On The Sofa (9)

[syzygy @thane16]

@rob sounds wonderful!

@scaryb  oh, that be very clever….the top’s poking out. I like it!

 

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@blenkinsopthebrave and @rorysmith

The BBC has no advert breaks and is available to anyone with a UK IP address (I think).

So, you didn’t hear this from me but *cough* VPN. 🙂

I don’t know about these things, honestly – I have Netflix and Amazon Prime for movies and TV shows and I have iPlayer as I’m in the UK.

But find a computer nerd who knows about these things. I’d recommend it.

There are some dodgy streaming sites out there as well, but they try to infect your computer every chance they get – so I’d avoid unless you have robust and multiple virus protection software.

[NearlySane @nearlysane]

Joined up today as I was looking for somewhere to talk about the new series that wasn’t a set of flame wars, and having looked at this site, it seems to allow discussion without being overly combative. As someone who helps run a message board, my hat is doffed for maintaining that balance.

About me: I’m a 50-blah male whose first TV memory is Troughton as Dr Who. I’m not a full fledged geek in my opinion just a long term fan.

I look forward to reading the threads in more detail and to posting opinions on the new series in particular, though having read the very interesting blog on the Moffat years, I may well dip back as well.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@thane16

Hi Puro. Many thanks, and yes, the jelly babies are standing by, and the chocolate, and, of course, the coffee. In fact, there is a brilliant florist-and-coffee shop only a short walk away that makes divine affiagtos (affigati?) with soft serve ice cream and brilliant espresso.

@scaryb

Many thanks as well, from the outpost of Empire. But at least, unlike the wife of the US president, I do not wear a pith helmet in my outpost of empire.

@mudlark

Your support is greatly appreciated, although I fear I may have undercut my victim status [Note to self: too much context]

@craig

Many thanks. Your secret is safe with me…

 

[janetteB @janetteb]

@blenkinsopthebrave Sorry to hear about your “Who” related problems.The lunacy our our current government only gets more and more extreme. One would laugh if the outcomes were not so destructive, for the population and for the environment. I don’t know what upsets me more the government or the fools who keep voting them in. At least here in SA we had many years of sanity, though we were punished for it but now we too have succumbed to the stupidity.

I have not watched the new episode either yet but I only have to wait another day. We have a Dr Who event tomorrow night. Heading out shortly to buy the required jelly babies. Have to make Jammy Dodgers as they are not longer available in supermarkets here.

@nearlysane Welcome to the forum. I like the username.

cheers

Janette

[syzygy @thane16]

@nearlysane

Great handle!

Yes indeed this is a sane site as @janetteb indicates. The only twerp, last year, who became erm, difficult was actually me (but I totally put that down to medication & general insanity   😉

Agreed. I imagine the flame wars and unhilarity -hilarity would be most unbecoming for a civilised person. I assumed (foolishly) that people would love the entire episode. I’m confused as to what’s not to like?

Still, my bad, wrong thread.   😀

Welcome

Puro and Thane16

[Missy @missy]

@kharis

I was only joking about we Leo’s. We can  be a great pain in the rear!

Missy

[Missy @missy]

@bambi70006

Hello there and welcome.

Missy

[Missy @missy]

@rob

Hello there, love the avatar! I wish………………………

Missy

[Kharis @kharis]

@missy Leos are awesome!  Every Leo I know shines and tells like it is. (:

[Missy @missy]

@kharis

What a generous thing to say.

Not very true of me, although I do say what I think – regardless. However, this doesn’t mean that I am always right.

Missy

 

[Kharis @kharis]

@missy LOL, true, but like with most of my Leo friends I’m certainly glad you say what you think and don’t go with the sheep.

Lions are not sheep, thank goodness.  (:

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@nearlysane Welcome. And thank you. It took a good while, and a lot of troll hunting, to set the tone of this site but I think we got there.

It’s only a small community but we kinda all know each other now. Look forward to your contributions – or just your continued reading.

[Anonymous @]

@nearlysane I’m relatively new here too. I had problems registering because of a captcha problem but @craig fixed it. I’m not very active but enjoy reading the conversations. A lot of people here seems very erudite and well spoken (or written) and me not being English speaker sometimes I’m a bit hesitant to write. Welcome

[Craig @craig Emperor]

I don’t know if you know about Screen Junkies on YouTube, or their Honest Trailers. If not you should check them out as many are screamingly hilarious.

They recently did a charity auction and someone paid them $10,000 to do a Doctor Who Honest Trailer, so they had to watch all of Who for the last few months.

But here are the results – they did two, one for BG Who and one for AG Who:

[NearlySane @nearlysane]

@craig and @tempusfugit, thank you very much for the welcome. To TempusFugit, your English is brilliant. Unless you said I wouldn’t have a clue about you not being a native English speaker.

[Anonymous @]

OMG that was hilarious. I didn’t know I needed that in my life.Thank you

Edit to add: The Classic doesn’t work, it says video unavailable – video removed by the user

[Anonymous @]

@nearlysane thank you very much. I studied it at an academy but during the years, reading and posting on internet and watching movies and listening to audiobooks has improved a lot

[Kharis @kharis]

@craig Thank you Worthy and Esteemed Emperor, that was freaking hilarious!

[Kharis @kharis]

@tempusfugit Another link for classic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOeloEkQw6I

I laughed so hard my kids came in to see if I was okay. (:

[Anonymous @]

Thank you very much. This is hilarious

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@kharis Thank you for letting me know they updated the link – have updated it above so it now works.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

Hopefully they won’t change these links. Here are the people behind it – who had never watched Doctor Who before, talking about making the Honest Trailers – if you’re interested. I kinda like ‘Classic’ and ‘Modern’ but I still prefer BG and AG. 🙂

EDIT – if you want to see the parody trailers without the commentary see my post above.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

Hey everyone. I don’t live anywhere near Blackpool but Madame Tussauds Blackpool are launching a brand new Doctor Who area, which includes a Tardis, themed areas and even a Jodie Whittaker wax figure.

I’ve been invited to a hard-hat tour on Monday 15 October, and the launch night on 18 October.

If someone wants to go and report back, let me know and I’ll see if you can go in my stead.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

Ha ha – those honest trailers are great – Doctor Who does look really weird from the outside!

I’m glad The Doctor Who Forum under your reign Emperor @craig has grown to the size where you are invited to “press” events. Sadly am nowhere near Blackpool myself either, but someone else might be!

 

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@craig

Yep, I’m a big fan of the Honest Trailers guys. And that’s cool about the Tussauds invite but Blackpool is a bit out of my travel zone too, I’m afraid. (My abiding memory of the waxworks there is of being regaled by a set of animatronic Wurzels mannequins as I waited to go into the Chamber of Horrors. Unless, of course, I dreamt the whole thing.)

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@juniperfish I think my favourite bit was in the AG one – “Spacial Justice Warrior”. Just genius.

@jimthefish That sounds horrifying! 🙂 I have a friend who lives very near Blackpool. She’s not a Doctor Who fan but she knows I am and is a fan of free drinks and a free night out (like most of us probably). If no one else can go I’ll see if she can make it and report back (via me).

[Rob @rob]

@missy

Warmley Tea Rooms on the Bath to Bristol Railway Path

I did a 240 mile charity walk a few years back and whilst stopping for a cup of tea and a slice of cake completed the timeywimey loop and found they had a Tardis hence the avatar

You may have an excellent brew and your own Tadis pic 😀

(Actually I had coffee but you know the line above was better)

[Missy @missy]

@nearlysane

Blimey, I sent this once but got kicked off! Welcome. Love the name.

@rob

Good for you. Unfortunately I haven’t got a pic of the Tardis, and couldn’t upload if I had. Really dense when it comes to technology. Love coffee, but tea is my drink. Enjoy your stay here.

Missy

[Missy @missy]

@craig

Thank you for video.  I’ve watched the first one, and cannot believe how much I  loved them all – except the film.

Shockers some of them, but they did the best they could at the time with Special effects.

I shall view the other later.

Missy

 

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Greetings from the world beyond Doctor Who…Canada.

Well, beyond if you are not prepared to sign up to streaming services designed to deplete your retirement funds.

So, I have been watching the breadcrumbs released by the BBC. I like the new opening credits and theme! The theme seems to hark back, subtlety, to BG Who. Or, at least, to be not as full on as the Moffat and RTD years.

And the trailer for the next episode seems…whoops! Wrong thread.

 

 

 

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@thane16 re chocolate, your mother has a point, as white  chocolate isn’t chocolate, it contains no coco, but then the same could be said about most milk chocolate…

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@miapatrick

It seems that we had the impulse to comment on the same subject at almost the same time, except that you virtuously migrated to the more appropriate location.

I’m not sure, though, what you mean by saying that white chocolate contains no cocoa. It’s more accurate to say that it contains only the fats extracted from the cocoa bean, known as cocoa butter, which is why it retains much of the texture and mouth-feel of chocolate but very little of the flavour.

 

[Mudlark @mudlark]

Next week’s Radio Times contains a piece on the new design of the Tardis, plus a double page spread covering the changes in design over the past 55 years. Without going into detail, the impression I get is that they may have ignored some established concepts such as the eye of harmony, and that the designer Arwel Jones did, as I suspected, intend to convey the idea of the Tardis-as-vestibule, since he talks of it as being like the wardrobe giving access to Narnia.

The  spinning mini Tardis surmounting the control unit was produced by a 3D printer

Apparently the design also includes one or two surprises yet to be revealed, but *SPOILERS*

[Arbutus @arbutus]

@thane16    I like dark chocolate but Mum who ALWAYS sneers at white-choc eaters was eating white chocolate the other day!

I also prefer dark chocolate. However, I have been know to hoover a peanut-butter Oh Henry bar. When necessity calls, etc.

[Anonymous @]

.

[Notime @notime]

Just finished reading several online articles about the American audience using subtitles to understand Jodie and Mandip’s  accent…

Hilarious!

We have no trouble with their accents over here.  The television program that interviewed Jodie is a parody of a nightly news/talk show.  They are pranksters.  The subtitles were obviously a joke.  Apparently one that keeps on giving because others are writing articles as if it was real news.

I guess any publicity is good publicity though…

🙂

 

 

[Mudlark @mudlark]

@ichabod

Happy birthday.

Reminders of the passage of the years aren’t necessarily welcome, but it’s still a good excuse for a celebration 😀

[ichabod @ichabod]

@mudlark  Thanks, ducks!  Went to lunch with my sister today at a pretty decent Italian place, then discovered by accident a French bakery etc. which looked pretty good — but we were full up.  But when I asked for an espresso, remembering where I live, I had a look at their “espresso machine” (“Yes, we have one, right there — you just push the bu’in, and the coffee comes out!”), and decided no, this is some sham chain thing and the hell with them.

So, a day of discoveries !  Like, one of the packages that came wasn’t a blanket that I’d ordered on Amazon.com, but 15 pairs of little notebooks and no invoice, so I guess they didn’t charge me for this set of items *that I never ordered*, but WTF?

Being 79 sure is weird.

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

This is a couple of years old but I’ve just discovered it and its bloody great. (And a little fix for anybody missing PC).

[Missy @missy]

@pedant

I see the old Pub is closed and I wanted to answer you post. Sooner would have been better, but life has been busy.

You are correct about the NI stamp. I asked my cousin yesterday and he verified your comment.

To be fair, I’m talking about over 60 years ago, so my memory could be at fault,but i could have sworn it took in the NHS and OAP and Tax was extra. I stand corrected.

However, not everyone would know that you didn’t have to pay for the Doctor or Hospital, because many of them do.

I remember that you only had to pay one pound for Dental treatment, unless you needed dentures, then it was five pounds for a full upper and lower. I know because I was a Dental Nurse/Receptionist for 13 years.

Missy

[Missy @missy]

 

@ichabod

Sounds as if you had a lovely day.

Trust me, being 79 isn’t half as weird as being 80. *winks*

Missy

[swordwhale @swordwhale]

ahhhhhhhhhhhh the stuff you find in thrift shops…

Stich AND the tardis hat…

(shout out to Community Aid in Hanover Pennsylvania USA)

[swordwhale @swordwhale]

@jimthefish

 

OMG… what did I just see….

I adore Capaldi

 

(snorts milk and Oreos out nose)

thanks

[swordwhale @swordwhale]

Adventures in Time and a Pink TARDIS…

OK, I hope I’ve got the right forum page here…

As I remember, the original Who was supposed to inspire kids to enjoy history.

Here on the Chesapeake Bay, specifically on the Chester River, in Chestertown (Maryland), a couple of “time machines” decided to have a sail one day… and it turned into a party that has gotten rather larger…

Friends and I try to go each year.

The waterfront is a floating timeline from 1630 to 20th century…

Yes, one of the “tardises” is blue…

(Kalmar Nyckel and Privateer Lynx)

 

But this year I ended up on the pink one. I didn’t pick it because of our first woman doctor, the skipjack I’d booked a ride on had engine trouble and we were sent off to other ships…

The Lady Maryland is a pungy schooner, they were always painted green on top and pink on the bottom. Legend varies as to why. They delivered perishable goods, and were wicked fast and agile. It’s basically a pretty tractor trailer. Here, in another year, with the shadow of Kalmar Nyckel on her sails…

It was a drizzlyish rainish pewter sort of day. Umbrellas are a bad idea on boats, not enough space and too many pokey bits, so I spent a lot of time wiping the camera and hiding it under my backpack’s rain cover.

The sailing trips (about two hours on the river) tend to be interactive: you can heave and haul on a line to help raise a sail. It’s an incredible amount of work to raise a single sail! The ships themselves are, like the tardis, more like living things than mere machines. Their hulls creak and groan with the waves, their lines sing with the power of the wind, and when the sails snap out it’s like dragon wings overhead. And they often have a mind of their own.

 

(there’s more on my website, http://www.swordwhale.com, I took all these pics except the one of me, that was my buddy Dave Tristan)

 

[Missy @missy]

@craig

Have only just seen the videos, thank you so much!

@swordwhale

As do I. For me he was the best Doctor. Thanks for the photos.

Missy

[Nekrosys @nekrosys]

I just started getting into doctor who after hearing about it for years any advice?

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@nekrosys this current series has been designed as something of a new starting point, not particularly weighed down by history, so it might not be a bad place to start. Alternatively, the beginning of the reboot was the beginning of Who for a lot of people.

The thing about Doctor Who is that it changes with each regeneration, and changes particularly with every show runner. Your favourite doctor might be the first one you watch, or it might be any one of the 13. I think youtube has quite a lot of older episodes, there are a few linked onto this site, with discussions if you want to browse.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@jimthefish, @craig, @pedant, @thane16, and other long-standing participants to this forum,

Some random thoughts on why this current incarnation of the Doctor and the recent stories are attracting so much bile and toxic responses on the web generally and, unfortunately, even here; a site established as a place where we could engage in polite, civilized, and thoughtful discourse, among a relatively small group (that has happily grown over the life of this forum) who came from diverse backgrounds, with diverse interests, but were united by a love for, and appreciation of, the show.

One really obvious point is that a lot of the trolling and criticism is a reflection of the times. To draw an analogy, a lot of the opposition to Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor (a woman as the Doctor!?, blah, blah, blah) sounds suspiciously similar to the response 10 years ago when Obama became President (a black man as president!?). To a sadly large number of people it was, and continues to be, very threatening to their world view, which was and is bound up with a very particular notion of an ordered universe.

When it comes to the recent episodes, we see the predictable responses (too PC, too SJW, “real” Doctor Who in the past was about zany adventures in outer space and not about social or political satire or criticism, etc, etc). Of course, we know that is not true, as the show has always been about those very things. To give an example, I wonder if there is not a million miles separating the satire in a show about spiders and a megalomaniac businessman, and a show like “The Macra Terror” back in the 60s with Patrick Troughton as the Doctor? It was, many of you will recall, set in a holiday camp that was frightening in its demands of uniformity, and distopian beneath its “fun” facade. It was, of course, satirizing the type of holiday camps that were popular in Britain at the time. And looking at this advertisement for one, it’s not hard to see why it was easy to satirize:

But The Macra Terror wasn’t simply making fun of holiday camps. It was biting deeper than that. As Doctor Who has always done. So why the rabid opposition to educational stories like “Rosa” or satirical humour in “Arachnids in the UK” now? Well, perhaps because life was relatively comfortable (full employment, expanding educational opportunities, etc) in the countries where Doctor Who was shown back then, in comparison to today. Perhaps satire, for example, was easier back then. And for those old enough to remember, it was the golden age of satire. The irony, as witnessed in the toxic opposition we see to a show like Doctor Who today, is that there seems to be evidence of more ignorance of the world at large now than, in some ways, there was then.

Not especially world-shattering as a reflection, but the best I could manage after one cup of coffee and a meagre breakfast.

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Ooh, that Macra Terror analogy is a good one. I think the point about the more fraught political climate is accurate. Geek culture is far more front and centre in society now than it was in the 60s and so is far more likely to get dragged in to culture wars these days (is nothing sacred when Russian bots and the alt right start screwing around with Star Wars?) and there’s no reason to think that Who will exempt.

What dismays is that Who has always had a pretty blatant message of tolerance and a defence of diversity (second only to Star Trek probably) so anyone who calls themselves a fan should really know better than to spout this kind of nonsense, or be ready to call out those who do. Though sometimes I must admit that I sometimes wonder if some fans, especially those most fervently nostalgic for the old unreconstructed days, are attracted to the show because it was a supercilious, always slightly superior, if not sometimes downright arrogant, white dude, who had the respect of all around him and had pretty girls looking up to him with awe. Was it the fantasy and the myth they enjoyed or was it the superficial patriarchal trappings it often had?

[Author]

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