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FAQ

This is a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) I created when the site was just me at BillieDoux.com. (BillieDoux.com and billiedoux.blogspot.com became Doux Reviews on January 1, 2013.)

Before our readers could post comments, I used to get a goodly number of emails. Many were just nice acknowledgments of my work, but most were questions. Here are the questions I got most often.

What's that blue thing at the top of the site?

It's a fan. We're fans. Not the cleverest pun in the world, but I thought it was fun. And I like blue.

What's your real name, and what do you look like?

Billie Doux is my pen name. It's a take-off of the French expression "billet-doux" (pronounced bee-yay doo) which means "love letter." I don't use my real name because I would like to retain some privacy in this increasingly un-private world, and I haven't put up photos for the same reason. (The lovely cartoon of me was created by Dimitri A.C. Ly.) I'm not a hot young college girl; I'm over the hill and picking up speed. Nothing to see here. Move along.

How popular is your site?

Not as popular as I'd like it to be, but we get an average of a hundred thousand pageviews a month. Of course, we also have a ton of content. There are over ten thousand reviews on Doux Reviews.com right now, can you believe it? It's like the geek television critic's version of War and Peace.

The episode [blank] was on last night. So where's the review?

We would love it if we got screeners like the big sites do, but we don't. So we see the episode when you guys do. We try to get the review up by the next day, but sometimes it takes a little longer because we also have jobs.

Could you send me a copy of [something I've reviewed that's hard to find]?

I've gotten this question many times (mostly about Roy Dupuis's hard-to-find titles), and my answer is always the same. I'm really sorry, and I know how frustrating it is to want something you can't get, but I just don't have the time or the equipment to make copies of stuff for people. Plus, there are copyright issues.

There was this song that was playing on the last episode of [show name]. Do you know what it is?

Back in the day, I was asked about Michelle Branch's "Goodbye to You" from the Buffy episode "Tabula Rasa" so many times that I knew the answer and could give it to people. But for the most part, even though I like music, I'm just not that familiar with music titles and artists. In order to answer your question, I'd have to do some research on the internet and get back to you. Please don't ask me to do research for you.

Who is Dan?

He's my son. Not all of us are lucky enough to have someone in their lives that likes a lot of the same shows that they do. I've watched many of my favorite shows with Dan over the years. He's smart and observant, and often comes up with things that I put in my reviews, so I like to give him credit. And that's why I mention him. And if you want to know a bit more, check out what Samantha wrote at the bottom of Our Own 10K.

What's your favorite episode of [a specific show]?

This is sometimes difficult to answer because I don't always have one. But here's a few.

Angel: Destiny, Smile Time
Babylon 5: Severed Dreams
Breaking Bad: Ozymandias
Buffy: Fool for Love, Once More with Feeling
Dead Zone: Cabin Pressure, Deja Voodoo
Dexter: Shrink Wrap, Hungry Man
Doctor Who: Human Nature/The Family of Blood, Blink
Firefly: Out of Gas, Shindig
Highlander: The Modern Prometheus, Comes a Horseman
La Femme Nikita: Into the Looking Glass, Psychic Pilgrim
Lost: Flashes Before Your Eyes, LaFleur
The Prisoner: The Schizoid Man
Six Feet Under: Everyone's Waiting
Star Trek: City on the Edge of Forever, The Doomsday Machine
Star Trek, The Next Generation: Best of Both Worlds, The Inner Light
Supernatural: In the Beginning, The Monster at the End of this Book
Torchwood: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Fragments, Children of Earth

How did you get started writing episode reviews?

I started writing brief Babylon 5 reviews for my wonderful friends on STWTTF (the Star Trek Women's Caramel Sauce Task Force discussion list) back in 1997. Those reviews are now lost somewhere in the ether, or there would be a Babylon 5 section on this site.

Right about the time Babylon 5 ended, I fell madly in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it seemed like a natural reviewing segue. Angel premiered a year later, and I started reviewing it, too. One day, while perusing a terrific Buffy/Angel site on the web, it occurred to me that I had all of these reviews only my friends had read, and the wonderful site I was looking at had none, and a light bulb went off in my head. I offered, and they took me on. (The site is no longer on the web, or I'd give you the link.) Awhile later, I found another web magazine and wrote for them. I was also a featured reviewer on a major site, TV Tome, until it got bought out by TV.com. That's when I decided it was time for my own site. That was back in 2004.

I want to be a writer, too. How can I get started?

I honestly don't know what to tell you, because I sort of fell sideways into this. If you're interested in joining the Doux Reviews writing staff, here's what you need to know.

Could I post your reviews on a board?

Not the whole thing, please. How about an opening paragraph or the part you found the most interesting, with a link to the actual review? Link to me as much as you want; I'd love it. Please do not post my review, or parts of my review, and say that it's yours. It's happened. People have written and told me about it. I've been plagiarized at least four times, just that I'm aware of. Come on. As we learned in grade school, cheaters never prosper.

Can I send you spoilers?

Please don't. I avoid them. I honestly believe that spoilers... well, spoil things. I got deeply into spoilers once, during the sixth season of Buffy. I was so into it that I simply couldn't stop myself; I had to know what was going to happen. All of the major events in "Seeing Red" were ruined for me; there was no impact, because I knew what was coming. I stopped reading spoilers at that point, and the last minute of season six was an exceptionally pleasant surprise. This experience convinced me that spoilers are, at their core, evil. I also suspect they have a negative effect on my writing.

If you've gotten this far...

Yeah, I realized that I didn't really say much about myself, personally; this page is basically a FAQ. Let's see. I have a master's degree. I read a lot; when I was a teenager, nearly everything I read was science fiction, but I've branched out since then. I've seen every episode of Star Trek in each of its incarnations (except the recent cartoon serieses), and meeting Scott Bakula on the set of Star Trek: Enterprise was one of the high points of my life. I have a personal blog at my old review site, BillieDoux.com, if you're interested in reading more about me.