(0) Today is Scroll Lite because at 8:40 a.m. the manager of a tree trimming crew banged on my door to tell me they were going to work on the big tree across the driveway from where I live, and given the alternatives I chose to be away from home all day. So please fill in the important things that are missing with your comments!

(1) DOCTOR’S LAST HOUSE CALL. In “Doctor Who unveils trailer for Jodie Whittaker’s final episode”, Radio Times outlines what we learn about “The Power of the Doctor”, which will air October 23.

…The Master (Sacha Dhawan) will return for the Thirteenth Doctor’s exit, while the Daleks and the Cybermen – including Ashad (Patrick O’Kane), also known as the Lone Cyberman – will also appear.

Returning to help the Doctor, Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) in this epic battle for survival will be two companions from classic Doctor Who – Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) and Sophie Aldred (Ace).

Two more familiar faces will also appear in the special: Vinder (Jacob Anderson) and Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) will both be back, having last appeared in Doctor Who’s last full series in late 2021….

(2) OCTOTHORPE.  John Coxon is clever, Alison Scott has lost her composure, and Liz Batty is confused by WSFS. They spend a lot of time talking about Glasgow 2024, and their gorgeous art this week is by Sara Felix. Listen to Octothorpe 68 here: “It Made John Laugh”.

(3) GOFUNDME APPEAL. Author Ryk E. Spoor has started a fundraiser to help him overcome “A Series of Unfortunate Events”.

… I’m Ryk E. Spoor, best known as an author of science fiction and fantasy, but my main job is as a technical proposal writer at a local tech firm.

Several recent events have upset my monetary tightrope walking lately, including unexpected expenses for illnesses, repairs, etc. Most recently, my main publisher, Ring of Fire Press, has just ceased operations. This immediately deprived me of two anticipated payments, and more in the future. Moreover, even if I were to immediately choose another publisher and they were to quickly prepare all my back catalogue for reissue, it’d be months before I’d likely see any money coming in.

To put the cherry on top, I have just gotten COVID for the second time, my wife is ill and may have it, and there are a lot of expenses coming due now that I simply cannot meet.

So if you can give anything at all, it will be tremendously appreciated….

(4) WHEN CRIME IS IN FASHION. Olivia Rutigliano nominates these as “The 10 Best Hats in Crime Movies” at CrimeReads. But first! The hats that you won’t find in this list:

…I like hats. I like hats a lot. I don’t wear them enough, but that’s beside the point. Crime film is full of excellent hats, and I have selected what are, to my mind, the ten absolute best. Then again, all of film history is full of excellent hats, but this is a crime website, so I must show restraint. I’ll say up front that there is no Indiana Jones stetson, and no Freddy Krueger fedora, and no Annie Hall wide-brimmed bowler, and no Willy Wonka orange velvet top hat, and no scarf-heavy Holly Golightly chapeau du matin.

And, again, I’m trying to keep to most iconic hats. For the Corleone-family diehards, I’ll just say right now that the gray homburg hat Al Pacino wears in The Godfather isn’t quite indelible enough, I’m sorry. Also, I’ll just say up here, I wish The Tailor of Panama had more panama hats in it….

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

• Born October 13, 1906 — Joseph Samachson. In 1955, he co-created with artist Joe Certa the Martian Manhunter in the pages of Detective Comics #225. Earlier he penned a couple of Captain Future pulp novels around 1940 under a house name. (House names often blur who did what.) He also wrote scripts for Captain Video and His Video Rangers, a late Forties to mid Fifties series. (Died 1980.)
• Born October 13, 1914 — Walter Brooke. You know him for muttering a certain word in The Graduate but he’s earlier noteworthy for being General T. Merrit in Conquest of Space, a Fifties SF film, one of many genre roles he did including The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, The Munsters, Marooned, The Return of Count Yorga and The Nude Bomb (also known as The Return of Maxwell Smart). (Died 1986.)
• Born October 13, 1923 — Meyer Dolinsky. He wrote the script for Star Trek’s “Plato’s Children” plus for Mission: Impossible, Science Fiction Theater, World of Giants (which I never heard of), Men into Space and The Outer Limits. (Died 1984.)
• Born October 13, 1923 — Cyril Shaps. He appears in a number of Doctor Who stories,  to wit The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ambassadors of Death, Planet of the Spiders and The Androids of Tara which means he’s appeared with the Second, Third and Fourth Doctors. He was also Mr. Pinkus in The Spy Who Loved Me, and he was in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady as Emperor Franz Josef. The latter stars Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee as Holmes and Watson. (Died 2003.)
• Born October 13, 1952 — John Lone, 70. He played the villainous Shiwan Khan in The Shadow, and he was the revived ice man Charlie in the Iceman. His first film role ever was Andy the Cook in the Seventies King Kong.
• Born October 13, 1969 — Wayne Pygram, 63. His most SFish role was as Scorpius on Farscape and he has a cameo as Grand Moff Tarkin in Revenge of the Sith because he’s a close facial resemblance to Peter Cushing. He’s likely best recognized as himself for his appearance on Lost as a faith healer named Isaac of Uluru.
• Born October 13, 1969 — Tushka Bergen, 53. She first shows in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome as The Guardian at the age of sixteen. She’s got one-offs in the Fantasy Island, Angel, FreakyLinks and The Others series, and an appearance in the Journey to the Center of the Earth series. The FreakyLinks episode is titled “Subject: Edith Keeler Must Die”.
• Born October 13, 1976 — Jennifer Sky, 46. Lead character conveniently named Cleopatra in Sam Raimi’s Cleopatra 2525 series. (Opening theme “In the Year 2525” is performed by Gina Torres who’s also a cast member.) She’s had guest roles on Seaquest DSV, Xena, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And she was Lola in The Helix…Loaded, a parody of The Matrix which scored 14% at Rotten Tomatoes. 
• Born October 13, 1983 — Katia Winter, 39. She’s best known for being Katrina Crane on Sleepy Hollow, and Freydis Eriksdottir on Legends of Tomorrow. She also was Swede in Malice in Wonderland which is very loosely based off its source material. She’s currently Gwen Karlsson in Blood & Treasure which might be genre. So how is Sleepy Hollow? I’ve never seen it. 

(6) REASONS TO READ. Mark Kelly reviews Jim Al-Khalili’s The Joy of Science at Views from Crestmont Drive.

…[Two] things attracted me to it. First, of the eight chapters, one of them is called “It’s more complicated than that,” and it echoes a point made in Slate recently (which I discussed here) that Occam’s Razor is not necessarily true, it merely often is. I shouldn’t say echo — this is the book by the author of that Slate article. Second, this point in particular supports one of my themes in this blog, that too many people in the world think in terms of black and white, and all social issues are obviously right or wrong, with no nuance or shades of gray (or color) in between. Simplex, complex, multiplex, and so on.…

(7) STEPHEN FRY VISITS RARE BOOKS LA. First posted three years ago.

(8) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers:  Hocus Pocus,” the Screen Junkies say this 1993 Disney movie, besides being both one of the darkest movies in Disney history, from the time when a comedy film was “shown in real theaters and shot in real locations with real song and dance numbers,” as opposed to the new Disney+ Hocus Pocus 2, “which meets Disney’s content quota for Q3.” The film is “like what if the Three Stoges did a Halloween special–and were ladies.”  SJWs will want to stay for the closing comments, read by Thackeray Binks the talking black cat!

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cliff.]