they demand a credit card for it)


• UK Netflix but not America, Canada, or Australia (unless you region-hack it, which I have never done but have heard is possible; we here at Brinens and Things like Windscribe for proxy services)


• Various shady websites, which we here at Brinens and Things cannot officially endorse and which you use at your own risk

If you're interested but can't make it because of logistical issues (can't be there at that time, can't obtain the episode), let me know: I might do another one of the same episode at some time more/different people can make, and if there's demand I'll poke at the rather intimidating-looking process of Discord video streaming and see if I can get it to work right.

Replying to let me know you *can* make it is optional.

Comments

[thedarlingone]

Yeah, I'll be at work. (I'm also busy enough right now that I don't know of a time I could definitively make it. And I haven't even looked at the possibility of acquiring the video, although I hear Discord itself can be used for streaming videos if a host has unlimited bandwith.) But I am very interested in the general concept of a Rewatch-type community starting up again. I never did get around to watching the RTD era of Who canon, and now that it's a closed (sub)canon I would probably do much better with it. I've mellowed a lot since I was trying to watch Who on an airing schedule, and also become way more aware of my own preferences and limitations.

...sorry, that was a lot of words to say "can't make it, hypothetically interested, no specifics available for what changes would allow me to attend".

ETA: Oh look, and you actually mention Discord video streaming as a possibility. Wasn't sure if you'd have bandwidth issues. Granted I also have bandwidth issues, but those are at least hypothetically soluble now, which they weren't before. I will admit, having the media content provided by someone else would significantly decrease the executive functioning needed and make it much more likely for me to actually attend, given time-availability.

[brin_bellway]

Yeah, for the initial test run I chose it to occur on *my* weekend (I currently work Thursday - Sunday, and sometimes Monday), but I suspect a lot of people are going to be working. If I get a lot of "would like to attend, but can't do Tuesdays at 23:30 UTC", my next suggestion will be to do one at midnight on Sunday (that is, Saturday at 8 PM EDT): I'm usually home from work by then, although I used to work later on Saturday nights and--knowing Meta-Boss--could go back to doing that at any time. But it *would* have the advantage of being a standard time-to-be-awake-and-not-at-work throughout America and Australia simultaneously.

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>>And I haven't even looked at the possibility of acquiring the video<<

I actually already tried looking up whether your local library had Doctor Who DVDs, since it seemed like that was likely to come up. Their answer was "our public-catalogue software is on the fritz, please check back later".

*pokes again*

Oh hey, they've fixed it. Looks like they have some bits and pieces, S1 *not* among them.

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>>But I am very interested in the general concept of a Rewatch-type community starting up again.<<

This post was inspired by re-reading a bunch of DS9 Rewatch chatlogs from 2015 (my last year there), and being struck by the mix of "this was great (and I miss it)" and "except when it was toxic, which was quite often". DS9 Rewatch was the last SJ-dominated space I hung out in, several months after fleeing the rest for lack of marbles, and in the logs there is just *loads* of foreshadowing that I cannot actually handle the place anymore and it's only a matter of time until somebody breaks. A rewatch group recruited from my *current* social sphere--much more filtered for being compatible with my mental health--could be very good.

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>>Wasn't sure if you'd have bandwidth issues.<<

I have unlimited home Internet with a real-world upload speed of ~15 Mbps, so I don't think that aspect would pose a problem for me. The main issues I have with hosting are that it's apparently trickier to set up video streaming for a server rather than a DM (I suppose we could just use the server as a waiting room, and hold the actual stream in a group DM once we know who to include in it? that might help), and you can't currently host (but apparently *can* watch) on Linux: I'd need to set up my Windows partition for Discord and boot into it for every stream.

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>>having the media content provided by someone else would significantly decrease the executive functioning needed and make it much more likely for me to actually attend, given time-availability.<<

Noted. :)