I’ve been thinking about this a lot since watching ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ and also hearing about the destruction of ‘Doctor Who’ – shows that both happen to be on Disney Plus.

We desperately need a reset – Dallas-style!

‘Dallas’ was perhaps the biggest TV show in the world during the 1980’s, and the story of the ninth season – also known as ‘The Dream Season’ is legendary.

It all started with the killing off of the Bobby Ewing character (the only man without a hat in the photo), as the actor Patrick Duffy had decided to leave the show after the eighth season.

When Duffy made his return a year later, the producers accommodated this by retro-writing the entire ninth season as a dream experienced by his mourning wife Pamela, played by Victoria Principal (wearing the blue suit in the photo). That’s right – an entire season of thirty episodes was turned into a fantasy that never happened, hence the ninth season of ‘Dallas’ being commonly referred to as ‘The Dream Season’.

‘Dallas’ then continued on like nothing happened.

So, can someone please do the same with ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Doctor Who’? – A one-season rewind won’t be enough – these shows need to be taken back at least twenty years!

Before people start jumping up and down, I’m going to begin by saying straight up that I had NO issue with any of the casting – I couldn’t care less about representation quotas and DEI policies.

**MILD SPOILER WARNING AHEAD**

The opening two episodes of this show were complete garbage; nonsensical at times, riddled with poor timing and lazy scene jumps, and with more plot holes and inconsistencies than anything I have seen in television or film for a very long time.

And if the rumours are true, the show starts to get EVEN WORSE from episode three.

I’ll give one small example of how it kept missing the mark – the outline you see in the photo above is presumably the main villain who is referred to as ‘The Master’. This was the final scene of the first episode and was intended to end things on a thrilling and menacing note. Instead, I couldn’t stop laughing when listening to his voice, as he sounded like the hapless ‘Shockmaster’ from WWE wrestling.

Look, I was prepared to give the show a chance, and it ended up far worse than I imagined.

I do admit to having some concerns when the showrunner Leslye Headland continually made comments regarding gender and queerness, rather than selling the series on its story and action – speaking of a project that was a cross between ‘Frozen’ and ‘Kill Bill’.

I was concerned that Headland was in over her head with ‘Star Wars’, and I think this will prove to be the case. It felt wrong, it looked wrong, it tried to be ‘cool’ at times but fell short, the fight scenes were not good, even the special effects looked a little off.

I do hope that people reading this may disagree with me, and actually enjoyed the show. I really do.

All screenshots are courtesy of Lucasfilm – Disney Plus.

One by one, as they become eligible, my stories will be available to purchase on Books2Read.com.

First cab off the rank is ‘Barren Point Road’, with ‘Blasters!’ and ‘Vindictive Pursuits’ coming soon.

Once all the stories are listed, they will be advertised across multiple online bookstores.

The layout certainly looks professional enough, so let’s see how we go.

Five of my titles are now listed on Kobo, as their exclusivity arrangements with Kindle Unlimited expire over the coming weeks.

Please note, they are still available at the Kindle Store in both eBook and paperback format.

Link here – https://www.kobo.com/au/en/search?query=sean+carslake&fclanguages=en

Once you get the hang of it, Amazon’s cover design builder is pretty good.

The screenshot below is of my final, ready-to-print cover art.

Using photo editing software, I firstly join two separate images: – one for the back cover and the other for the front and spine, ensuring that I make them larger than needed for the print bleed.

If you wish to use your own font and title design, you must superimpose this to the artwork before uploading to Amazon’s cover creator, as you can see in the above image.

From there, Cover Creator will ‘fill in the blanks’. When comparing both templates, note that the author profile, book blurb and author name on the spine were added by the Amazon software – and they are placed perfectly according to the printing requirements.

Getting the exact measurements can be a pain, and it involves a lot of adjustments back and forth until the print areas are lined up perfectly within the allocated borders. I tend to start with the spine and once that is in place, it is easier to set up both front and back covers.

At the time of writing, my cover had already passed the publishing standards, but the paperback itself is still pending. Once it is approved, I will order an author copy of the book to undergo final checks.

‘Hobart 1983’ is now available at the Kindle store.

Link here – https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0D4YDNVV6

When I was told about this by an online critic channel, I had to go and check it for myself.

The photos featured are of a campy musical number from the most recent episode of ‘Doctor Who’.

The same episode featured a drag queen as the villain, but I won’t get into that here.

Before anyone gets all upset, I would like to point out that the song itself and the way it was performed was pretty cool – but it proves beyond doubt that the once-loved show is gone!

For those interested, ‘Doctor Who’ is now streaming on Disney Plus – which might explain the photos.

All screenshots are courtesy of Doctor Who/BBC/Disney Plus.

The other day I uploaded a video to YouTube from the 80’s TV show ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’.

The clip is cringe-worthy beyond description, but as expected, I got many hits over the first few days.

But then it completely flat-lined at 895 views.

I should point out that there is a copyright restriction, but have the views been stopped after April 30th?

See how it levels out after that date?

The other stats are interesting too; all male, all aged between 55 and 64, and 13% coming from Russia!

I’ve added a link to the video below, but I must warn you….it’s pretty bad.

The destruction of ‘Doctor Who’ is now complete.

Photos are courtesy of various online sources.