On The Sofa (10)

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@miapatrick So sorry about your loss. That’s a tough one at any time but that sounds particularly hard. Take it easy, and all the best with your dissertation. Big ups to your partner.

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@scaryb I have of late discovered that if my diss work is becoming disheartening and tiring, doing a little work on probate application (without will) and estate valuation reminds me how, overall, and relatively, fun academic work is…

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@miapatrick    I suspect I must have enjoyed my student days (5 decades ago) since I quite frequently dream of being back at University.   Though usually the context is, I’m late for a lecture, and I can’t remember what room it’s in, except it’s  somewhere the other side of the campus, and I can’t find my timetable to locate it, and I can’t remember the lecturer’s name to ask somebody…

This is very odd, since that was never a problem for me at the time.

But there was something very pleasant about the atmosphere at a university, being able to wander around the campus and relax.    I don’t know if that has changed in these security-minded days.

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@dentarthurdent I don’t know so much about campus’ – my undergrad and my current Masters are with the OU. I have almost exactly the same dream, only it’s about going back to school for some strange reason, I can’t find the room, or the timetable… or actually quite work out why I, being the age I am (which is always my current age in the dream) am going back to school in the first place…

regarding university study, I personally find it’s (especially at this point), as the saying goes, like hitting your head against a brick wall, it’s so pleasant when it stops. But it’s also very UN-like hitting your head against a brick wall, in that whenever you stop you find yourself missing it, and you even end up taking out loans to build a new wall to hit your head against.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@dentarthurdent @scaryb

I know that dream all too well. I’m at school or university and I’m about to sit an exam but realise that I haven’t attended any of the classes in that subject and I’m going to have to wing it somehow.

I certainly enjoyed my time as a university student in Edinburgh, both work and play, and the only classes I skipped were lectures on French language (one of my ancillary subjects), because those were on ground I’d already covered in doing GCE A and S levels. In fact you couldn’t sit any exam without a document certifying that you had ‘duly performed’ the necessary class work – i.e. attended tutorials and written the required number of essays. They couldn’t really check up on lectures attended – except in the case of Hons. Archaeology, which were more like seminars anyway because the number of honours students was so small.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@miapatrick    So you and Mudlark have almost the same dream as me?    There must be something deep-rooted (and probably Freudian) about that dream!

I actually found the course work quite hard (it was Civil Engineering).    I did wimp out of one option (fluid dynamics) a few weeks in, it sounded interesting but I found it was fearsomely mathematical and I concluded I could either try and pass that at the expense of every other subject, or swap to a less demanding one (Public Health Engineering, which was mostly descriptive).   No, my lingering feelings of fondness are not for the coursework, more for the ambiance of the University.

@mudlark    Ah, French.   Had it as a subject for a year at grammar school, the first subject I dropped as being utterly useless (!)     Then in 2013, touring in the Alps with some friends, I discovered I could still decipher a few words on signs.    So when I got back here, I took some Beginner’s French evening classes – the first time I’ve been back in a ‘school’ setting in 5+ decades.   The tutor was a charming French Canadienne who delighted in pointing out the quirks of Canadian ‘French’  (‘only in Canada’).   I also bought a boxful of trashy French paperbacks and started reading them laboriously with the aid of a dictionary, I’m up to #30 by now- they are dire, full of sub-James Bond sex and violence, but at least more interesting than ‘Mr Brown goes to the Bank’.   So by now I can read almost anything French  (but spoken French, or speaking it myself, is another matter).    I signed up for another French (Intermediate) evening course recently, but then our latest Covid outbreak happened.   I must check and see if it’s restarting about now.

 

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent  @mudlark   @miapatrick    I have a variation of the same dream which finds me standing outside a door knowing that I have to go in and write an exam but realizing that I have forgotten everything. My mind is blank and I am in a cold panic. I can’t go in but I can’t leave either. A very frustrating dream considering I haven’t been at school for 35 years.

I had 3 kids when I went back to school so it was always a juggling act but I did enjoy it and the people!

stay safe.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@dentarthurdent @mudlark, @miapatrick and @winston

Mudlark’s analagy of hitting one’s head on a wall summs up Uni well. It is fun but also massively stressful however once we finish we long to return. I have always thought that one day I would go back and now I am running out of excuses for putting it off. Earlier this year it was suggested that I use a history that I have been working on for the past few years as a Creative writing Masters or Ph’d. Naturally I have done nothing at all towards actually talkign to the Uni to find out if this is possible. Meanwhile I have been helping the boys and the eldest’s girlfriend with their uni essays for the past few years which is far too much fun though reminds me of just how stressful Uni is. I love the work, hate the deadlines.

I have that recurring dream too. In mine it is the night before an exam that I have not studied for or the end of semester and I find out that I am enrolled in a subject that I have done no work for at all. (I had a friend who had that happen. Thought the subect was second semester. Found out at the end of Semester one that it was first. He failed.) It was so bad at one time that I began to feel as though it was real and had to remind myself it was just a dream.

there are variations of the dream, it is Christmas eve and I have no gifts for the boys. That one started when they were young or I have not made any cards or the family are about to arrive and there is no food prepared. I dream about leaving my camera behind somewhere, or having a plane to catch and no time to pack and get to the airport.

Not that I need dreams to remind me of all the things I should be doing or have to do. ..

Cheers

Janette

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@janetteb I also love the work and hate the deadlines, and yet I rarely produce a thing worth any effort, let alone finish it, without a deadline

@dentarthurdent see I’m the complete opposite. But mostly because I’m much better at the work than I am at social atmospheres. Mind you, I’m in humanities for a reason, I’m ridiculously right-brained dominant, so creativity and connections, sure, great fun. Sequences etc… run screaming in horror.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

It seems that some variant of the ‘what have I forgotten? – too late!’ dream is almost universal, at least among Whovians.
Since we’re doing dreams, I had a very consistent recurring dream – I was following a little path up a steep-sided narrow valley, and I came to a place where the path crossed over the stream in a little footbridge, and a big bridge arched high over the lot. Since I was a little nostalgic (not quite homesick) for England after we came to NZ when I was 14, I assumed the dream was a sort of gestalt of the Porth stream at Newquay, the stream in the park at Bournemouth, and Chewton Bunny valley at Highcliffe, Hants, and maybe the park at Hastings, where I used to drag my grand-dad for walks (though we left there when I was 3). I kept having this dream for 30 years.
(In 1921 in Hastings, St Helens Road was extended across a little stream gully in a magnificent two-arched stone-faced bridge. Since it crossed on the skew, the centre pier would have been a wall angled across the stream, damming it. So they made a little archway through the bottom of the pier for the stream to flow through. And the little footpath up the valley crossed over the stream, under the big bridge).
In 1991, on my first trip ‘back’, we visited Hastings, I bought a street map and, idly glancing at it, I saw the long-forgotten words ‘Old Roar Ghyll’ which rang a bell (actually, it was like a fireworks display going off in my head). So I just had to walk up the stream of that name – and there was the exact bridge from my dream. I was surprised and overjoyed. I had no conscious memory of it (until I saw it) – but my dreams had remembered. The last time I’d seen it, I was three years old, but it was the exact thing to appeal to my childish imagination.
I never had that dream again, but that’s fine, I now have a memory instead.

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@winston so interesting that so many anxiety dreams centre in on childhood, adolescent childhood at that. Says something about what our schooldays can do to us. Here we are, with bills in our names, tax due, having to make rational decisions to keep ourselves in homes with food etc. And what do we return to for stress dreams? The so called ‘happiest days of our lives’.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@janetteb

‘Twasn’t me who likened university studies to banging my head against a brick wall. In fact, as I said, I mostly enjoyed my time there as an undergraduate. Post graduate research was a different matter. I enjoyed the research itself, but for the most part I was working in isolation with no-one to bounce ideas off, apart from my brief trips back to Edinburgh to consult my supervisor and use the libraries. Many of my contemporaries had chosen subjects on the basis of those which they had done well at in GCE A level, and maybe they felt differently, and maybe I was lucky. At the age of 16 I had set my heart on becoming an archaologist, so I was studying exactly the subject I wanted to, and with an end in view. Like all students in the faculty of Arts in Edinburgh, we had to take two other first year courses; in the case of Hons Archaeology a language, ancient or modern, and one other (I chose Social Anthropology as being reasonably relevant). Unlike most other Hons courses, we also had to do part of the Honours courses in History and Fine Art, neither of which I found particularly onerous. Fine Art, in fact, was a breeze. From a very early age I had been browsing my mother’s books on art history, and found when it came to it that I had unconsciously absorbed a great deal of information on artists and their work.

@dentarthurdent

Intriguing that you should have had an accurate dream relating to early childhood. I have never had such a dream, though I can remember certain dreams which I can date from when I was four or younger. I also have quite a few memories dating from when I was two – or even younger, according to my mother when I asked her for verification concerning one when I was carried down from my afternoon nap and taken in to the sitting room to see the Christmas tree. These memories are largely visual, like short video clips, and I was never sure quite how accurate they were until this year. One of my brothers came across a recent estate agent’s description, with photos, of the house on the Yorkshire moors where we lived when I was born, and which we left at least six months before my third birthday.  It confirmed that my memories were entirely accurate. I could pin-point, on the plan and in the photos, exactly where I was when the ‘video clips’ in my mind’s eye were recorded –  e.g. where my pram was when I sat in it watching my mother at the kitchen range, or where I was standing, next to the kitchen door from the inner hallway, when I watched my mother at the kitchen table cleaning the  oil lamps: no electricity – or telephone – in those primitive days and in that remote location, though we did have indoor plumbing thanks to a handy spring just uphill from us.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

I hasten to correct any implication that, because one memory was genuine, all my memories are accurate. I think the brain ‘reconstructs’ memories from a few key clues, with a generous helping of supposition and inference. (See ‘invisible gorilla’)   Though @miapatrick I absolutely accept that your brain got it right 🙂

But the fallibility of my memory was graphically proved to me once. I went to a party at an eccentric friend’s, Terry, who had a huge New Zealand flag as a bedspread. A decade later I ran into him on a bus, and I said “Last time I saw you, you were walking down the street dressed in a flag” – which he indignantly denied, though I would have sworn, on oath, that it was true. But anyway, he invited me to his wedding a few weeks later. And at the reception, at his house, there was a wall covered with stapled photos from his past – including one of *me* wearing the flag. I know what my brain did – it remembered “Terry, eccentric, party, flag, being worn” – and put it together all wrong. (And lest any cynic think “Photoshop”, this was before home computers could do graphics in more than 8 colours).

Miapatrick – your young childhood, in a house without electricity – amazing. I find it hard to really imagine (until I reflect that Mrs D, too, lived on an island without electricity until the 1970’s. But no, I still can’t really imagine it).

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@dentarthurdent

It was me, not Miapatrick, who remembers living in a house with no electricity 🙂 .  I suppose that for most people now it is hard to imagine, but at that time there were still many houses in remote rural areas in Britain which were not yet connected to the grid or even to a gas supply. I was born in 1942, in the middle of the war. When my parents first married they lived in lodgings in one room, so when I was expected * they had to find somewhere else to live, and in wartime it wasn’t all that easy. What they had to settle for was a farmhouse, situated about a mile from the nearest village and nearly half a mile from the road, which had been unoccupied for several years owing to some dispute over a will. Apparently they got it rent free for the first few months because they had to make it habitable, but fortunately my mother was in nest-building mode.

My parents were both born in 1915, and as it happened my mother had grown up in houses without electricity, where lighting was by gas, cooking was on a coal-fired kitchen range, and washing was done in an old-fashioned copper, with water supplied from a single tap in the scullery and heated by a fire lit under the copper, and ‘the facilities’ were a privy at the bottom of the garden. At least we had indoor plumbing, and the coal-fired kitchen range had a back boiler to heat the water.

I know about the dangers of confabulation when it comes to memory, but those early visual childhood memories are very vivid and mine alone, with the exception of the memory of the Christmas tree – and even in that case I could describe the room in greater detail than my mother could remember. They relate to everyday things which no one else had any reason to remember, such as sitting on my potty on the flag stones of the kitchen floor, with the doorway to the inner hall and the cellar door behind me to my left, a leg of the kitchen table immediately to my right, and the legs of people passing back and forth to my left. In fact, as I said above, the recent photos and floor plans I saw this year checked out exactly with those early memories.  I’m a lot less sure about some of my more recent memories, though.

After we left that remote farmhouse we moved to a rather better equipped house in a village near Halifax where my father worked, and we lived there for two years until we moved to Norwich in the winter of 1946/47. I had never been back there until just before Christmas 1968 when, as a break from my post-graduate toils, I stopped off on my way back from Edinburgh to stay for a week or so with family friends who had a small hill farm not far from where I was born.  My father, who regularly returned to Halifax on business, picked me up on his way home, but stopped at a certain point on the road where it overlooked a valley with a row of houses on the opposite side. He didn’t say anything, but I immediately recognized the house where we had lived when I was between the ages 2-4, and my first thought was, ‘They’ve built a garage over my sand-pit’.

* provisional name Stinky apparently, though I was never going to adopt that as my user name

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@mudlark   @miapatrick    I do apologise so much for swapping your names!    It was entirely inadvertent and a stupid mistake to make.    I’d go back and fix it with an edit but I’m out of time for that.

Please (both of you) accept my apology.   I wish I could promise never to do it again but I’m afraid I do make silly mistakes from time to time.

Mudlark, I’ll read your interesting post later today.    Just wanted to get this apology in as soon as I could.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@mudlark

That was a fascinating insight into pre-electronic life.

Of course young kids don’t really notice the lack of facilities like plumbing and refrigerators, that’s ‘someone else’s problem’.

Probably the most primitive place I lived was in 1953, after our family had gone to Perth, West Australia for three years, couldn’t handle the heat, and came back – we lived for a few months in a Nissen hut in a pine wood near Ringwood. (Googling tells me Christchurch council was using old wartime camps as temporary housing). I expect my parents hated it, I loved living in a forest. Probably my liking for pine woods (all woods, really) comes from that.

Mrs D, on the other hand, grew up on a Pacific island, in a house of pandanus logs with a thatch roof. And no electricity, just paraffin lamps. (The island now has a limited electricity supply with solar panels and batteries. Enough to work refrigerators and, I think, the inevitable smartphones).

[David the “erratic” Whovian @davidwho]

Welcome to the new members. I am a new member myself. Few weeks old. Have been inactive for a few days…

 

I am liking the threads that are bringing up Sarah Jane Smith and K9. They, specially Sarah Jane, were my favorite plot points/topics/interests in Classic Who. As well as after the revival.

Like Tom Baker (And the character of Romana II), Sarah Jane had become the advertised face; the notion to transitively link back to the show called Doctor Who.

Plus her body language was refreshingly funny and witty.

A lot of characters were funny, but the inception and enunciation of a line like “I could murder a cup of coffee..”; her delivery and sense of using the term murder. It’s both equally funny and erratic.

Plus her expressions were golden. Specially when 3 regenerates to 4. It’s like the Brigadiers’ expressions of “I am so done with this space-hobo with teeth and curls, but oh…wait, we need him still” was carried on to her for a moment or two.

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Well, after a bit of a pause, I restarted with In the Forest of the Night.  Marvellous title, too bad about the episode, I actually liked it less this time round than my first viewing.   Almost Kill the Moon levels of impossibility.   Once again, the closer an episode approaches to mundane earthly physical reality, the bigger my scepticism for supernatural events (Alien tech?  Fine.   Trees growing a thousand times faster and then somehow evaporating?   Nah.)   So I posted a review in the forum for the episode, but please don’t bother reading it if you loved the ep, I don’t really want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment.   Never mind, Dark Water next.   🙂

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

… and while you folks were trying to disentangle the cast of thousands (apparently) in The Vanquishers, I was (re-)reading Doug Adams’   Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.    Which is, I think, quite tightly plotted, *but* it’s told in a non-linear multi-threaded way that requires (and rewards) concentration to follow.   For example, the eponymous anti-hero doesn’t even appear until Chapter 8.    And Adams doesn’t always specify exactly what is happening, or to whom – he leaves the reader to deduce it for themselves.   Although the style is quite different, it reminds me of Catch-22 in the way it weaves around.   However, it’s entertaining enough to make it an enjoyable read even when there are loose (and not-understood) ends dangling in my mind.

So after I finished the book, I looked for a synopsis of the plot and found an excellent one on the Wikipedia page.  A whole four screenfuls of dense ‘plot summary’, in fact, that cleared it all up.   Rather snottily, Wikipedia has noted “This section may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience. Please help by spinning off or relocating any relevant information, and removing excessive detail that may be against Wikipedia’s inclusion policy.”   Obviously Wikipedia has never read the book!   Anything less would leave out small but important plot points.

So anyway, excellent book, one of DNA’s best.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@dentarthurdent I have not yet read the Dirk Gently books. I really enjoyed the British adaptation with Stephen Mangan. Have not seen the U.S. version. I believe both are reasonably different to the books.

cheers

Janette

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb   Hi, I wasn’t even aware that there had ever been a TV adaptation of Dirk Gently until I started Googling for a synopsis of the plot.   I was a bit cynical about the TV versions but if you liked them (or at least the British one) I’d guess it must be quite well done.

Though I’d also guess it might differ substantially from the book, both because the book is so tightly plotted I don’t see how one could make a series out of it (it would have to be a carefully scripted one-off mini-series), and because DNA is famous for the variation between different versions of his works (I’m referring to Hitch-hiker of course, which was variously a radio series, a stage play(?), a trilogy of books, a TV series, and a movie, and substantially different every time).

 

[Missy @missy]

I have heard a couple of Dick Gently’s books on YouTube – a while back actually. There are a few of them. Audio I mean.

Missy

[winston @winston]

@janetteb  and @dentarthurdent   I liked the book and the BBC TV show but had no idea there was an American version. The book is a bit of work but worth it, quirky,smart, funny and assumes the reader has a brain. Mostly I like Dirk and his philosophies.

Stay safe.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

So I just watched Last Christmas (and put my comments in the forum for that episode), then re-watched it again. (DVD’s are absolutely marvellous for that sort of thing). I find I can understand a lot more, second time round, when I have a rough idea of where it’s going. Events and statements become more meaningful or nuanced with a bit of foresight. And I can enjoy them without having to devote my attention to following the plot.

I see most of the commenters (which includes most of those still here) liked it as much as I did. Sarcastic Santa and his unruly elves, what’s not to love? Even if Santa was an imaginary construct of the victims’ subconscious.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

Happy New Year everyone. Hope 2022 brings you health and happiness… and the Dr Who that you want!

(Apologies for my absence recently – had a wee bout of Covid, so been delayed in catching up, and behind with comments. 0/10 for the yeti 😛  🙁   )

Will be on catch up for tonight as well – tho with its time-loopy theme, will anyone know?

Hoping for a good one!

See y’all on t’other side.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@scaryb Sorry to hear about the dreaded lurgee, but very pleased to hear it was only wee bout, and that you are back!

And also, a shout out to the wonderful @craig, who continues to keep the lights burning for us in this home away from home.

Happy new year to all!

[winston @winston]

@scaryb  Glad you are felling better and only had a wee bout. My granddaughter has it now but has no symptoms, except boredom, from being banished to her room for 10 days. She could give it to her family even though she has no symptoms.It was very quiet Xmas here this year.

Thank you for the good wishes and Happy Who Year to you too!

Stay safe.

[nerys @nerys]

@scaryb and @winston I’m sorry that you have had to deal directly with Covid. @scaryb, I’m glad that your case was a mild one, and @winston, how relieved you must feel that your granddaughter is asymptomatic (though I understand what you mean about the possibility of spreading it to the rest of her family). That’s the best we can hope for with this virus.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

Hope you’re feeling better @scaryb , and @winston that the rest of your family stay Covid free. It’s everywhere right now – bloomin’ Covid Christmas, as Raymond Briggs would say. I’ve been indoors for the last ten days with my sis, as she tested + on Christmas eve. So far I’ve escaped – lots of open windows! We are out of Covid-gaol tomorrow.

Proper Victorian convalesence warranted though.

 

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@scaryb and @winston

Sorry to hear about your Covid encounters and that you’re all safe, well and on the mend…

And all the best to all the bonkerising crew for ’22.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

And a Happy New Year to everyone.

Only vaguely Who-related, but this popped up in my Youtube feed:

and it reminded me irresistibly of the first NuWho episode ‘Rose’.   Like, with the Autons…

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

We just finished watch The Pandorica Opens. What a fabulous episode. The Big Bang follows after dinner. If there was an explanation of why Moffat was brilliant and why Chibnall isn’t, then honestly this is it.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

OK, just finished watching The Big Bang. Was it fabulous? Yes. Obviously. Was it about about the end of the universe? Yes. Was it better than The Vanquishers in the way it handled the potential destruction of the universe?

What, is that a trick question?

 

 

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Hmm @blenkinsopthebrave I think you may have it Moffat was brilliant he was able to carry a series arc and keep individual episode stories fun and enjoyable. He doesn’t  seem to have sacrifice the episode story in order to tell the series arcs. I’m not saying Moffat had a perfect record but Chibnall who the fans seem to generally agree has been a relatively poor front runner as seemed to be all about a series arc rather than the individual episodes. I’m not saying Chibnall isn’t a good story teller because when he’s not concentrating on an overall arc he seems to have produced who I consider classic type Who episodes for example the Eve of the Daleks it seemed with Flux out the way he has produced what appears to be a throughly enjoyable episode. This is unfortunate really because when he was announced as the Showrunner and with Jodies appointment as the Doctor is seemed to for-bode of a successful combination that didn’t appear.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@blenkinsopthebrave  I share your liking for Pandorica / Big Bang.   The Moff has a talent for ingenious plotting and unexpected events (Daleks and Cybermen working together?) and revelations that neatly turn the situation on its head (the deadly contents of the Pandorica are… the Doctor?)

I’ve reached The Magician’s Apprentice (Witch’s Familiar to follow).   Another brilliant episode – who could ever forget the Doctor riding on a tank blasting out power chords on his axe.   And Colony Sarff – a sentient nest of snakes – what a memorable character.

And Missy’s back! – as idiosyncratic, perverse and dangerous as ever.   A sheer joy to watch.

I loved the dialogue in the prologue, between the Doctor and Ohila:

OHILA: Why do you always lie?
DOCTOR: Why do you always assume I’m lying?
OHILA: It saves time.

And then the exchange neatly illustrates the exact point –

OHILA: The truth – will you go?
DOCTOR: No.
OHILA: When?
DOCTOR: Soon.

As for a cliffhanger, Daleks shooting Missy, Clara and blowing up the Tardis will do very nicely – till next episode.

 

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@devilishrobby interestingly, to me, The Flux story worked, for much of the run, precisely because it was about the archiest arch following I’ve seen in a long time. He’s not as good at Moffat at stringing together independent stories into an overall story, but the less independent the stories, the better his work seemed to play out. And even with the New Years day episode, some of the strongest elements (besides an absolutely cracking use of a time-loop with twist) was, again to me, a sense of the episode as a kind of bridge between the Flux and whatever he’s going to do to wrap his run up. She’s in some sort of conflict with Time, Yaz’s feelings for her, consequences for her slaughter of the Daleks.

About the wrapping up of the run, I’m not entirely confident, for the same reason I felt the Flux fell a little flat and frustrating at the end- he hasn’t been very good at endings to his stories. And this does make the use of a longer-form story all the more problematic because it makes it more frustrating.

While I agree about the brilliance of Moffat, I think he might often have been particularly brilliant for a particular kind of viewer. People willing and able to keep up, recognise call backs, who wanted puzzles to try to solve. Which is why I think the return of RTD is a good thing for the program in general. I prefer Moffart, I don’t mind Chibs, but Russel is what’s needed.

[melLouie @mellouie]

Hi everyone,

I’m new here and I wish you all a wonderfull year! Little background: I’m French (don’t hesitate to correct my English, it’s not my 1st language, so…), and a whovian since 2008.

Back on the topic, I’m agree with you, @miapatrick. I think the return of RTD will do great to the show. I loved Moffat era (yes, he’s brillant). And Chibnall era isn’t always wonderfull, or brillant. Often, I found it boring. But at the end of Moffat’s, I was exhausted. It was to much. Every season (sometimes episode) a big mystery, a “wow” revelation. I needed a rest, and Chib was welcome.

But I’m exting for the RTD’s come back. I found his work for Doctor Who perfectly balanced. He’a amazing at telling stories and write endearing characters.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@mellouie Welcome to the forum and happy new year. Your English is excellent. NO need for corrections. I agree with your comment though I loved Moffat’s writing and don’t think I would ever tire of it I felt that he was tiring of it towards the end. I hope he writes the occassional episode during RTD’s tenure. I got the impression that they worked well together.

I have a lot of catching up to do with the dicussions so apologies for not commenting on other posts. I just popped in to share this delightful story.

Cheers

Janette

[winston @winston]

@mellouie    Hello and welcome! I hope you like it here,it is a great place to be if you are a Whovian.

@janetteb That was a delightful story. I loved his enthusiasm and love of sci-fi and Doctor Who. His collection is wonderful and if I lived there  I would definitely visit.

Our library changed its website and now wanted a username, something we didn’t need before, so I picked Tardis but no,then Doctor Who but no and so on until I finally found one not taken. I had no idea there were so many Whovians in my mostly rural area. Who are they? Who nose.

Stay safe.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@mellouie, Welcome!

@miapatrick, You are, of course, quite right about Moffat appealing to a particular cohort. I readily admit to being part of that cohort. I confess, I was never really excited by RTD’s take on the Doctor and all the episodes I liked tended to be written by others (and not just Moffat). When it came to Chibnall, I tried really hard, partly because I am so in love with the history of the show. But…

Anyway, I too, am looking forward to the return of RTD. But I suspect that RTD mark II won’t necessarily be the same as RTD mark I. He has developed as a writer and producer and I suspect he won’t be interested in simply reproducing RTD mark I when he takes back the reigns of the show.

@janetteb, I would simply love to be able to visit that museum! Where is a Tardis when you need one?

 

[winston @winston]

@blenkinsopthebrave   They are 2 of my all time favourite , go to, feel good episodes. I will never get tired of them. They just make me feel good. The Doctor calling on all those ships while standing in Stonehenge was spectacular. Rory the Roman waiting all those years is so romantic, this story has it all. Now I must watch them again.

Stay safe.

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@blenkinsopthebrave oh absolutely me too. I did watch and like Who with RTD, enough to feel a little apprehensive at a change. But Moffat made me fall in love with it. But I’m reminded of one of my A level class back at school. I thought the teacher was excellent, I thrived in that classroom. Another student got so overwhelmed she burst into tears half way through taking the A level.

The thing about RTD is that he has, indeed as you say grown as a writer, and he really is extraordinary. My sister in law, who for years was perfectly nice to but refused to let it be publicly known about her son’s boyfriend raved about It’s a Sin. My partner and I were shocked when we watched it, not because of the content but because she wasn’t shocked by it. ‘what, Sharon, ‘this is my son and his roommate’ Sharon loved this?’ Very conservative doesn’t drink turns up for visits at 9 am on a Saturday morning Sharon? (we live two hours away from her). Plus he’s worked with Neil Patrick Harris now. I’d love to see NPH in Who. Something glorious. He can even do a musical number.

I’m hoping, with a fair amount of faith, RTD will incorporate some Moffat elements, because there are some things Moffat did so well. And even some of the stuff Chibs has done, patchy and disappointing as he’s been, he’s also done some interesting things. And something new. Because that’s what he did last time.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

(I wrote a comment and then edited it and the site promptly ate it.   Always seems to do that.   If I retype it, the original will probably magically reappear as well.   Oh well, can’t help).

@mellouie   Bienvenu!   Votre Anglais, c’est meilleur que mon Français.    🙂

I agree with your take on Moffat – except for one thing, I never get tired of his stories.   (Whether he got exhausted after so long writing Doctor Who is, maybe, a different question).

I think, as blenkinsopthebrave said, Moff’s stories appeal to a particular kind of viewer.   They feature original dialogue, often multiple layers of meaning, and complex plots that often twist in an unexpected way.   This makes it quite rewarding to re-watch them and discover things we’d missed on the first time through, or which have subtly different implications when we know what’s about to happen.

But, I think, for casual viewers who can’t be bothered to follow the plot, they’re also entertaining (and this doesn’t necessarily apply to other series with complex plotlines).   I think the Moff said, there needs to be something happening every five minutes that makes the viewer want to see what happens next.    I think maybe his background in comedy contributes to this – in a comedy, you can’t afford to have any ‘flat’ periods where you lose the audience.

(Right.   Now, Dr Who Forum, eat this one!)

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

… and I just watched The Witch’s Familiar. Another Moffat masterpiece.

Missy is dazzling. Entertaining and capriciously dangerous. And with an ice cold steely nerve – she stands in front of Dalek Clara (who she has given no particular reason to like her, aside from saving her life a couple of times, but then she has put Clara in the firing line just as often) to confront another Dalek sent to kill them.

Clara as a Dalek (where have we seen that before?). And it’s fascinating new information that the Dalek tank responds to thought commands from its inhabitant – but that its circuits translate anything outside their limited lexicon as ‘Exterminate’. This explains a lot about Daleks.

The Doctor and Davros – now there’s an interesting dialogue. I think they’re playing a sort of mental chess, manouvreing to get one move up on each other. And Davros obviously doesn’t know about the Doc’s Sonic Shades. But there is so much emotion packed up in this scene – I can even feel for Davros. And he asks “Am I a good man?” – the Doctor’s own trademark question. But then Davros tricks the Doc into supplying regeneration energy to all Daleks – and the Doctor lets him, knowing the consequences will be zombie Daleks regenerating everywhere.

And I do like it that Missy rescues the Doc. But then of course, Missy undoes it all by trying to get the Doctor to kill Dalek Clara. She just can’t help being a little bit naughty.

One other little thing – “Seek. Locate. Destroy.” – the title of a Blakes 7 episode. Was that a little easter egg for scifi fans – I bet it was.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Last night, we watched something from the Blenkinsop DVD collection that had been sitting on the shelf for years: “The Flipside of Dominick Hide.” For anyone who knows it, you will remember it fondly. For anyone who doesn’t know about it the show was on the BBC programme “Play of the Day” in 1980. It was a time travel story (hence the attraction to Whovians) that was incredibly sweet and clever and funny. It starred Peter Firth (who is almost my age) and watching it last night, I realised how it captured, in an uncanny way, what life was like for me in 1980 (the casual lifestyle, the camaraderie among friends, the casualness of relationships).  But not, of course, the time travel.

I have no idea if it is available on any streaming service, but it comes with a four-star recommendation from the Blenkinsop household.

 

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent  I like your new picture!

[janetteB @janetteb]

@blenkinsopthebrave Yes I indeed remember Flipside of Dominic Hyde. It must have screened on ABC not long before I left home. I did think I had it in our collection but a quick check indicates that sadly that is not the case.

@winston and @dentarthurdent Agreed re’ the new picture.

I read out Dentarthurdent’s comment about the Blake’s 7 reference and we spent the next hour looking at Blake’s 7 snippets on You Tube in search of the original opening credits which the boys fondly remember having been subjected to Blake’s 7 numerous times in childhood.

Cheers

Janette

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@winston  @janetteb   Well thank you both!

I realised I’ve been posting here for – over a year, and I still don’t have an  icon?  avatar?  picture.   So I scratched my head but in the end there was only one that would suit.

Blakes 7 opening credits – quite memorable, but very seventies.  Well, actually, the logo reminds me stylistically of comic-book sci-fi from an earlier era – Dan Dare (or even Flash Gordon).   I think maybe B7 was one of the first TV scifi series where the ‘goodies’ didn’t always win (and frequently weren’t exactly the ‘goodies’).

As intros go, personally, I think I’d pick Red Dwarf.   But of course, in any memorable-intro contest, the original Who intro wins hands down.

[nerys @nerys]

We recently finished up all four seasons of Unforgotten. Powerful, powerful stuff. In between waiting for our DVDs we’d put on hold at the library, we also watched two other series, Time (starring Sean Bean) and Mare of Easttown (starring Kate Winslet). All equally powerful, in their own ways. Between that and watching No Time To Die (Daniel Craig’s final Bond film) on Blu-ray, our viewing has been a little on the heavy side. We like dark stories, but now it’s getting to be a bit much. Though Time and Mare of Easttown both deal with the subject of forgiveness, which lends hope to an otherwise dark story. Oh, and then today we watched 1917. Definitely need something lighter now!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Well, Series 12 of Doctor Who has just arrived in my mailbox. (The real one, not the virtual emailbox). Haven’t watched anything yet. I have to say I’m slightly disappointed in the packaging – just plain blue generic DVDs with ‘Disc One’ etc on them. Not even a list of the episodes, on the DVDs or the box. Compare that with e.g. Series 9 that I have open right now – each S9 DVD has an individual label with leading characters superimposed on a mock ‘confession dial’ and the box has a full list of the episodes and extras on each DVD.
Admittedly that has nothing to do with the quality of the episodes, but I would have thought the series’ purported increased budget would have extended to fancying the DVDs up a little.
So now I have the choice – continue on with Series 9 and do 12 in due course, or break it and watch 12 now. That would have the advantage of getting me nearer the same page as the rest of you 🙂

Other news – we had our covid booster shots yesterday and my left arm is aching. Odd, that never happened with the first two.

And, in my quest to find the ‘best’ bootleg (Youtube) recording of Mark Knopfler’s ‘Piper to the End’, I have narrowed the 74 (!) videos (was 57 but it grew…) down to 31. Mostly just knocking out the ones with excessive audience noise. Why do some people think that a performance that thousands of people have paid to see and hear can be improved by them whistling and hooting at the top of their voice? I was speculating – if I had a time machine, I could maybe go back to e.g. Nimes in July 2010, and identify the loudest contributor(s), then track them back another couple of hours (can Tardis technology do that?) and steal their cars’ ignition leads. Or just give them laryngitis. The only consequences of this would be a vastly improved Youtube video for everyone to enjoy and me to download. What are the time travel ethics of this? Would the Doctor (and by that I mean Capdoc) approve?

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