On The Sofa (7)

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Hello all. Back from the Inner Hebrides, otherwise known as the land of dodgy mobile reception and limited wi-fi. 😉

Ooh, lots to read! 🙂

[Cath Annabel @cathannabel]

Just to chip in to the convo re Dickens – I’m a huge fan.  I started reading him while I was still at junior school and have read and re-read everything over the (many) years since.  I love the sheer exuberance of his writing – his revelling in language and the power of words, his larger than life characters who yet somehow have a core of reality, his passion for justice and fairness when he’s writing about the invisible people in society (Jo, the crossing sweeper in Bleak House, for one).  There are aspects that I don’t love, such as the fact that the ‘good’ women are usually tiresome in the extreme (I want to slap Esther Summerson every time I read Bleak House – for god’s sake woman enough with the ‘little me’ crap, and sort yerself out!) and of course the Little Nell sentimentality is cloying to modern tastes (see the Doctor’s lit crit in The Unquiet Dead…).  But I can forgive all of his flaws – his greatest books (Bleak House, I’m prepared to argue about which others but BH is the greatest novel in the ENglish language and I will brook no dissent on that topic) have such power and emotional truth that they never fail to move me.

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day.

I thought of these words this week, seeing the picture of Aylan Kurdi on the beach.  What Dickens could have written about the scenes in Europe this week – he could have moved hearts and minds.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

Pratchett and Dickens? I like this conversation!

I was a late convert to Dickens I’ll admit. Resistant for most of the reasons expressed by detractors on this thread until my 20s when I had a certain urge to reexamine certain aspects of Victoriana and it suddenly seemed to gel. Funny how that can happen, but all of a sudden it seemed funny in the right places and much more relevant

@missy I have to agree with @miapatrick. Ignore the recommended ages and try the others as well. Pratchett grew as a writer over his career to the point his children\young adult books eclipsed his early adult books quite easily.

I recently purchased his last book- The Shepherd’s Crown. Two weeks ago, if I’m honest, because it remains unopened. I’m telling myself I’m waiting for winter, long evenings, crisp air, etc. But the more likely explanation is that I don’t want this particular relationship between writer and reader to end. It’s lasted thirty years afterall. While I resist temptation I still have one book to read. Which is a marvelous feeling.

Still, his last book continues the story of Tiffany Aching, young witch of the Discworld. It’s a compelling strand of five books which starts with Wee Free Men. An eight year old Tiffany storms the gates of faerie to rescue her snotty younger brother and a drippy son of a local nob. Armed with an iron frying pan and a band of the most violent fairies in existence. It was a story I intended to mention in the Last Christmas thread, simply because of the Dromes.The Dromes were amorphous blob men from another dimension living in fairie. Touch one and you enter a dream state where, if you don’t work your way out you’ll die, turn runny and become Dromes food.

Tiffany gets the trick of them and uses one of them to form her own dream state to fight the Queen of the Fairies. A simple seaside scene in which the Pratchett pulls of one of his regular reversals, showing the Dromes in a new light as it becomes wistfully lost in her dream, with its dream sea and dream crabs. It’s one of a number of convergences between Pratchett and SMs Doctor Who work.

There isn’t actually a young adult Pratchett book I wouldn’t recommend to all ages though. Through the Bromeliad Trilogy (Truckers, Diggers and Wings) to Johnny Maxwell or one offs like Dodger which brings us back to Dickens, as it features young Tosher (look it up) Dodger and his Jewish mentor meeting Dickens, who is actually presented in a way not often portrayed. The social campaigner, yes.But hard edged, cynical and a true ‘reporter’. Well worth a look.

Oh. By the way. I gave up taking Jonathan Jones seriously when he criticised someones public artwork, without seeing it, while simultaneously giving his opinion that Damien Hurst was still the great rebel of the art world. This would have been laughable in the late 90s. This was in 2011. Nuff said?

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@pedant

I once managed to make a member cry simply by asking “But what it is about?” (meaning what’s the theme?). I’m dead proud of that

Good grief. Pride! Really?

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@phaseshift

Yes, proud.

As a direct consequence  she later got to present to, and be taken up by, Barry Cunningham.

If you don’t know who Barry Cunningham is look up the history for the Harry Potter franchise.

So yes, very proud. As proud as she is grateful.

[Serahni @serahni]

Hello glorious Whovians!   Just thought I’d swing by, it’s been a while since I poked my nose in.  Counting down the days ’til the next season, I can’t wait to start reading bonkers theories again.  I truly think our creativity was what made the last season memorable at all, since rewatching it hasn’t really left me with a fantastic impression.

All is well here, though very busy.  Work is nuts and my relationship has taken a few health turns for both of us that has monopolised time.  There’s a whack of distance between us at the moment too, and the AUD doesn’t stretch so far when you’re trying to help out an American.  Any expert fundraisers out there?  Finding it a challenge to promote something that doesn’t target our close circle who already do more than enough.

But life is good mostly!  How are you all?

[Anonymous @]

@cathannabel

I agree with you regarding Bleak House: his startling renditions of characters leave me incredulous. In other works, there’s a secrecy to his London; a polluted place imperceptible to some but discernible to others. Some of his ‘evil’ characters are like superstitious bloodhounds; there are gibbering proselytisers, journalists with their nose to the ground sniffing out stories, the wealthy rich, roaring with laughter, surrounded by lavish velvet, glum housekeepers and tables overladen with magnificent sugary puddings and fruit. The pictures he paints are so vivid, each story clamouring for attention, totally overloaded at times with imagery but in the end, it’s so jolly real and clear. Nothing seems incidental to me and I love it. I binge on Dickens like a ravenous addict.

@serahni

welcome back!  I was checking out the activity page and you were one person (amongst quite a few) who hadn’t been around. Goodness, I hope your health situation improves soon?

I’m useless with fund raising but I think there are people on the Forum who may have some ideas about where to start -even in Oz!

Shame with your impressions of last Season: re-watching it opened my eyes to some different aspects. But maybe this coming season will tickle the brain and heart differently? 🙂

All the best. Cheers to you,

Puro

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman;”>@JannetteB- yes, of course it was- I think I was thinking of ‘Fathers and son’s’ and transposed it. Yes, it started very strongly. I love the idea of a romance that takes place within a discussion of the effects of the industrial revolution and the changes it bought- both positive and negative. And then- lots and lots of plot happens. Maybe too much plot.</span>

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman;”>@Arbutus- yes, humour is a great saving grace. The key to Jane’s character, of course, is pride. Her feelings of humiliation at the point of marrying him without money of her own in particular. The plot does fall into absurdity, but for me the gothic elements of the story help carry it off. Incidentally, one of the things I love about Austin is that you could put all her primary protagonists in a room together, and they probably wouldn’t all like each other. </span>

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@pedant- of course, and I didn’t mean to come across as a snowflake :). One thing I like to do (well, one thing I do, at least) when editing is take the piece of writing and remove around one third of the words. I might put some back in later, but I find it does focus the writing (I do incline, by nature, to witter.)

(btw sorry about the formatting thing. Suddenly my word is insisting I use control v rather than right clicking to paste.)

(OK and then it didn’t do that. My computer hates me.)

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Still catching up – but surely ‘Young Adult’ is just a renaming of the genre known as the Bildungsroman. Probably because, like me, publishers can’t spell ‘bildungsroman’ without looking it up – and the average reader would need to have done GCSE German to understand the word. Is it about the sewage systems of Ancient Rome, they ask the poor bookseller? 😉

Most ‘Young Adult’ novels (or series of novels) are about growing up from a child/adolescent to an adult, anyway. Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching novels are about her growth from talented (and stroppy) child to powerful (and stroppy) adult.

Dicken’s Young Adult novels would be David Copperfield and Great Expectations. And possibly Oliver Twist…

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@cathannabel

I want to slap Esther Summerson every time I read Bleak House – for god’s sake woman enough with the ‘little me’ crap, and sort yerself out!

Esther’s a bit like Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. But I think the characterisation is psychologically credible; both characters are the ‘poor relation’. Dependent for their upbringing and survival on the kindness of charitable relatives – and Esther doesn’t even know that Jarndyce is a distant relative. Furthermore, Esther’s first experience of a charitable relative is of an incredibly cold and distant charity, of the sort which would much prefer her never to have been born at all.

Both of them respond by developing a ‘don’t notice poor little me, except when I’m being incredibly grateful and really, really helpful’ type of character. But it is a survival response to their situation – Esther and Fanny are both quite capable of sending unwanted suitors off with a flea in their ear. Even when, in Fanny’s case, the pressure to accept that suitor is intense. Esther’s also quite capable of taking danger on herself. It’s just that those first few years of being utterly unwanted leaves her believing that her only worth is what she can do for other people.

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@craig

Closing in on £500,000 including Gift Aid.

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

oh, by the way, has anyone here bought/used an edition of ‘The Chambers Dictionary’? It’s been suggested by my course, but looking at Amazon reviews (which are not always helpful, unless you’re browsing male hair removal products) editions after the 11th seem less good quality and are missing many, many words. The 11th is from 2008. Is that too old?

[Arbutus @arbutus]

@bluesqueakpip @cathannabel @miapatrick

Here’s the thing about all these characters that annoy us, with whom we wouldn’t want to have tea, want to slap, etc. They are fully realized and realistic characters, each in their own way “psychologically credible”, drawn from real life. The writers are all insightful enough to understand how people placed in certain circumstances might behave, and talented enough to draw a portrait of that for us.

This includes Rose (going back to @cathannabel’s discussion on the other thread), and in fact all the AG companions, about whom fandom is hugely divided, and who seem to prompt a lot of “she was annoying”, “couldn’t stand her” comments. I liked CathAnnabel’s idea that the Doctor became hugely devoted to Rose because he saw certain strengths in her that really mattered to him at the time, to the exclusion of other, less admirable traits that went with being nineteen years old. Not all nineteen-year-olds are self centred, but many are. Not all working class women approaching middle age, who find it hard to believe in their own worth, are loud, stroppy, and abrasive, but many are or might be. Not all bright, energetic young women who have been through the emotional typhoon of loss on multiple occasions are obsessed with control, to the extent of compulsively lying to their loved ones to keep everyone happy; but however it irritated me to see it, it seems perfectly believable to me that it might happen.

The fact that we don’t always like these characters just reinforces the fact that they are really well written, and taken right out of real life!

[Cath Annabel @cathannabel]

@bluesqueakpip @arbutus Agreed.  I think the problem for me with Esther is that if Dickens has a weakness it is in writing virtuous women.  His male characters are allowed to be complicated and flawed, e.g. Copperfield/Pip, but the women are more either/or.  THat’s where Dickens’ female contemporaries win – the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, George Eliot.  Dickens tends to idealise those female characters to a problematic extent and whilst the ‘back story’ for Esther is certainly consistent with her behaviour, there’s a sense that we’re meant to approve her passivity (in relation to her own situation) and obsessive self-deprecation rather than to see it as evidence of damage.   I find Fanny Price easier to believe in, even though many critics find her just as irritating, she’s more credible.

[Stella Luce 333 @stellaluce333]

I’m not too well versed in Dickens (with the exception of a kid’s version of The Christmas Carol when I was younger), but considering that he lived & worked in the 1800s, having female characters that play a major role seems very…progressive. I think every character is a small reflection of the time period that they were written in…

—

I’m Stella! I’m new around here, & even though writing fanfiction is one of my hobbies, I’m terrible at writing introductions. I’m more familiar with New Who than the classic series, having started with Series 6 & just finished getting caught up last year. I’m looking forward to having discussions about the new episodes!

I swear I’m more interesting than I’ve made myself sound…lol

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@pedant I know. Is amazing. Home page updated.

[Anonymous @]

@arbutus

yes, I agree with you: they are real. A lovely analysis. Which is also why I like Dickens. Of course, I know little about that era, so it just seems real! But the characters, the descriptions are ropey and organised: whole little worlds created on just two pages.

@stellaluce333 hallo there and welcome!

Kindest,

Puro

[janetteB @janetteb]

@stellaluce333 Most fiction of that time had central female characters regardless of the authors gender though as there was a high percentage of female writers a lot of fiction is very much written from a female perspective. Dickens was however in many respects a progressive particularly in regards to social commentary. His works did draw public attention to many of the social injustices of the day.  Oh and of course welcome to the forum. You come here to talk Dr Who and wade straight into a discussion of Dickens. Well done and don’t worry. There will be plenty of “Who” talk soon once the series starts. Enough to make you head spin.

@cathannabel The problem with Dickens’ earlier heroines is they were based upon his long deceased mother and the deceased sister in law, both intensely idealised. It was only after his infatuation with Ellen Ternan that he began to write some more rounded female characters such as Estella and Bella Wilfer. Few of the great women writers of the 19th C really wrote well rounded male characters either. Take for instance the arrogant Mr Darcy and who would really want to marry the aggressive and devious Mr Rochester?

Cheers

Janette

 

[Cath Annabel @cathannabel]

@janetteb  You’re right.  I’m reading Dickens’ letters at the moment and the presence of the departed sister-in-law is very striking and (to our 21st century sensibilities) more than a little disturbing (I couldn’t help wondering how Mrs Dickens who was NOT idealised by her husband, having had the misfortune to get old and worn out with all those kids etc, felt about this…. ).  And yes I have to admit, not that many well-rounded male characters in the women writers – I always quite liked the chap in Persuasion, whose name eludes me, and George Eliot creates some interesting ones.

[Anonymous @]

@judefjackets-2

Yes, I think you’re right. About grooming the young actors. I, however, adored Smith in the role, and after Tennant, I wasn’t really looking forward to a young’un. Still, Smith is still my favourite. 🙂

 

[Anonymous @]

• Tennant was amazing. As for Smith, i think he lacked the entertaining quality that Capaldi and Tennant possess. Nevertheless, i am really looking forward to the latest season. 😀 😀

[Anonymous @]

@janetteb

I’ve never thought of Rochester as “devious and aggressive” -possibly because the men in my life were exactly like that (even now, on a birthday, my brother, sniffing wine and throwing his arms around wildly, actually suggested I was speaking too loudly!).

But yes, he was certainly devious. Played in 2005 by Toby…(can’t remember the surname) and I was a bit….attracted to the cranky, short Rochester -also wild hair and wildly rotating arms. Says a lot about me….evidently…. 🙂

[janetteB @janetteb]

@cathannabel Captain Wentworth is the man and he is certainly the most believable of Austen’s heroes. I love Persuasion equally as much as P&P for quite different reasons. I am adamant that there should be a copy of the later in the first aid box. It is my go to book in a crisis. I credit Mrs Bennett with helping save my life. She does more for an elevated temperature than Paracetamol.

@purofilion Rochester is attractive on the pages of the book and even more so when portrayed by Toby Stephens, (son of Dame Maggie Smith incidentally) but I don’t think he would be an ideal partner in real life.

Oh dear. We have strayed haven’t we? I am desperately trying to think of something pertinent to Dr Who right now. A gothic Bronteish episode maybe or did Crimson Horror cover that turf sufficiently? Perhaps a episode set during the Napoleonic wars. I do like the historical episodes. That would be familiar territory now for Peter Harness.

Cheers

Janette

[Anonymous @]

@janetteb Capt Wentworth; as a young woman: boy, did I fantasise about him.

And yes Toby Stephens: a glorious actor: as Rochester, a revelation. I’m taking out my DVD now. This sounds vaguely pornographic, but only in the way I fall down when I hear Beethoven played well: in other words, it’s a holy thing 😉

Truly.

[Anonymous @]

@janetteb @cathannabel

Either way, Robert Lane’s theme music mixing gentle sweetness with rolling passion is quite lovely – I think Rochester, in Susanna White’s version, changes quite dramatically at the end: with blindness comes virtue?

Perhaps not.

Despite the annoying hand held horror movie camera in the first act, it calms down somewhat when Jane ages a little and in comes Ruth Wilson -from there on a series of television shows announces her firm presence.

Yep: wrong thread, I’ll stumble drunkenly onto the Telly Thread.

It’s wine from the Adelaide Hills: $4o a bottle -lilts on the tongue, it does.

[Arbutus @arbutus]

@janetteb et al

Well, I did my bit to get things back on track, a few posts back, but all in vain apparently. You lot will not stay focused, will you? 🙂

Lucky for us all the mods seem to be on vacation this weekend.We could move Dickens etc. to the books thread, I suppose.

It’s a holiday weekend in North America, but I don’t think that is true in the UK, is it? So I’m currently sitting at my kitchen table with my morning tea, watching Mr. Arbutus make muffins, and getting ready to wake the teenager up for his last day of summer freedom before school starts. Ah, domesticity.

 

 

[Anonymous @]

<span class=”useratname”>@purofilion</span>

have you checked out the video? let me know what you think about it

[Anonymous @]

@Judefjackets-2

Sorry! I am dim witted! What video? I’m sure you mentioned it but my memory is not what it once was 🙂

Kindest,

puro

[Anonymous @]

hahaha i was talking about the latest season’s trailer

[Anonymous @]

@arbutus

sounds delightful! muffins….

School, not so much!

Boy has Sept hols in 2 weeks where he’ll be doing “soccer practise daily” -or so he says. I think it will be Soccer FIFA, Play Station, actually 🙂

[Anonymous @]

@judefjackets-2

ah  yes, I will go to the trailer thread -discussion over there: to protect those who don’t want to see any spoilers at all. I think did make some comments last week or thereabouts!

Walking over later…..:)

[ichabod @ichabod]

@purofilion  In the case of Mr. Rochester, I’d say in reality he’d be about as attractive a romantic partner as any arrogant, self-centered putz flaunting his romantical locks (that will surely never fall out) while  and casually, coldly confident of his general dominance.  What he gains by getting his comeuppance for his bad behavior (losing his home and being blinded and partially crippled) isn’t virtue, but humility.  Jane was the humble but forthright dependent.  Now *he* is reduced to humble dependency, which at least has the potentiality to develop in him virtues similar to Jane’s — at least if you subscribe to the Victorian delusion that suffering ennobles, a handy justification for not bothering helping actual sufferers.  In my experience, suffering is just as likely to leave sufferers prone to spreading pain to others as best they can (misery loves company), at least for a time.

Been out sick, all, but finally feeling human again and trying to catch up a bit — meantime welcome, new members!

ichi

[Ludivine @ludivine]

Hello everybody !

I’m Ludivine. I’ve just arrived in London (I live in France originally). I really like Doctor Who, so here I am !

I can’t wait to discover London and meet some Whovians =)

[Anonymous @]

@ichabod

Oh I agree regarding the ‘virtues’  and ‘noble’ suffering

-the protestant work ethic…at work, in my opinion.

@ludivine Happy Who! Welcome and enjoy. Have a seat on The Sofa! I’m from Oz, myself, and so my ‘meetings’ are all ethereal and timey and whimey -and it’s pretty good (great, actually)

[Anonymous @]

@TheConsultingDoctor

I did tag you on the Spoiler thread regarding some of your ideas and I wanted to mention that here -in case tags on spoilers are not diverted to your ‘in box’. It was a response to your well thought out observation/discussion back in late August.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

I was itching to join in the conversation about Dickens etc. but alas, I have had to spend the better part of the last few days dealing with the aftermath of a Trojan which had managed to sneak past my firewalls.

Resetting my computer to factory default and then re-installing various bits of soft ware and reloading my documents from backup was tedious but straightforward.  But then the stupid machine tried to install more than two years’ worth of updates (166 of them) all in one gulp, and gave itself massive indigestion.  So for almost 24 hours I was locked out of the system while it tried to sort itself out.  Then, when it had done so, I had to spend almost the whole of yesterday installing the updates manually in small batches. The only thing that saved my sanity was the fact that I had some cryptic crosswords* to distract me while I was doing so.

* Of course, there may be some of you who think that an addiction to cryptic crosswords is in itself a mark of insanity, in which case I will admit freely to being bananas (but not psychopathic)  🙂

[janetteB @janetteb]

@mudlark. I sympathise. I hate updates with a vengeance. They are as irritating as Daleks. Not too late to join in the Dickens discussion. Also I was thinking of you reading the article about the hidden Durrington Walls henge.

Cheers

Janette

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@mudlark

You have my deepest sympathy. Last month I spent a day uploading Windows 10. A day because, once I’d uploaded Windows 10 itself, I had to find several workarounds to keep my printer and finance program going.

I really, really object to this policy of ‘planned obsolescence’. Ah, capitalism. We need people to keep buying things or the whole pyramid will collapse. Silly me. 🙄

[Levram @levram]

Hello, i wish to make this my introductory post and present a question about the TARDIS.

 

Is it actually bigger on the inside?

 

OOOOOOOORRRRRR…..

 

Does it actually shrink things down to the order of nano technology?

 

I’ve been a long time fan of Doctor Who, since Tom Baker.

 

of the modern Doctors, I am most familiar with Eccelston and Tennant, I’ve not seen a lot of Smith, but I am completely unfamiliar with the Doctor who followed Smith as I don’t get the BBC any more.

And, there is one thing i’ve noticed about the Daleks. They have something in common with the Hammer Films Dracula movies.

 

They keep coming back.

 

 

 

 

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@bluesqueakpip   My sentiments exactly!

On the other hand, we have to allow for the fact that the technology is improving very rapidly.  I still recall with a shudder the computer I was issued with when I started a new job in 1991.  It was a Toshiba portable, with programs running on DOS and with only about 20MB of memory;  and the dedicated program which we were expected to use for writing reports was a nightmare, even by the standards of the day.

How do you find Windows 10?  I had been considering upgrading, then the recent setback bumped me back to Windows 8 – which was what was installed when I bought the PC – and I have today had to re-upgrade to Windows 8.1 before contemplating anything further.

@janetteb    I will go back over the conversation on Dickens and 19th century novels to see if there is anything worthwhile that I can add, although I think that the ground has been pretty well covered.

The latest discovery at Durrington Walls is fascinating, but it is just one of a whole series of revelations about the prehistoric landscape around Stonehenge.   Ground penetrating radar and other non-invasive techniques of investigation, such as have been used in this survey, are rapidly transforming the nature of archaeological investigation*.  One of the first things which we budding archaeologists were told to keep in mind back in the day, was that ‘excavation is destruction’ and therefore not to be undertaken lightly or without adequate means of comprehensive recording.  And now we have the means to learn a great deal without having to excavate and destroy, even if excavation may ultimately be needed for verification of the details.

* But they haven’t revealed anything under Stonehenge, so the reboot of the universe must have done away with the undercroft where the Pandorica was stored  🙂

 

[Missy @missy]

@phaseshift @janetteb MiaPatrick @puro

I am so sorry not to have answered the above posts. It was not my intention to be rude.
Not being on here every day, posts pile up. Also when I receive notifications and click on one, I lose the rest. Obviously I’m doing something wrong? HELP!

Regards with apologies,

Missy

[Missy @missy]

@levram

Hello there and Good point!

Missy

[Missy @missy]

@mudlark

You have my sympathies too. Just over a year ago, I too was infested with the trojan virus – no fire wall *duh*

I was put on to TechBuZZ and they sorted me out. didn’t lose anything, didn’t have to re-install anything, they did it all. Cost a bit, but it has been worth it. Any time I see a problem,. I contact them.

Regards,

Missy

[Missy @missy]

@mudlark

Trying to catch up here. *grins* I love cryptic crosswords, also cryptograms which I print out.

Missy

[Missy @missy]

Frankly I love all the episodes in Series 8, as well as Capaldi as the Doctor. However, the odd episode I watch less, The forest and Kill the Moon being two of them, but I certainly don’t dislike them either.

Regards,

Missy

[Missy @missy]

@miapatrick

Yes, I’ve read a few of his Young Adult Disc World books, and enjoyed them.

[Anonymous @]

@levram

hallo and welcome to you.

I think the Tardis is bigger on the inside. In Flatline the Tardis’ energy was being leaked out and so it was smaller and smaller on the inside. Time is an unusual thing in the world of Who and TL science, exacting and futuristic, is not something we ‘get’. The Doctor did say that if the actual mass of the Tardis was taken into account, it would virtually flatten the earth: the Tardis is so huge its interior is unknowable. Or so I believe.

Kindest,

Purofilion

[Anonymous @]

@missy

if you’re losing your notifications, then perhaps by clicking on one, can you navigate to the Activity page and once there, have a quick scan of what activity you may have missed.

No-one worries if you don’t ‘respond’ to a ‘question’ -it’s a series of random thoughts usually and people may not always read what is written (most people do read them in my experience, eventually). They’ll pay attention, however, but they don’t necessarily have the time to respond themselves -real life and all that!

The Activity page is the best way to scan what you may have missed. It’ll heat up by the 20th Sept, though.

Enjoy! Kindest, puro

[ichabod @ichabod]

@purofilion  One of the elements of the show that I’ve seen exploited with glee and imagination in some fanfic is the enormousness of the interior of the Tardis and its changing variety, since some writers have the Tardis adding and shifting variously purposed “rooms” around more or less at will.  Does that happen in the show?  Is most of the Tardis held in a state of potentiality, actualized and de-actualized in bits as needed, so the mass of the entire thingie is never fully materialized?  Doctor: “I’ve got a swimming pool around here someplace” (I think that’s an actual line, but no idea from where) would mean either that the Doctor could set off from the bridge in any direction, and the Tardis would manifest a swimming pool down the corridor and little lights lighting the way with labels, “This way to the swimming pool”; or that the Doctor never bothers looking for the swimming pool because it’s a fixed part of the Tardis, shown in the floor (?) plans, and lies two or three leagues west of the Bridge because the Tardis is so huge, and by the time you got there you’d be ready for dinner instead . . . ?  Something as crass as moving sidewalks, to get around?  Segways?

Heck, aliens (of some kind that the Tardis likes the company of, or has been bamboozled by) could have colonized whole “wings” of the Tardis, and you’d never know because you never *get* to that Italian hill village tucked away in sector 20, or pod 90, or whatever — ?

I’m seeing the Tardis from the outside, inside my head that is, as a cloud of mostly unrealized potential space and purpose that extends a sort of pseudopod with the Bridge chamber at the end of it to the surface of a planet so as not to flatten the place.  Kind of like a dialog bubble in a comic book, with the little spike that connects it to whichever character is speaking serving as the extension that ends in the Tardis as entry-point and command outpost to the whole thing.

Maybe I should just go back to sleep.  It’s 1:45 a.m. September 10 here in New Mexico.  But maybe much more is known about the Tardis through BF and the books and all?  I’ve got no time for any of that, so I wouldn’t know.

 

 

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