The Winchester

[nerys @nerys]

Nothing to report, other than that husband and I recently returned from a nearly two-week trip to Minnesota and New Mexico to see cousins of mine and take in a bit of vacation. The American Southwest is a beautiful place to visit … but I wouldn’t want to live there. Too arid and hot. (I was amazed at how happy I was to see fall colors and bodies of water upon our return home!)

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Hmm not sure this is the right place for this but here goes. I was re watching some of my favourite who episodes and was rewatching  DOTD special  and it got to the part with what I have generally called the CuratorDoc and realised it could have been a foretelling of Bigeneration could CuratorDoc have been a post TBaker/DavidsonDoc Bigeneration, hell even the regeneration from Tom Baker to Davidson sort of had a Bigeneration element which involved Davidson being there as the Watcher…. What do you all think.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@devilishrobby

bigeneration… hmmm. Why? Make sure you have Tennant on tap if the crits turn nasty?

Past evidence? Seriously, for all RTD’s bluster, there’s nothing to be seen except for… 2. We never actually saw him become 3. He whirled about a bit saying ‘oh no’ and ‘my giddy aunt’, then… six months later… Pertwee just falls out of the Tardis.

The thing is Ruth has the same Tardis. Not the Death Star Elevator we saw 1 shuffle into. And not an American Diner. That was definitely a cop box with a cheap MFI interior. And a hat stand.

Could the watcher be Ruth after an explosion in a flour mill?

Also, wherefore The Valeyard? Was there suddenly a bad regeneration? I suppose, if you stand in a lake long enough, a fish will die.

What exactly IS The Valeyard? What exactly are ‘the darker sides of The Doctor’s nature?’ Could it be the result of someone invading his time stream? The face from The Rogue Scan?

If so, Clara also invaded The Doctor’s time stream. Will she turn up as a bigeneration?

The Curator? Well, we’ve seen Secret Agent Doc (3), Tudor Nob Doctor (10), Monk/Victorian Misanthrope Doc (11) and Mad Professor Doc (12)…

The concept of Curator Doc strikes me as being a bit sessile.

 

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Been hovering around the site for a while (life demands attention occasionally), but had to say: ps1l0v3you

That was hilarious. “oh my giddy aunt”. And as you point out, with Who, consistency  and coherence is often in in abeyance, particularly when the showrunners areChibnall and RTD2.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

ps1l0v3y0u

Damn! I can never get it right!

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb @winston @nerys My recent travels (as I probably mentioned already) included two weeks driving an Opel Corsa around the Alps and two weeks of a dinky little Toyota Aygo in south of England country lanes, without putting so much as a scratch on either (for the first time ever). Boring. But as winston commented, all the best stories tend to involve some sort of disaster. Quite coincidentally, I was musing today on all my ‘best’ stories, and realised that every single one of them, without exception, was heralded by some untoward happening or minor disaster. For example the rental car that immediately preceded the Opel, which lasted less than 24 hours before I launched it off a low wall and landed on its roof, and the drama that followed – now *that’s* the story I’ll remember.

Fiction writers and news reporters know this of course. Was there ever a Who episode where nothing disastrous happened? Or as Mark Gatiss put it (in the DVD commentary for Sherlock Season 1), we’ll never see the weekend the Doctor went to Margate. (I assume Margate is the epitome of uneventful seaside towns).

Speaking of Sherlock, I have one quibble with the plotting: In The Blind Banker, all the books from two flats are delivered to Holmes’ flat and Holmes and Watson try to find any books which the two big piles have in common – with predictable confusion. BUT – Sherlock is highly computer literate. Surely it would be obvious to make two lists and write a quick’n’dirty little script to compare the two lists, that’s what computers are really good at? But wait, there’s an even quicker way. Just list all the books in one pile in a text editor, one per line, e.g.
Moby Dick Melville
Bourne Identity Ludlum
Sign of Four Doyle
da Vinci Code Brown
and so on, each title doesn’t have to be complete just so long as spelling is accurate. Then, pick up each book in Pile B in turn and type a keyword from its title into the editor’s search box and it will instantly light up if there is a match. No programming required!

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent OK, you buried your lede. You must tell us the story of the Opel’s predecessor! I hope that you came out of that one unscratched … even if the car didn’t.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys  Umm. Well, in the hope that Craig will pardon the bandwidth… I picked it up from Valence TGV station, I had a Fiat 500 booked but they ‘upgraded’ me to a MG ZS. The 500 would have been ideal for narrow Alpine roads, the ZS less so. Some cars, I can tell precisely where they are on the road; others, I have some trouble accurately judging how close to obstacles it is, and the ZS was one of those. This was, paradoxically, not so much a problem on the high passes – where the road tends to have ‘soft edges’ and on single track places you slow down and crawl past the oncoming car. Such it was on the Col de la Cayolle. The problem arises down on the flat, where narrow two-lane roads have brick walls right at the edge of the carriageway. So I was approaching this nominally two-lane bridge (it had a white line down the centre) on a slight curve, with another car coming the other way, I thought I’d better keep well right and misjudged it, there was suddenly a shocking amount of violent banging and crashing and I found myself upside down. (The right-hand stone parapet wall – about 2 feet high – sloped down at the end making a perfect launching ramp. The car launched off that, across to hit the left-hand wall upside-down, and skidded to a stop perfectly parked in the left lane except facing the wrong way and – upside down. The other driver must have reacted promptly to avoid colliding head-on with me). So I undid my seat-belt, landing on the remains of the back window which was all over the inside of the roof, causing my only injuries, and crawled out through the driver’s window which was open. A very kind lady and her daughter from the adjacent house brought out a deckchair and sat me down. I insisted on crawling back inside to retrieve my camera, coat, suitcase etc. An ambulance arrived and the paramedic checked me over, said I seemed to be okay, but on conferring with a doctor strongly urged me to go to hospital and be checked over. A couple of young policemen questioned me – quite politely – breathalysed me and took a drug test (standard stuff).

So there I was, in the middle of nowhere, with no transport, and even if I managed to get to where I was booked that night (near Castellane) then next morning I’d be in the middle of a different nowhere with no wheels – so Nice sounded like the best bet (also, I was booked just 20km from Nice the following night). So I accepted their kind offer of an ambulance (so long as they brought my bags!) and they stuck a neck brace on me, strapped me down to a stretcher and off we went 60 miles to Nice. A long and winding road, by the time we reached the hospital I was busting. Me (to doctor, urgently): “I need to pee!” Doctor (doubtless used to American tourists): “No no, it’s free!” Me: “No, not ‘pay’, pee!” And that is verbatim. So they kept me in for about 8 hours, doing all manner of scans, X-rays and blood tests, I think they were a little disappointed to find nothing, gave me a tetanus shot and discharged me about 10pm – I suggested they might like to keep me in for observation, the doctor said ‘Why? There’s nothing wrong with you!’ I did ask the desk if they knew of any hotel that would be open at that hour, and they wrote down a hotel on the Promenade des Anglais (which sounded a bit swank to me, but still…)

How do you tell an absolutely top class hotel? – you walk in at midnight, past the Lamborghini Countach on the footpath with cones and ropes around it, barefoot and dragging your luggage behind you, looking like you’ve just been in a car crash, walk up to the immaculate young man behind the desk and ask if they have any inexpensive rooms – and he doesn’t blink, he doesn’t sneer, he isn’t icily polite, he is genuinely understanding and sympathetic. Unfortunately, all their inexpensive rooms were taken, the cheapest they had was 540 Euros. (Gulp). So I thanked him and asked if there might be anywhere less expensive nearby, he suggested I could try the Ibis, half a kilometre away. The Ibis was a lot less swank and hence a lot less polite – ‘Have you any rooms?’ ‘Have you a reservation?’ ‘No’ ‘Then you don’t have a room.’ He did suggest I try the Magnon, but by the time I found that it was firmly shut. It wasn’t a cold night but it was starting to rain so I assessed my options. I could sleep in a bus shelter but they were mostly taken by ladies waiting for customers. Or, my credit card could afford 500+ Euros even if I couldn’t, so back to swank hotel it was. I approached the immaculate young man and said “I will take that room, if you still have it” and he said “Wait a minute, I’ll see what I can do” (tap tap tap on his keyboard) “The best I can do is 200 Euros.” I almost hugged him.

Next morning I rang the car rental Emergency Assistance number, they asked where was I (Nice) and where was the car (I didn’t know. Somewhere between the Col de la Cayolle and the Gorges de Daluis, probably, but I failed to mention that). So they said, wait and they’d call me back when they’d arranged a new rental. Well, they didn’t call back, and I kept pestering them, frustratedly battling with dodgy travelSIMs, my own phone company’s exorbitant global roamimg rates, Skype (intermittently working) and my difficulty understanding European English accents in a noisy environment, until the afternoon when they mentioned the Nice police had no knowledge of the car and the penny dropped and I finally realised they were looking for the wreck in Nice. (I think their procedures require them to ‘find’ the old car before they give you a new one). Luckily the sheaf of papers the hospital gave me on discharge mentioned the location of the ‘incident’, and within an hour of me telling them it they rang back with a rental car at Nice airport and offered to send me a taxi. I declined the taxi since for the last few hours I’d been watching trams going past with ‘Aeroport’ on them. And there was minimal delay at the rental desk, Emergency Assistance had arranged everything. The moral is, give them all the information requested and let them do their job.

After that, as I said much earlier, everything went without a scratch.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent @nerys

DW with no disaster??? Disaster would seem to be a dramatic necessity. Therefore The Fam might be seen as a ploy to rewrite said rule. A disastrous one of course.

Stupid coincidence is more of an issue.

Sleep No More. Oops Clara ‘accidentally’ fell into of those sinister looking coffins. ‘Doctor… perhaps it’s a bed. Let’s try it out’ might be more convincing.

Empress of Mars. ‘I’ve fallen down a hole and, when Nardole went back for the ropes, the Tardis disappeared. For no reason.

Black Orchid. Just no reason. Unless it’s ‘lets show what an idiot Adric is before we fire him at Chicxulub.’

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent
Sherlock…

He’s digital. But analogue is more mind-palacey.

Also this reflects the pace of technological change. The Blind Banker was 14 years ago. Who had heard of algorithms in 2010? In the previous episode Sherlock had to painstakingly explain smart phones and their potential.

You could say he was doing it for the benefit of Lestrange and Anderson.

You could say, at the time, the majority of the population still had brick phones. The smart phone featured because that told the audience that Sherlock was being  updated. It was quite a radical idea.

But we all know there was some read-through where someone pointed out that no one would get it as it stood.

Sherlock should encounter a forensic ChatGTP program and hack it to win, Kobayashi Maru stylee. Or has that been done?

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent Wow, what an experience! You described everything so clearly. I’m glad that you were mostly uninjured, and also that once the rental agency knew where the car ended up, you were rebooked and on your way in fairly short order. Kudos also to the concierge at the swanky hotel who, on second try, found you a cheaper room. That must have been a huge relief!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys    In hindsight, I should have phoned the Emergency Assistance number as soon as I was established in my hotel room at 1 a.m.   (They are 24-hour I think).   I expect they would have had a new car lined up by the time I finished breakfast.   But I was too tired to bother, and the subsequent confusion was all my fault   (they were far too polite to say so).

It was not so much a cheaper room, as a massive discount on an existing one.   Whether the rates and rules changed after midnight, or my reappearance convinced him I was genuine, or what, I don’t know, but I wasn’t going to question it.   It may also be a cultural thing – here in NZ we don’t have a ‘haggling’ tradition.   If the price is x dollars, I either pay it or not, it feels almost insulting to suggest the seller lower his price.   So by that time I was expecting to pay the 540 Euros (ouch!), the discount came as a complete but welcome surprise to me.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Sherlock and algorithms – I’d have to point out that my suggested method of comparing the books is last-century stuff.   Dating from the 80’s when everyone had a home computer running Basic and wrote little programs on it.   Probably the default these days would be to use a spreadsheet but – in 99% of applications – that’s absurd (and clunky) overkill when a text editor would suffice.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

To tell the truth I need to rewatch The Blind Banker. But, as I remember, Sherlock grabs an A-Z off a couple in the street. Isn’t that the point? The Mind Palace is a concentration and abstract of reality, while the book is something anyone might possess (before the days of google maps and satnav). The medium should be experienced in the frame of the world, as you would open a book or watch a program in life, not translated into numbers and then reinterpreted. As would AI.

But who would have guessed in 2010, that the A-Z would soon be irrelevant? Imagine the rewrite: ‘no John, all the victims had THIS one book in their flats, a publication entirely irrelevant in the age of smartphones and universal data coverage. Why do you think that should that be?’

The Mind Palace has been vandalised. It’s a little scary.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u    You are correct about the A-Z.    But (I seem to recall) there was some earlier confusion with grabbing books off the stacks and trying the code on them (I need to re-watch to figure just what they were doing).   My suggested procedure would, I think, have been far the quickest in finding duplicates.    The A-Z would have been an exception, in that there might have been some uncertainty in how to list it  (unlike most books where title – author is unambiguous); I would have dealt with that by putting it on one side (along with any other ‘ambiguous’ volumes, I suspect they would only amount to 3 or 4 total) and just including them visually when stepping through Pile B.

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent   @ps1l0v3y0u   In 2005 we took a road trip to British Columbia that would take us 6 days. I planned for months and remember thinking how great the internet was when I ordered maps from every province along with other tourist info. I planned every step of the trip and spent a lot of my drive with maps spread out on my lap. The trip was good and we were never lost because of my superb map reading skills taught to me by my Dad.(big brag)

Now we have a smart phone and one of those other map things (turn right in 200 yards)and I am out of a job. Damn you technology ,you have made my navigation skills obsolete.Now what do I do? Talk to my husband?

stay safe

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@winston I love large-scale maps e.g. the Ordnance Survey’s 1″ to the mile. In 2013 when I first ventured into France in recent decades, I got a huge Michelin atlas and photocopied all the relevant maps (about 20 of them), ditto for Italy and Switzerland. And that was how I navigated. In 2017 the rental had a GPS, stuck in French but that was okay, and I did use that for half a day going cross country. The rest of the time it spent muttering ‘Calcul une nouvelle itineraire’ as I sailed past its instructed turn. Unfortunately as I approached my final destination (Nice station) where I did want to use it, the voice switched itself off, which just left the on-screen display which zoomed in to the next intersection – this was not helpful in Nice traffic when one ideally needed to get in the correct lane several hundred yards in advance.
One other rental had GPS of which I managed to turn off the satnav function and put it in ‘mapping mode’, with the unexpected benefit that Mrs D was fascinated by it. Mrs D is not normally happy with winding roads and tends to say so vehemently, I was approaching the Colle Delle Finestre and its 47 hairpins with extreme trepidation, however when I pointed the GPS out to her she was so fascinated seeing each hairpin approach (which she duly warned me about) that she forgot to complain. Score a win for GPS in-car entertainment.
This most recent trip, I did pre-plan a route from the south London suburbs to Hastings through country lanes avoiding almost all towns and most main roads. Makes for interesting driving. Got lost in London though.

And a final comment on GPS – one of my favorite photos from my trip is of a blue sign which says ‘Unsuitable for motor vehicles 500 yds ahead’ and below it, in angry black and yellow, ‘IGNORE SAT NAV No Vehicle Access to Warleggan Village’ I sense the voice of experience speaking. You can see it for yourself, go to Pantersbridge crossroads in Cornwall and point north in Streetview. The Googlebot did actually go 500 yards up this road and it is possibly the narrowest lane in Cornwall.

By the way, OS maps can be viewed on-line at streetmap.co.uk, but they’re completely outdone by the French and Swiss, both of which have scrollable zoomable maps of the entire country (at geoportail.gouv.fr and map.geo.admin.ch ) and very impressive maps they are too when zoomed in. They’re identical with the paper hiking maps you can buy in shops in the relevant areas.

[nerys @nerys]

@winston Your navigational skills are still needed. Google Maps and GPS don’t always get you there … as we discovered when trying to locate my cousin’s home in the mountains of New Mexico. My husband, whose navigational skills are vastly better than mine, could tell we were going in the wrong direction, and so he turned around. But even after that, my cousin had to walk out and meet us, because we couldn’t quite figure out where her driveway was (based on what the GPS was telling us).

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys    I often find  Satellite View  (in Google Maps) is a lot better at showing tracks, than the regular map view.   Though it does depend a lot on the terrain.    And of course I’m talking about viewing it on a laptop with wifi Internet, which is probably a non-starter in the mountains  (unless you saved the screen previously).

[janetteB @janetteb]

When I was in the U.K in 2005 I had to navigate sans maps which was interesting. We were at the end of a six week touring holiday with the three boys and the S?O had to do a “return to duty” which meant flying out to Sweden for a couple of days. I had left all the driving to him and planned to spend those days at the camping ground nearest to the place where we were staying and catch buses. I had no intention of driving in England any more than I could help. But.. we were staying in Cheddar Gorge YHA and I had to drive him to Bristol airport at about 6 am. We left the boys asleep there and headed off. Got to the airport ok. It was early and there was no traffic on the road. Waved goodbye and got back in the car, a large and unwieldy black Merc’ and headed back. It was a clear sky morning the pale lemon sun falling on green fields, mist clinging in soft curtains to the hollows and dips. by the time I got back to the YHA I was really enjoying the drive. Got the boys up, fed them and we set off for that camping ground. Only I thought we should at least see Cheddar Gorge first so we took the turn to do so. By the time we were out of Cheddar Gorge I was lost and realised that ten year olds don’t read maps well. Could not pull over, English lanes don’t allow for that so just had to keep driving but it was a lovely sunny day and the Somerset landscape was beautiful. I kept driving, figuring that I would eventually get a chance to stop and consult the map. Before that happened however I saw a road sign that pointed to Exeter. Exeter I thought. That is near Cornwall. I love Cornwall. What the hell. We’ll go to Cornwall.

I did at one stage back into a hedge which was more solid than I expected and dented the back panel of the car but we managed to push it back in place before returning the car.

Next time I returned to the UK with the boys, two years later, I decided to catch buses rather than hire a car and I am glad that I did even if it limited our travel choices at times. It felt less like being a tourist and more like being visitors. I think it gave the boys more of a feel for the places we were travelling in. (I hope that distinction makes sense.) On that occasion we ended up in Bristol and got to visit the Dr Who Experience.

cheers

Janette

 

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb

“Exeter I thought. That is near Cornwall. I love Cornwall. What the hell. We’ll go to Cornwall.” I love that!

Generally, main road signage is quite good. Though, with respect, I wouldn’t choose a large Mercedes for the trip. On my trip I was lucky enough to score a Toyota Aygo X – dreadful styling, but extremely tight turning circle, good visibility forwards and a big screen for the backup camera. The rental company kept trying to persuade me to upgrade to an auto and I kept politely refusing. An excellent car for Cornish country lanes…

Public transport vs rental cars? Well, anywhere well out in the country, I’d always take a car. In big cities (or their suburbs), public transport, every time.

I rented from Paddington this last time, which turned out to be a mistake. Before departure, I had plotted a route out of London on Westway (A40) then a bit of the notorious M25, then through country lanes to Hastings. That worked fine. On the way back, I had plotted (with Streetview) the last bit of inward route which included some twiddly bits near Paddington to get to the hotel underground car park where the rental place was located. I just had large-scale road maps, not street maps. So I ended up on the A4 (Great West Road) not the A40 (Westway). There were bits of overpasses and stuff that seemed vaguely (misleadingly) familiar until I recognised the Natural History Museum around 4pm and realised I was on the wrong road altogether, some miles southeast of where I ought to be, at the start of the rush hour, with no street maps, no idea quite where I was, not sure which way I was facing and not even sure which direction was North, and I was getting desperate for a ‘comfort stop’ (in rush-hour traffic? Not happening!). Eventually I headed in (what I hoped was) north-west hoping to come across the A40 which (after a few meanders and loops and going round Shepherds Bush roundabout three times in the wrong lanes) I finally did. Made it into the underground car park at five to five after the most traumatic hour of my entire trip, by some miracle there was no-one behind me, nobody in sight, I yanked on the handbrake, raced into a corner and watered the London Metropole Hilton.

So that way exceeded any little misadventure I had in France, though the car was undamaged.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@dentarthurdent  We did not choose to drive a Merc. I think that was the only car available that was large enough for our needs. We were a family of five and had bought up on toys in Germany so had more baggage than was sensible by then.

I think our worst experience was getting stuck in Sunday afternoon traffic at Heathrow. It was when I returned to the UK two years later with the boys, from Sweden I should make clear. The S.O had a one year attachment there. We spent the week travelling and he flew over to join us for the weekend and hired a car for the two days. This time it was something smaller and more sensible. Anyway he had to fly out on the Sunday night. His ticket was in the boot and we weren’t entirely sure of the time so thought we would head to the airport an hour earlier than we thought we needed to be there. We didn’t know about Sunday afternoon traffic jams. It took over an hour to get a few hundred metres into the airport. I dropped him at the terminal, having missed the flight and then returned the car. By which time he called to tell me that he had (conveniently) got the flight time entirely wrong and arrived just before the gate closed. Needless to say we were all in need of a stiff drink by then.

cheers

Janette

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

Anyone else seen the teaser to Joy to the World shown on Children in Need tonight?

[janetteB @janetteb]

@ps1l0v3y0u Not yet. Been busy all day recording a podcast on Dr Who, the Twin Dilemma so it can only be a vast improvement.. I am introducing one Doctor each year. We only watch one episode, (thankfully in this case)  though usually the rest of the gang watch the remaining episodes of the chosen story before recording. We did not put them through that ordeal this time round.

Any impressions on the trailer? Though I must say I usually find trailers very misleading, perhaps because they are not really aimed at fans..

cheers

Janette

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@janetteb

Twin Dilemma??? Truly you must love the show.

How on earth did they put that out after Androzani? At least whoever got the Starship Trooper stuck in the slug trail had a good laugh. Can’t say I’ll be watching it tonight though.

I still think Time Flight is worse, though. And Underworld is at least as bad, but somehow escapes opprobrium.

Don’t want to go into details of the Teaser here, or jump to the Spoilers page because I’m not sure what stuff meant. Safe to say Moff is wheeling out his strongest themes.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Wallace and Gromit: “Vengeance Most Fowl”

New trailer

[winston @winston]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Thanks for that. It looks like another fun adventure with Wallace and Gromit ! Too bad I will have to wait till it comes out on Dvd but I don’t have Netflix. I do love those movies as well as Shaun the Sheep.

I hope the big storm is not too bad in your area.My daughter ,on the islands west coast got hit hard and has just got her power back on.She is getting hit again right now with rain and high winds. She is OK and I hope you and the Mrs. are too.

stay dry

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@winston, Thanks for asking about the storms. Winter is definitely coming to the island, as the link below indicates. But so far, we have escaped the worst.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-fall-storm-nov22-1.7390478

 

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@winston,

Sorry to hear about your daughter’s house losing power. Glad to hear she has got the power back. The west coast of the island, while beautiful, does tend to bear the brunt of weather events like this, unfortunately.

 

[winston @winston]

@blenkinsopthebrave      The wild west coast is certainly beautiful but it is a rain forest so….Anyway yesterdays storm knocked off a couple of my daughters roof shingles but that was the worst that happened. I always told my kids during bad storms to be prepared and not scared and so she was and wasn’t.

We are expecting our first snow next week so I am getting ready to hibernate. I eat a lot of ice cream and junk food so I can grow a nice layer of fat to keep me warm all winter.

stay safe.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@blenkinsopthebrave @dentarthurdent @winston

We seem to be getting away from Sutekh and Ruby… I will finish that ep at some point, but I thought I’d continue the discussion here.

Fantasy is rehashed pre-scientific/modern ethical belief systems. Generally the milieu doesn’t require an elaborate introduction or world building because we’ve all encountered fairy stories and/or bullet-headed traditionalism. Though, as had to be pointed out to me in a writing class, fairy stories are NOT fantasy nor vice versa. I am laying aside and avoiding traditionalism along with all those deities from Who I mentioned in my other post.

Hard sci-fi: The Forever War was great… not read it in years. Something odd and transcendental happens to the protagonist, though. Could do without that nonsense. Though nice to see some sort of character development. Cyberpunk left me cold. Hard sci-fi doesn’t really do characters. One meatbag is pretty much interchangeable with other meatbags.

As I say most sci-fi is Space Opry meets Dali’s melting clocks. I really liked The Helliconia Trilogy (warning… a major investment in time), which seems to be fantasy masquerading as sci-fi, until we realise it’s become a reality show being broadcast to a post apocalyptic Earth. Crazy aliens believe stuff about the world which can be explained by Kepler, Einstein and Darwin. Ho ho. And then we find out, in the end, that the two worlds somehow emote with each other. Hmm.

I revere The Lensman series; rubbish science, but really is allotropic iron and neutralisation of momentum any more trashy than hyperspace? Hence Douglas Adams’ not very sly jokes about faster than light travel. The purpose of sci-fi is throw ideas out there. E E doc Smith certainly does that in spades, and that’s where Azimov started out… not sure about most of his post 70’s output.

My opinion is that ill considered science or the presentation of soft sci-fi is very different to resorting to sprayed-on fantasy tropes. There is an obvious contradiction – a certainly ain’t just a tension – between the scientific method and traditionalism. This doesn’t mean to say I don’t like some fantasy. I even admire the Harry Potter films, and certainly more than the books. Whatever else you think of Rowling her imagination is a party and she writes good dialogue in service of the character. Easy peasy for Mr Kloves. His problems began when he had to branch out on his own.

My problem with other fantasy adaptions is they are just so grindingly mundane. Andy Serkis as Gollum? Brilliant. Serkis IS brilliant. Then they story-boarded it. UHHH. OK. Want to big up Arwen? Great! Merge her character with her brothers (from the book) and get groovy with the Dunedain on The Paths of The Dead. Nope. She stays a little elf lady. Do you like my dress? And why not present Aragorn as the frothing psycho butcher of Return of The King (I mean the book)? “Let the vermin be cast in a pit!” See, that could be fun. It is like Akhaten… you can make visual candy BUT you also need to honour the story. Or even have a story.

The Legend of Death… I dunno. Lot’s of visual candy. I hope some of the sprayed on fantasy tropes peels away with time. RTD has studiously avoided this before. The most 10 ever admits is things “are really old,” like Syd Barrett listening to ‘Wish You Were Here.’ The Beast of the pit wasn’t all there. Stuff from the dawn of time, like The Carrionites and The Racnoss, is generally pants. Taking the dog for a walk?? I ask you. Sutekh’s not a dog. He’s not a god, he’s just a very naughty alien….

…now hold on a moment.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u

Well, I don’t know if there’s any official definition, but fantasy seems to range from Harry Potter to Alice in Wonderland to those curious pseudo-mediaeval novels that start ‘Sir Edric sat pensively on his mighty charger as he surveyed the broad sweep of the Homelands, and pondered when the marauding hordes of the Hilldwellers would come storming over the dread and forbidding ramparts of the Eastern Gate’ – that sort of thing, is there a name for it? Fwiw I adore Alice, also Pratchett; Harry Potter and Sir Edric I give a miss to.

Hard sci-fi? I suppose space travel is hard sci-fi, as are alien civilisations, and I presume future societies like ‘Brave New world’ or ‘1984’ are too? My favourite early authors were John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids) and Arthur C Clarke, who I would have classed as strictly sci-fi but then, Clarke verges into mystical on occasion. (As an aside, I picked up a volume of Clarke short stories “l’Etoile” in Paris, the cover artist clearly hadn’t read them as the cover features a magnificent and scantily clad young lady on an equally magnificent winged horse, weilding a scimitar, which I don’t recall in any Clarke story and certainly not ‘The Star’. I’m delighted by the incongruity. And she is very… photogenic). Oh, and Robert Sheckley.

I agree that hard sci-fi is often more about concepts than characters. Bringing in individuals with their own interests and motives tends to obscure and distort the concept, even if their personal involvement adds more impact to it. For example the deadly profit-driven accounting in Oxygen or Boom.

Who often deviates far from hard sci-fi in that the characters often become the most important feature of the story. This is probably a consequence of the TV visual medium and the same characters recurring in successive episodes, if the actors have any charisma we start to identify with them.

I found most of Lord of the Rings film trilogy unsatisfying (I never read Tolkien btw). I think partly because there were too many characters and what makes a good novel does not necessarily make a good movie, Peter Jackson reportedly stayed fairly faithful to the books and this was probably a mistake. Though he would surely have been roasted by Tolkien fans if he had dared re-write it too much.

Back to Who – I hope RTD reins in the apocalyptic stuff, we already had too much of that with the Flux. Who is at its best on a personal, manageable level – Boom, 73 Yards, Dot and Bubble…

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@ps1l0v3y0u, @dentarthurdent, @winston

and, of course, other forum members,

On the question of fantasy, a lot of excellent points have been made above. Given that the conversation began with reference to the visual representation of fantasy in Who I would offer two examples of how fantasy can really work on the screen;

The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

For me, these are the two most perfect fantasy films I have ever seen.

And, interestingly, one of the things they have in common was that they were both co-directed by Michael Powell.

 

 

[winston @winston]

To all my fellow Whovians far and wide, Happy New Year!    Some of you have already celebrated and are probably sleeping and some have hours yet to wait for midnight and I have 40 mins. to go.

My hopes for everyone are good health,enough food and a roof over their heads. How can life be anything but a struggle without those basic rights? Of course a world at peace is a dream we all have. The world is a tough place for many and anything we can do to help each other is a good start to make it a better place.We must fight the hate that seems to be everywhere. “All we need is Love” Love for people, nature, animals, love for life.

My New Years resolution is to release my inner nerd. I plan to wear my Who clothes and my collection of Avengers shirts and drink my tea out of my Tardis mugs! When I go to town I am going to wear my Dalek hat and Tardis scarf and if I ever need it I will use my Captain America shield.No more hiding my Harry Potter toys and the wand my mister made for me. “Accio cookies”  I will quote the Doctor , Dumbledore or Captain Kirk whenever I want  and damn the consequences. May the fourth will be celebrated in my house with a Star Wars marathon this year and April the 20th will be celebrated with a …….

Got to go, I have 15 minutes to midnight.

Happy 2025

May the Force be with you.

 

 

[janetteB @janetteb]

Happy New Year @winston and all the wonderful friends here.

cheers

Janette

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Well a Happy New Year to all.

Last night we watched on a Youtube channel the fireworks lanched from the Sky Tower in Auckland. Then a couple of hours later the display from Sydney, which made ours look like a damp squib. It always does, Sydney Harbour is the perfect site for a spectacular fireworks display and they never disappoint.

Today (New Years) it was mostly sunny here in Auckland, with a good high tide, so I went down to Blockhouse Bay for a swim. There was a Japanese-looking gent sitting on a camp chair on the little patch of grass by the car park, with a large telescope pointing at the sun and a monitor on a folding table beside it. He explained that he was waiting to catch the ISS (International Space Station) crossing the Sun, and the location is quite critical – a quarter mile either way off the line and he’d miss it. The transit would only take a second or so but he hoped to catch it on high-speed video. I think the occasional clouds cleared away for him, I hope so.
Not far away was a young guy pumping up an inflatable paddle board – like a giant surf board, ten feet long and a couple of feet wide, I’ve seen paddleboards before but I never knew inflatable roll-up-into-a-backpack ones existed. It was his first attempt with it, as became apparent when he launched it. He had been recommended to try the bay as it was sheltered – good advice. The swell in the main harbour was a foot high, in the bay – which is almost perfectly sheltered from the prevailing stiff southwest breeze by a steep-sided narrow ridge – it was calm.   So he was okay when he fell off, as he did – several times.
And then there was the gentleman who regularly brings a guitar and portable amplifier and sets up in a sheltered alcove to practise, and sends music by Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin wafting across the water – fortunately he’s good enough to sustain it.

So it was just a very pleasant day, with people enjoying themselves doing happy things. I hope everyone here had a similarly pleasant and interesting day.

[nerys @nerys]

Happy New Year to all the good folks here! I celebrated New Year’s Eve by exploring a new beach, thanks to a friend who introduced me to it. I know most of the beaches west of where we live, but am less familiar with the beaches east of us. So this was a lovely discovery to end 2024.

I’m still waiting on the latest season(s) of Doctor Who to materialize at my public library. The month-long Canada Post strike did nothing to help, I’m sure. But while Doctor Who showed up in regular installments right on up through Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, there seems to be a bottleneck with the Tennant Doc specials and Gatwa Doc season that followed. I’m not sure if it’s linked with the change to Disney+. I’ve contacted the library, and the answer I received indicated that these DVDs and Blu-rays are not available via their usual source. At any rate, I’m still waiting!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys    A new beach?    Always an exciting experience, I think.   Though I imagine, in your half of the planet, you wouldn’t be swimming this time of year.   🙂

I wish you luck with the Who DVD’s.    It may well be a licensing thing to do with the change of franchise, it’s always frustrating when I try e.g. a Youtube video and get ‘The uploader has not made this available in your area.’    And of course I get the same with BBC iPlayer, I haven’t bothered to try and cheat it by getting a VPN, I would if I really wanted something and couldn’t get it some other way.   I guess just laziness and inertia stops me.

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent I think BBC has gotten wise to folks using a VPN. I have NordVPN on my phone and turn it on whenever I’m using Wi-Fi at an unsecured location. So I tried using it with iPlayer, and they blocked me, making note of the fact that I was using VPN. Such is life.

You are correct, the Atlantic Ocean is not currently swimming temperature. In fact, I pretty much never swim in it, regardless of the season. Because we’re along the North Atlantic, the ocean temperatures are just too cool for me, even in the summer. I’m fine with cooling my feet in the surf (in the summer), enjoying the scenery, smelling the scent of the air and logging whatever birds and other wildlife I see. That’s the beach experience I have come to enjoy.

Speaking of cooling my feet in the surf: My husband and I took a Boxing Day walk at one of our local beaches. I was standing there, shooting video, and a wave sloshed right over the top of my boots. (I had just been telling my husband about my previous experiences with this happening … and then it happened again.) When they say, “Fill your boots,” I think they mean something completely different!

[winston @winston]

@nerys   Happy New Year!    When we were on Vancouver Island our daughter took us to the secret beach that only the locals knew about. We first walked through an old growth forest with trees so big and ferns so tall that we felt very small. We felt like Hobbits on a quest and low and behold the secret beach. A strange thing about that day was that a very large mastiff type dog followed us all the way down the path always a few feet behind us and he played on the beach and then followed us back. Apparently he lives near the start of the path and follows everyone. A perfect day!

@dentarthurdent  It sounds like you had a perfect day at the beach too! A nice way to start the new year. We on the other hand have had 2 days of snow and are expecting more .The mister even had to shovel off the roof as the snow was so deep up there.We could swim in it but it would be so very cold.I am just waiting for the right snow to make a snowman.

Happy January.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@winston   Actually we’ve had pretty much a perfect week.   The high tides have been the right times (late morning to mid-afternoon), the right height (near the top of their range), and the wind has been from south-west so the beach (Blockhouse Bay) has been sheltered behind a ridge.   Next week – not so good with the times or the depths.   Unless I trek 20+ miles to Piha on the west coast.   But since Mrs D is banned from driving I try to keep the occasions when I leave her stuck in the house for the day to a minimum.

@nerys   I had a brief swim in the Atlantic in July, in Cornwall.  When I say ‘brief’ I mean about two minutes.   There’s supposed to be this thing called the Gulf Stream, bringing lots of warm water to keep Britain from freezing, well all I can say is, it wasn’t working that day.   🙂   And the water looked so tempting too…     But regardless of that, beaches are always the most interesting scenery, in calm or stormy weather.

Thinking back, all my life (except for six months or so) I’ve lived within a couple of miles of a beach.   I can’t imagine living out of easy reach of one.   I guess I’ve been fortunate that way.

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent We too benefit from the Gulf Stream. However, “warm” is relative … and the water is never warm enough for me to consider swimming in it. However, thanks to the Gulf Stream, we rarely get the frigid temperatures and deep snowfall that routinely hit New Brunswick and the northern U.S. East Coast. After watching the winter storm reports for New Brunswick, I have to remind myself that, as lovely as parts of it are, I don’t want to live there.

@winston Your beach on Vancouver Island sounds wonderful! I may have made the beach I found sound like a secret beach. It’s not. It’s actually quite popular, and a number of people were there at the same time I was on Boxing Day. It’s just that it was hitherto unknown to me.

I prefer the more secluded beaches where, most days, I’m the only person out there, or at most only one of a few. There are some secret ones here that I have been told about, but have yet to visit. One of my favorites that I do visit routinely is Crow’s Neck Beach, on the southernmost tip of mainland Nova Scotia. In the summertime, there’s an Arctic tern rookery, along with piping plovers and other shorebirds, so I enjoy watching them and experiencing the peace and quiet of the place.

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent      That does sound like a perfect week. Good weather and a good beach, what more can you ask for? We woke up to -17C but it did warm up to a balmy -12C by afternoon. Knee high snow and cold winds. Oh Canada! We do have lots of cold birds and chilly squirrels come to the feeders though and that gives me something to look at besides a sea of white. Snow is pretty though,it can be very sparkly.

But it is not the beach.

stay hydrated

 

[nerys @nerys]

@winston Trump seems to think he made a new joke with that old “51st state” saw.

(Continuing from my off-topic reply on the “Joy to the World” episode, so as not to derail that thread.)

On the bright side: If Canada were to become the 51st state, that would solve my annual U.S. tax reporting issues. I kid. But as a point of information: Did you know that the United States is one of only two countries in the world whose federal tax system is based on citizenship, not residence? Most people don’t know that. In fact, I didn’t find it out until I’d lived in Canada for 14 years. It was not a happy discovery.

People say, “OK, so just fill out the tax return.” They don’t realize what that means. For people living outside the U.S., the tax reporting requirements are far more onerous than they would be for that person in the same financial situation, but living in the U.S. Many expats have revoked their U.S. citizenship for that very reason. I’m not there yet. But it’s the time of year when, faced with that dreaded pile of paperwork, I wish for an easy way out.

Having said that, it’s ludicrous and repugnant to me that Trump is braying on about this. But I guess that’s what autocrats do. In no way do I want any of it to become a reality. There are many reasons why I am happy living in Canada.

I’m reminded of: “May you live in interesting times.” We do … getting more interesting all the time.

[winston @winston]

@nerys  Interesting times is as good a way as any to describe whatever this is. Canadians have always got along fairly well with our neighbors to the south and we always help each other in times of need. This whole Trump thing is just weird and worrying. The question among most of my friends is “why?” The second question  “Is he crazy?” and my question “What the f@#k is happening?” 51st state indeed! Is he just trying to piss us off to get a reaction, like a schoolyard bully. Is all of this done so Trump can get a better trade deal? Who knows?

Not just us but Panama and Greenland too. I call that buffoonery!

In other news we are a little chilly here at -15c so still too cold to make a snowman.

stay warm

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@winston   @nerys    The way I see it, tRump’s proposed invasions of Canada, Greenland and Panama are just diversions to distract from his less-than-stellar appointments to senior government positions.    It’s not like they’re policies that anybody else wants, so in a few weeks he can quietly forget about them and nobody will object or scream about ‘broken promises’ (and if anybody does bring it up, he can always blame Denmark, Canadian lib’ruls and Latino criminals and his MAGA base will lap it up).

Tax returns – I’ve heard about that.   The only other country that does that is Eritrea or Ethiopia or somewhere in that region IIRC.   The relevant law/regulation is called FATCA.   It imposes reporting obligations on any bank which has a victim, I mean American citizen, as a customer, which is why many financial institutions simply refuse to accept Americans as clients.

I used to find doing tax returns a real pain, but since I’m retired I literally never think about it.   Our Inland Revenue seems to take the approach that paying taxes should be as painless and trouble-free as possible, which is why we generally don’t see the tax man as the enemy.   I have two income sources, NZ universal superannuation and interest into my Kiwisaver account.   Both taxable, but the super is taxed by an estimated amount before it ever gets into my bank account, and Kiwisaver ‘earnings’ are taxed at source.   So once a year the IRD sends me a one-page tax notice which lists my annual earnings, tax payable on the total, tax already deducted, and the outstanding balance which is usually a few dollars which they duly write off.   I usually look at the last line which says ‘Balance due:  $0.00’ and file it away.

@nerys

I just Googled Crows Neck Beach, it certainly looks like a remote countryside, even the Googlebot (aka Streetview) hasn’t been there. You’re not far from the Bay of Fundy with its famous tides.

I have a liking for deserted beaches too. Actually, the north shore of the Manukau Harbour between Hillsborough and Titirangi (about a six-mile stretch) is bordered by roughly hundred-foot cliffs, interrupted at intervals by tiny bays, with the suburbs of Auckland sitting on top of the cliffs. But because it’s generally only walkable at low tide, in between the occasional bays there is, often, nobody at all, and the big city on top of the cliffs is invisible. So you can be on a deserted rocky beach without a person in sight and not a hint that there are houses a hundred yards above you. I kinda like the incongruity of it.

But, for properly empty beaches, I just head to the west coast. From Karekare (just south of my old swimming spot at Piha) down to the Manukau Harbour entrance at Whatipu is five miles of deserted ocean beach. Whatipu is at the end of a little-used winding gravel road with a small car park for fishermen and beachgoers, usually near-deserted except summer weekends. There’s a walking track from Whatipu over the cliff tops, then it joins the beach for the last mile to Karekare. Just once I parked at Whatipu, walked over the track to Karekare, then back down the beach and for the entire distance on the beach I saw – no-one. No footsteps, no sign of life, nothing but sand. I got horribly sunburned ankles, for a curious reason – I always use sunscreen on my arms, but my knees and ankles have never (previously) got burned. And I worked out that this is because normally I’m walking in the ‘bush’ or scrub and there’s usually plenty of shade for my lower half – but not on the beach. But the sheer isolation of an empty beach is a strange but not unpleasant feeling. I wanted to swim but, not knowing the conditions, I waited till I got to Whatipu where there’s a bay in the harbour entrance sheltered from the open surf so probably safer from potential undertow, I guess.

[nerys @nerys]

@winston I think your call is the correct one. But even as buffoonery, it’s just bizarre. And he hasn’t even been sworn in yet. I hate to think how it’s going to be after he is … and without the people who were there before, putting up guardrails.

@dentarthurdent We’re about a three-hour drive from the Bay of Fundy. We go out to Brier Island pretty much every summer to go whale-watching. We love it there. It’s not that far away, yet it feels like we’ve really gotten away from it all whenever we go.

This is Crow’s Neck Beach (also referred to as Crow Neck Beach). In the summer, you’d swear you were in the Caribbean. The water is a gorgeous shade of turquoise blue, sometimes more aqua. The beaches are white sand. It’s only when you dip your toe in the water that you know you are definitely not in the Caribbean. Because it’s located so far southwest, and the area is sparsely populated, it just doesn’t get that much foot traffic … which is fine with me. I think the wildlife appreciate it, too.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent @nerys @winston
Why?

1. Disruption… give things a shake and see what falls out.

2. Mess up liberal opponents so we can give more sympathetic parties a leg up. Elon is helping with this. He’s very good. Very sane.

3. Justify protectionism. We need to show we got something back.

4. Lay the ground for the resolution of the Ukraine War.

i. This might be, hey Vlad, you like to push your weight around don’t you. We can too.

ii. More probably… Vlad, if you really want those bits of Ukraine, we get Greenland, understood?

iii. Also… NATO guys, you really like NATO? Then you won’t mind us getting Greenland, will you?

5. To make money, because protectionism will make everyone poorer. Except us, because we were ready.

6. There’s no such thing as bad publicity. And if you think there is, you’re probably with Antifa.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u    I think Trump has a very simplistic view of the world.   He sees every transaction as a zero-sum game – for one party to win, the other has to lose.   (The concept of ‘win-win’ is beyond him, if he ever heard of it he probably dismissed it as woke nonsense).   I think this explains why he is so gratuitously obnoxious – the more he offends or annoys people, the more he wins.    It also explains his perversity – if there are two candidates for a job, one of which is eminently qualified and an obvious (and uncontroversial) pick, and the other is blatantly unsuitable and has no qualifications whatever, he will obviously pick Candidate B because (a) it will outrage everybody and (b) because he can.    The idea that Candidate A will be good for the general welfare doesn’t enter his thoughts for a moment.

I really think he is that shallow.

@nerys   That beach looks lovely in the photos.   Pity the water isn’t a more welcoming temperature.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent
zero sum… dunno. Donnie does like to deal. And the deal needs to look good to the buyer. It’s more that he doesn’t really bother to think that hard about it.

His instincts are:
what have I done before that might work? Obviously this in property but money is real, right? Rich guys in Russia are obviously on to a good thing but Vlad also uses that to control them. Maybe I need to be tough like him. Make lots of money for important (wealthy) people and stuff may fall from the bird-feeder for the little guys.

can I get away with it? I can fix the courts but it still might be embarassing. People tell me I shouldn’t get angry. Don’t want to look like a loser.

will it cost me votes? Because if I’m out I can’t fix the courts. They had me rattled for a bit.

The disruption principle is more relevant… not to Donnie because I doubt if he really knows who Hayek was, but the general strategy, to create a crisis which makes your opponents look like ‘morons’ and then move in with ideas that deliver the things you want, would appeal.

Suddenly the super-rich tech rats have jumped ship. They like a ‘free-lying speech’ digital world and REALLY want to stay super-rich. Musk obviously wants to be super-rich in space. We could be looking at the advent of Azimov’s ‘Spacer’ culture…

[Author]

Posts