Hugos: Assorting wibbling on Dramatic Presentation Awards

The 2008 Hugo Awards have been announced; congratulations to matociquala and commiserations to autopope, ianmcdonald and paulcornell2.

Back in January I was pondering nominations and commented on the dramatic awards as follows:

"[Battlestar Galactica is] going to once again get its ass handed to it on a plate in the next category...

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. At the risk of tempting fate, we all know that the key question in Denver is going to be whether Steven Moffat's utterly brilliant 'Blink' will edge out Paul Cornell's utterly brilliant 'Human Nature' / 'The Family of Blood' in what will soon be renamed as Hugo for Best Dr Who Story."

No mistake there, then, although looking back at the BDP(SF) winners it might be more accurate to rename it as Hugo for Best Steven Moffat Story. In the end it came down to a choice between arguably the best-written and most emotionally effective Who story since the show was revived (if not ever) and the most perfectly-crafted piece of science-fictional horror in years. In that respect, 'Blink' perhaps had an edge with the wider Hugo voting community through being less reliant on the viewer's familiarity with the show's history and mythos.

I'm not sure if Moffat's run will continue, mind you, as I can't say that I found 'Silence in the Library'/'Forest of the Dead' to be amongst the best episodes of this year. Looking back at Season 4, I would suspect 'Midnight' to be a far stronger contender for the Montreal Hugos, possibly followed by 'Turn Left'. As for 2010, will he be writing any of next year's feature-length specials? In the mean time, Battlestar Galactica has an opportunity to try to make up lost ground, although the first half of its Season 4 (which we might as well just call 'Season 4' in its entirety, as it ended on a whopping cliffhanger and the other half won't be shown until 2009 so is really Season 5) suffered from frantic plot compression as the writers battled possible cancellation in the wake of the WGA strike. Since we're all waiting to see how Ron Moore resolves the hole he dumped everyone into at the end of the last episode we can but hope that he and his scriptwriters do so in a way worthy of getting onto the 2010 Hugo ballot.

Dissertation Progress

5,495 / 10,000 (54.9%)

Coming along nicely; the 2000 words since Thursday also includes a substantial re-ordering once I realised I was committing a Cart Before Horse error at one point. It's naturally tempting to talk about copyright issues before those arising from design rights, but it turns out to make a lot more sense if you do it the other way around, because of the way the two areas of law interact, especially as regards surface decoration. And this is one of the potential trouble spots, because it turns out that whilst fabbing a mobile phone cover won't infringe design rights, even if you sell it (thanks to so-called 'must-fit' exceptions), configuring your fab to emboss a picture of Mickey Mouse on it will, because that gets copyright protection, irrespective of whether it's done for profit or not.

Tomorrow I think I'll head down to the law library at Middle Temple to dig out some references. Whilst I have several IP law textbooks, including one (Cornish & Llewelyn) that is regarded as pretty authoritative, there is a core of very expensive 'practitioner texts' that are regularly updated and taken even by courts as generally definitive guides to the law. Some I can access online, but not all, and it does me good to get out now and again.