Blog: Doom In Progress

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Thursday evening saw me stomping across London town laden with GEAR, heading to the King & Queen for yet ANOTHER performace of Data and Doctor Doom. However, unlike the previous performances on Monday and Tuesday this time I was going to do THE LOT!

For LO! this was the first WORK IN PROGRESS version of the whole show i.e. the main thing what I have been doing all of these REHEARSALS for. The actual proper TOUR that people can buy tickets for doesn't start until July, but I thought around now would be a good time to try it all out, so that I'd have plenty of time for CHANGES if things didn't work as I'd hope. Me and Steve have done similar tryouts in the past for previous shows and it WORKS, but it is always a bit TERRIFYING to have to stand in front of a bunch of people with an hour's worth of material that almost definitely isn't quite ready yet!

It is ESPECIALLY terrifying when it is a room of PALS from various aspects of your life, and that is exactly what it was, with chums from ROCK, COMICS and also WORK all gathered in the same room. It was lovely to see everyone, but annoyingly I didn't get as much chance as I'd hope to mingle around talking to people as the show has a lot of GEAR to be set up, including a whole projection screen which I had to wrangle into place behind the BAR upstairs, with the AMAZING help of The Ingledows. Getting it all set up, and then later put away, took AGES - as Steve said later, I will need to get a ROUTINE sorted out for when it goes on the road!

Once it was done people started to filter upstairs, and at not long after 7.30pm I stood up before the gathered THRONG to do a bit of admin, before promising to go off for 10 seconds and then come back to start the show. The plan was to nip out of the room, put my CAPE on, and then SWOOP back, but somehow a previously unnoticed strip of VELCRO got involved and it took a full minute for me to come back and get started, whereupon I done THIS:

Data and Doctor Doom (intro)

Batman But Done Better

Transmedia

My Unified Catalogue Of Transmedia Character Components

That's Not Empirical

The Marvel Age

Is That Empirical?

Random Stratified Sampling

Asking

That Is Empirical

The Where, What, How And Whom Of Doctor Doom

Fuzzy Trace Theory

Many Hearts

Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars

Data And Doctor Doom Closing Medley

Data and Doctor Doom (finale)

That is a WHOLE LOT of songs, and in between them is a WHOLE LOT of talking. I had planned to record the whole thing for a) scrutiny b) timing but forgot, but I THINK it took an hour from start to finish, which is just about right at this point - it needs to be a bit shorter but hopefully that will come through minimising FAFF and getting bits wrong. There was QUITE A LOT of that sort of thing, but again I don't think it mattered - it WOULD matter if I was doing it to an audience of comic fans who I don't know, as will hopefully be the case later in the year, but one of the many nice things about performing to a room full of PALS is that they are obliged to be Quite Forgiving!

All in all I think it went OK - there were bits that seemed to go on too long, and I'm not sure the balance of songs and talking is right all the way through, but handily I DID remember to hand out FEEDBACK sheets to everyone so I could see what the AUDIENCE thought. This was a GRATE idea, although it did lead to the rather weird sensation of finishing the show and then seeing pretty much the whole room immediately put their heads down to start WRITING UP!

After that there was the aforementioned Putting Away, which I must admit I got a bit fed up with as it meant I had less time to waft around and CHAT to people, so after a bit I decided to PAUSE the packing and go and do that as well. Also I had been on the alcohol-free beer up until that point so wanted to give myself time to NECK a couple of Actual Pints!

It was a LOVELY, if somewhat NERVE-WRACKING evening, topping of a lovely but VERY nerve-wracking week. The next stage will be to go through everyone's feedback, have a bit of an old think myself, and then work out what needs to change and start rehearsing THAT. I think I'll have a couple of days off before leaping back in though, that was a LOT of Doctor Doom!

posted 9/5/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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