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@mudlark    Yes, well I think there was in general a more robust view of those things back in the day. But I was actually thinking of some of the modern picture books my son had, a decade or so ago, that were just works of art. I think in the back of my mind was a book about a snake in the rain forest, with semi-gloss pages full of different shades of green and yellow. It was really gorgeous, and it was his favourite story for awhile, so we went through it pretty frequently.

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@blenkinsopthebrave     Well, a lot of us are hoping that it might be!  🙂

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@ichabod    So sorry to hear about your sister, and glad that she is doing well. Here is some upbeat faux renaissance music.

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I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s more recent comments about this story, but waited until I had reached it in my rewatch before jumping in. But I loved @ichabod‘s comparison of the visual look and feel to a beautifully illustrated children’s book. I’m sure that must have been exactly what they were aiming for, those lovely pages filled with rich greens and browns, punctuated with splashes of little red riding hood. 🙂

There was an awful lot of vitriol aimed at this and I’m just not sure why. I know that some people are dead set against kids ever being involved (odd in what started out and has always been a show aimed at least partly at kids). And as with “the moon is an egg”, some people didn’t like the fantasy premise of the story. The trees protect us from space danger! I liked the kids in this, I found them hilariously believable. The episode was visually gorgeous, haunting and vivid, and I thought that the fairy-tale ending was in keeping with the tone of the episode.

Some nice moments: Clara realizing that Mr. Danny “Responsible” Pink was extremely attractive. The Doctor saying that there are good scientific reasons to be very afraid when facing a tiger! Maebh artlessly explaining that she usually has no idea what’s going on, so she doesn’t bother to ask anymore. “Stop calling us ‘team’.”

I loved the sound of Maebh’s voice telling us “Be less afraid.” What a great message, that we should probably pay more attention to when we hear it, usually less specifically stated, from our children. Children are risk takers and optimists. I would guess that Clara understands that better than Danny. Like @purofilion, I don’t think she was being uncaring or irresponsible. Sometimes, in real life, keeping the children safe is only a part of an adult’s responsibilities.

I enjoyed Danny’s lovely speech at the end about wanting to see, not more, but deeper, about looking inside people for wonders, rather than outward into space. It was really beginning to seem clear at this point that Danny and Clara probably didn’t in the end have a future. This is a pretty fundamental difference of viewpoint; and unless Clara was going to come round to his philosophy, it could never have ended well.

By the way, I agree with others here that the constant, swift splicing from scene to scene that happens so much nowadays gets old pretty fast. But of course, it’s aimed at younger viewers, the YouTube generation,  used to the dice and splice of videos and games, and the constant stimulation that goes with that. It’s nice to encounter something once in awhile that allows you to time to contemplate what you are seeing.

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@Australia    Wow. You can do that? Fabulous. I’d be in full on envy mode right now if it weren’t for the likelihood that we will soon be ditching, not just our PM, but the whole government as well.

Here’s hoping all suppositories go the same way.   🙂

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@purofilion    Sometimes I amuse myself looking at the reader reviews on Amazon. Many of the reviewers are intensely frustrating, as their non-understanding of basic subject-predicate-object grammar, not to mention punctuation, renders them unfit in my view to criticize anyone’s writing, no matter how poor the book, that was actually coherent enough to be published. But often, it’s interesting, because here you see people saying, “If you enjoyed this writer’s other work, you will love this,” or likewise, “I love this writer, but this one really disappointed.” This is obviously not deep criticism, at least not always, but there is definitely a place for it, if you recognize it for what it is.

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@mudlark    The Bone Clocks Sounds fascinating. I will have to look into it. I don’t mind a really long book as if I am loving something, I never really want it to end!

I do love The Dispossessed, it’s possibly my favourite LeGuin novel. You’re right that it expresses the same theme in a fully realized, “realistic” story, while Omelas is a parable. (I have heard remarks in which people find Omelas frustrating because it “doesn’t make sense”. They want more details. They want a story instead of a metaphor, and thus completely miss the point.) The anarchist society in The Dispossessed is lovingly, believably portrayed, but the flaws in the system are hinted at almost from the beginning. In the end, though, it’s that system to which Shevek returns, deeming it worthy of fighting for.

I will admit to liking a happy ending best, but as you say, only in a story that is designed for one. Some stories really shouldn’t end happily, and it never feels satisfying when they do.

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My guess, if I have a guess, is that this doesn’t refer in any major way to anything from Series 8. I agree with those who think it might have something to do with Rassilon. Or it might be someone entirely new (which would be great!). The whole things feels too portentous to refer to the MixMaster (IMO).

@purofilion     Oh, yes. Arbutus Jr. had to do an assignment last year for the bizarrely-named “Planning 10” course that everyone has to take, in which he described how he might acquire marijuana. This in Vancouver, where there are illegal but quite visible “pot shops” on every corner just now, due to loopholes in the medical marijuana rules. I believe he answered that he would get it either from a “guy who knows a guy”, from the kids that hang out around the corner of the lane across the street from the school, or from a shop with a sign reading “by the people, for the people”. As with many of the assignments in that course, he didn’t get the greatest grade, but he did get an acerbic comment from the instructor.  🙂

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@ichabod

Less erudite than Puro’s selection above, but lots of soul! And the theme of absolutely loads of music drama in a nutshell.  🙂

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@purofilion @mudlark   I took Puro’s advice and moved this reply here, lest we all get modded. This same concern about critics (which of course is the problem in a nutshell with the Jones “review” of Terry Pratchett) applies equally to film and music critics. The problem is that a big part of what we enjoy is dictated by taste, and it can’t be possible to review anything for a popular audience without being influenced by that. Obviously some things are better crafted than others, but why (for instance) compare Pratchett to Austen when they are generically entirely different? Why set a critic to review the new Bond when he or she doesn’t care for action films? I have read reviews of concerts where the writer clearly didn’t even like the band. The tone is always one of “Well, I thought it sucked but clearly the people around me didn’t agree.” How is that useful to anyone?

Fiction is particularly challenging in this because it is so hard to get a sense of a book without actually reading it. So we rely much more on critics than we would with films, where we often base our decisions on preview clips and our previous experiences. But when you think about it, choosing a book entirely based on a book review would be as chancy as deciding to watch a Doctor Who episode based on the comments section in the Guardian!  🙂  Seriously, I guess the more reviews you read, the better, kind of like looking at Trip Adviser.

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@ichabod   People who write Utopian stories usually write them in order to dig until the find the weak point in the system, where something is deeply unfair, exploitative, or doomed by the passage of time.

You remind me of Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”: beautifully concise and poetically descriptive at the same time, shocking and haunting. Exactly as you describe above, because there surely can be no perfection in human society.

I loved your image of “endangered classical forms”, hiding until it is safe to emerge, hibernating perhaps. 🙂  But I do think it is true that many talented composers, plebeian enough to want people to actually listen to  their music, migrated to genres and settings where that was more likely to happen than the classical concert hall.

And in response to this:     but Beppo, here, is miserable because he’s in love with Angelina, and she is promised to another!     I will shortly leave you something on the music thread!

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@blenkinsopthebrave

Yes. This is a story that I want to see. (Raises glass.)

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Thanks for the link, @jimthefish! I was interested to read it, although I was sorry to see that they have apparently decided to disable comments, as it would have been interesting to see if any readers at least gave him credit for trying. (Although I suppose there wouldn’t have been much of that, really.) I thought that his point of view was much more clearly expressed this time around, which is an excellent argument for actually reading the writer you’re talking about.

@ichabod, I had a similar thought about the issue of proclaiming some books to be “literary” and others not. Obviously, there is a lot of English lit canon that is considered, rightly, to be “literature” because it has stood the test of time in a way that other works have not. Loads of people wrote Gothic romances in the 19th century, and there’s a reason why they aren’t all remembered! But without that test of time, who decides? Because nowadays, it can’t be right to decide based on different literary styles. If someone writes in a more lyrical, image-based style, that is literature, while a straightforward presentation of story and characters is not?

I had this conversation loads of times in my days as a musicology student, where entire classes were devoted to analyzing the importance of various composers of the later twentieth century. I could never understand how it was possible to determine their importance before their work had been allowed to stew a bit in the juices of history. @purofilion can also tell you how many composers in recent years have been dismissed because their music was too tonal, too accessible, even (horrors) too popular. Film music too… Ennio Morricone and John Williams are not considered serious composers, but Sergei Prokofiev, who wrote a lot of music for film, is.

Oh, dear, you gave me a soapbox and I climbed up on it. Oh well… How ’bout that Doctor Who Prelude, eh?  🙂

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This was a standout, wasn’t it? I was impressed at how flawlessly it flowed between humour and suspense… one minute we would be laughing at the Doctor stuck in his tiny TARDIS, the next, ripples were running across the floor and people were being sucked away. The cold opening was one of the creepiest ever, and then it was followed by the shrinking TARDIS, amusing rather than worrying at first. The Doctor’s quiet pleasure at something he didn’t understand- “Can you not just let me enjoy it?” There was a really BG Doc energy to him in these early scenes.

I thought Clara was great in this. I like her much better as a no-nonsense companion getting the job done. The person who is starting to sink under the weight of her own deceptions is of course great for dramatic interest and story arc purposes, but I hope that in the coming series, we will see more of this competent, effective Clara. Rigsy was fun as well. I liked the idea of a graffiti artist helping to save the world through his art! I wonder if, as with Leonardo da Vinci, the TARDIS will show up in his work later on.

The lying to Danny bit felt a little shoehorned in. Why on earth did she answer the phone? I wouldn’t have. I truly think she must have been wanting to be caught by now, and it’s really hard to see how Danny didn’t put two and two together at this point. But this wasn’t about Danny learning the truth, but the Doctor learning it.
The whole “Doctor Clara” thing is interesting- the Doctor seeing himself from the outside, as it were- is that what it looks like when I talk/act that way? He is clearly not pleased that Clara has become Doctor-lite. Presumably he needs, not a mirror of himself, but someone to fight with him, keep him “human”, as Donna did for Ten, and Rose for Nine. I think Rory did that job for Eleven, as Amy really was too much like him. (I do wonder though, as Rory seems in some ways to be an awful lot like Danny, whether he went along mostly out of self-defense, knowing that it was the only way to keep the woman he loved? A whole potential line of inquiry for the Companion thread!)

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@purofilion   This is exactly how I feel about it. There is lots to enjoy there, but for various reasons, it is low down the list for me. To be sure, since I felt that most of Series 8 was absolutely fabulous, that is not that big a strike, really!  🙂

@nerys @lisa   I’m glad that others were able to find these things convincing, and love the episode. It means that Moffat and Co. were completely justified in the episode, because as long as some people love it, then it wasn’t wrong. Not everyone will be perfectly happy every week (although some people seem to be rarely happy, and I really do wonder why they bother to watch). This one was less for me, while heists in time and the Orient Express in space were clearly written in the spirit of “What would make Arbutus really, really happy?”  🙂

Oh, and Puro, I was interested in your remark that you always saw Matt Smith in Time Heist. Was it because of the type of story, or the dialogue, or something else? Because I didn’t get that at all. I can’t imagine Eleven being so dismissive of people dying, or making dry remarks like the bolthole joke or “Team Not Dead”. Mind you, I will have to go back and watch some Eleventh Doctor episodes after the coming series is done, because I find it hard to bring a lot of it to mind right now!

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Well, I don’t have the remotest clue what that is about, but I can’t wait to find out. Isn’t it great?   🙂

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@purofilion

Interesting point about showrunners keeping everyone happy. I think that Whedon has had an easier time, in that Buffy et al were his creations. Doing Marvel, he would open himself up to the same kind of ARSE that we see with Who fans all the time. I think in some ways, Moffat has had fewer problems with Sherlock, because although that is obviously based on source material, it is enough of a re-imagining that it is almost an original creation. When people have been upset with him, it hasn’t been as much because he changed it from the original, as that he handled his own characters in ways that some people didn’t like (probably like Whedon and the Buffyverse). I seem to remember that Moffat’s Tintin upset some old-school fans as well (although I loved it).

 

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@nerys   I think you are probably right about Clara. It just came off as a massively annoying moment, for me. A good example of why, despite how much I enjoy her with the Doctor, I probably wouldn’t want Clara as a friend– she would just drive me nuts. 🙂

Regarding Courtney, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t think she would want/need to be thought special. I think many of us actually feel that way a lot of the time! More that I couldn’t quite see why she would expect this strange man whom she barely knew to think she was special. It also seemed unconvincing to me that she would confront him so directly about it.

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I thought there was a really unique pace to this episode. It was a series of quiet, intimate scenes and conversations, punctuated occasionally by 66 second bursts of intense excitement. And the soundtrack! Absolutely pitch perfect, classic mystery mood music. As far as I noticed, we didn’t hear the familiar heroic DW theme until the Doctor made his move, taking on Maisie’s emotions to confront the Mummy.

It was filled with lovely small moments. The Doctor finally said what had clearly been bugging him all series– We don’t have time to mourn! Meeting a real monster is “everyone’s dream”, and, when accused by Clara of knowing that there would be danger, “I didn’t know… I certainly hoped.” And Clara, on being asked if the good times had always been like this, “Now that you mention it…” The heroic death of the damaged captain was very moving. He had submerged his best qualities to the point where his worst nightmare was a mystery shopper! But he recovered himself and died bravely, thanks to the Doctor.

The last few minutes were lovely. The Doctor and Clara on the beach, when the Doctor finally, in a sense, explains himself and why he acts the way he does. Then the moments in the TARDIS with Perkins. He and the Doctor had enjoyed such a lovely chemistry throughout that I was as disappointed as the Doctor when Perkins turned down his offer. It was beautifully done: the Doctor looks briefly surprised and then quickly accepts it, and Perkins looks regretful, as though he is well aware of what he is giving up.

Clara, by contrast, is unable to give it up. It was hard not to view the ending as a bit of a cliffhanger, in that her decision to lie to both Danny and the Doctor was clearly a hint that things were not going to end well. On thinking about it, I really don’t think there was a single piece out of place in this! (Possibly the fact that Clara chose to lie to the Doctor about Danny, rather than just say, “I’m coming, I’ll sort Danny later.” But that’s really a nitpick, especially given where we now know the arc was heading.) I may have to rethink my placing Time Heist in first place now.

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@purofilion @janetteb

Thank you! I’m really enjoying my rewatch as it seems with distance, I am able to be a little more analytical. (I don’t know how professional reviewers do it, actually!) It’s easy to be so excited that I am watching Doctor Who, that I am not always aware of what I like or don’t like.

Puro, I don’t remember particularly noticing these issues the first time round either. As you say, I think that the “moon is an egg” issue may have hijacked the debate fairly quickly. I can no longer remember what people had to say about other aspects of this, and maybe those aspects were overshadowed by the objections that so many people had to the premise. It’s too bad when, as Janette experienced, we find ourselves feeling obliged to defend an episode with which we actually had problems, because a certain group of viewers want to use it as evidence that “the show sucks” or “Moffat has to go”. They are allowed to get it wrong occasionally, and of course, not everyone will agree that they did get this one wrong!

As a parent, I found resonance in the issue of people owning their own choices. My husband and I were just recalling a time when, just over a year ago, our son was faced with having to make a last-minute choice as to whether he would leave the special ed program he had been in for two years. It was really agonizing for him, and I will never forget having to tell him (a la 10th Doctor), “I am so, so sorry, but I cannot make this decision for you. I know it’s hard, but you have to decide for yourself.” And as we realized yesterday in talking about it, that was for the best, hard as it was to say that to him and see his struggle, because I would have made the wrong choice. He chose to leave the program and it was the right choice for him in the end. The Doctor had no certainty that it would be safe to let the creature live, and therefore, no right to make that choice for humanity. But he didn’t articulate that very well at the time. He was condescending before the decision and somewhat self-satisfied after it had all worked out well. By the time he tried to explain himself more thoroughly, she was already fully into her “strop”, so probably unable to listen rationally. He actually did get the message across much more eloquently at the end of Mummy on the Orient Express (which I have just watched and will post about later!).

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This was never a favourite of mine, but not for any reasons connected to dodgy science/moon is an egg issues. There were some key aspects to the story that did bother me, though.

I disliked the whole premise for taking Courtney on board the TARDIS. The Doctor told her she wasn’t special? Seriously? She hadn’t known the Doctor long enough or well enough to care what he might think of her, as far as I could see. And the idea that Clara would be there demanding that the Doctor cave in and just say, “Okay, Courtney, you’re special,” implied that she felt that a) the Doctor was likely to care at all how Courtney felt, and b) Courtney would be dumb enough to believe that his sudden about-face at Clara’s urging had any meaning at all. Thus the whole thing started out on the wrong foot for me.

Also, Clara’s anger at the end (although Coleman performed it so well and believably) felt really excessive. I frankly thought that the Doctor was absolutely right not to influence their decision. If it was a critical moment in Earth’s development, and he had no way to know for sure that his desired path would lead to a positive outcome, then it was absolutely not his place to make that call. I could understand better that she might decide not to travel with him anymore because of the weight of those kinds of choices, but the anger seemed misplaced and unfair.

However, between the opening and closing, there were some elements that I really enjoyed. I liked the astronaut character, she was very calm and matter-of-fact. She didn’t waste more than a couple of minutes threatening to kill the unexpected intruders before accepting the Doctor’s help, and her whole wry attitude throughout was enjoyable. I also liked her very humble thank you to Clara at the end. I really loved the Doctor’s sheer wonder and delight when he discovered that the moon was an egg, a unique life form. Capaldi portrayed this so well, this really crucial aspect of the Doctor’s character. His speech about the future on the beach at the end was also a lovely, lovely moment.

The episode as a whole just didn’t hang together as organically as most. It felt like an episode that had some jobs to do (give Courtney a story, create a falling out between Clara and the Doctor), and was built around those needs rather than having those things arise more naturally out of the situation. The Caretaker, of course, was probably set up the same way: create a situation in which Danny and the Doctor meet. But somehow, in watching it, it could just as easily have been designed to give the Twelfth Doctor his “The Lodger” episode, and the Danny/Doctor situation was just the natural fallout.

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@janetteb et al

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

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

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

 

 

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I really enjoyed this the first time around, and did again. Lots of great moments here: the Doctor undercover, just trying to get on with saving the world; the whole Adrian thing; the Doctor and Courtney “Disruptive Influence” Woods (ah yes, there’s been a spillage). It was brought down just a bit by my feeling a little bit irritated by Clara and Danny. The moment when Clara, faced with Danny’s discovery, launched into a really stupid lie, was so irritating (although Jenna Coleman did a great job of portraying that shift into panic, “fight or flight”, thing). Danny’s continued hurt that she hadn’t told him about the Doctor might have carried more weight if it had been made specific that they had now been involved for a long time. This was a mistake in the writing, because although I could think it through afterward and find evidence that some time might have passed, it felt intuitively as if this episode would followed pretty closely upon the last one, since we were given no overt sign at the outset.

I liked the moments when Danny demonstrated for the Doctor that he was actually both capable and smart, and the climactic “I have to be good enough for you” scene was touching. The final scene on the couch irritated me, it felt a little too alpha dog. But those were small tics on the whole. Most of this brought a smile and kept me reasonably close to the edge of my seat.

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@bluesqueakpip @cathannabel @miapatrick

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

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

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

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This is quite possibly my favourite episode of the series (although there are a couple coming that I will have to see again before making that judgement). But I loved this from start to finish, every single moment of it. Riveting. Stylish. Funny. Suspenseful. All of the guest roles were perfectly played. The Doctor, going from strength to strength. Why are you in charge? That’s my superpower.

I loved the moment when he realized that Saibra and Psy hadn’t actually died; he can handle death without showing emotion, but the shock of their survival was too much for him. It was great to see the proof that he really does care about the fate of those he leads. It was also wonderful to see his glee as he finally began to understand the truth behind the Architect.

This felt like old-school Who in some ways, except that it was a roller coaster ride that we would never have seen on the BG show. Five stars.  🙂

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@cathannabel    Ha. You’ve nailed exactly how I felt about the shift from Ten to Eleven. The problem then became one of feeling maternal about the Doctor, which is no good either!  🙂

I like your thoughts about Rose. I haven’t watched Series 1 in a very long time, and should do it at some point. Also Mickey; his personal growth trajectory was really phenomenal throughout his time on the show, and his share of the Doctor’s respect was a long time coming.

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@miapatrick    I meant to say in response to your comment about Citizen Kane, that I’m not above a little sentiment, but I need it to be pretty well leavened with humour. I’ll take Casablanca, where we are smiling at the end, any day! As a teenager, I read Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice both within a short time of one another, and liked them both, but preferred Austen for her humour and her relatively unsentimental view of her characters. Jane’s story was engaging, but the events always seemed so unlikely, and I found her awfully hard to like.

Radcliff is I think one of the better gothic novelists, though she did spend a lot of time describing Italian scenery.      I confess to a weakness for writings that immerse me in a place, my own tend to lean that way. Although I suppose there can be too much of a good thing.  🙂

@jimthefish   Cheers. I love Chabon, although I have yet to read Franzen. I agree with everyone who has said they like a beautifully-crafted sentence. I don’t mind pithy either, when it is done really well, but it often isn’t.

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@mudlark @miapatrick

Obviously, people have a right to their opinions and the right to read what the want. But there is a bit of responsibility that goes with having access to a public forum like the Guardian. Literary criticism is one thing, and if he had read one of Pratchett’s books and then said, “Here are my problems with this book”, then fine. His opinion, and he’s entitled to it. But this is exactly like the people that come online to state “I haven’t watched any Who since Matt Smith showed up; Moffat is crap.”

But even more, what bothers me is the categorization of books (or any art, for that matter) as “worthwhile” or “not worthwhile”, based on broad issues of genre and style. Obviously, not all books are equal, in their intent or in their execution, and not all types of storytelling will appeal to everyone. But I can love a book because its use of language is beautiful, or its characters engage me, or its story enthralls me, or it makes me laugh out loud, or because it contains deeper truths about life, the universe, and everything. Hopefully, a book will do more than one of these, but it isn’t necessary that it be everything.

I can love books for very different reasons. If Jones can’t do the same, then I guess that’s his loss. But he probably shouldn’t be writing about books for the Guardian.

@miapatrick    I guess we all have a piece of received wisdom that leaves us cold. I heave a sigh every time I read another “Top 50 Films” list that puts Citizen Kane at number one.

@ania    Yes! Two and a half weeks to go. Off to watch Time Heist now.

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@mudlark  @ichabod

Goodness. I had bookmarked the (mercifully brief) Guardian piece by Jonathan Jones, and just finally got around to reading it. I’m sorry, but what an idiot! Firstly, how do you make such a judgement about a writer whom you admittedly have never read??? Secondly, this whole attitude, and the need to assign some kind of cultural value to books as if it were a competition, drive me mad, and is why I have recently fallen well away from the kind of reading that I used to do. Who decides?

I had written about three times this much, and looking at it again realized that I’m preaching to the converted so why use up the pixels? However, I am reminded of the University of Toronto professor who, a couple of years ago, stated that he never taught novels by female, Canadian, or Chinese writers  in his courses because he didn’t like them enough. He said he only taught novels by “serious, heterosexual guys”. Seriously. There was of course a massive tempest in a teapot about it for awhile, because it was so bizarre. I wonder what people like this expect to happen when they make these kind of remarks.

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@lisa   I’m not sure what the connection would have been. They are also trying to put a pipeline through there, called Northern Gateway, for the oil sands product, which might have been part of what you were reading. They’ve had much less joy with the pipeline, as most people here are against it and there’s very little in it for the BC government to force it through when most of the benefits would go elsewhere. But they’ve done a great PR job convincing people that without the Site C dam, the cost of their electricity will go up. They do already have two dams up there.

As for Alberta, much as I’m sure that Rachel Notley would love to pull way back on the oil sands, she can’t really afford to do anything too quickly as so many people are just waiting for her to put a foot wrong. She has already started looking into taxes and fees on the industry that have Tory-types yelling “I told you so!” And the province is now in recession, as the price of oil has dropped down so low and oil is by far their biggest economic sector, so she’s got her hands full. Plus, I’m sure she’s aware that the whole country is watching her to try and guess what Thomas Mulcair and the federal party would do if they were to be voted in next month. She won’t want to mess things up for him.

Oh, these are interesting days for socialists!  🙂

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@whisht    I hate to think what the Arsenal fans are reading right now. (ARSEnal is probably an apt descriptor for some of them if they are anything like Canadian ice hockey fans!) Actually, I started my day by listening to a lengthy lecture from my son on various deals that had made him happy, sad, or filled with hilarity, depending on the circumstances. Meanwhile, he has sports network alerts on his phone so every time something happens in any of the leagues he follows, the phone vibrates; it was sitting next to his bed, bouncing away the entire time.  🙂

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@ichabod @mudlark @janetteb @purofilion

Moved into the pub for ease of ranting. As we currently have a (very lengthy) federal election going on at the moment, I may be ranting a bit more than usual!  😡

Mudlark’s comment      it is difficult not to feel that we are governed by people who are intent on jettisoning pretty much everything this nation has which we can be reasonably proud of    describes so well what has been going on in Canada for the past ten years. Barring the awful prospect of vote splitting, we may be ready to move on, as Canadians appear, at long last, to finally have had enough of it. But as Puro remarks, it beggars belief that so many of them can’t be bothered to vote.

Ichy, this: they replace the gold of quality with changelings made of shit    is a fabulous statement. Unfortunately, too true.

@lisa   Very disturbing piece. Or it should be. But too many people will not be warned. Our government is planning to flood the Peace River Valley in northern BC, hectares and hectares of some of the best farmland in Western Canada, for a dam that even the former head of BC Hydro says won’t necessarily be needed. It will deprive farmers of their homes and livelihoods, and First Nations bands of their traditional territory and burial grounds. All that is holding them up (and not very effectively, like standing in front of a pack of charging elephants) is a small group of First Peoples and their lawyers trying to fight the corporate behemoth and the government. One of them is my sister, who has a very small firm that handles native rights issues, and I can tell you that the media doesn’t even tell half the story of what goes on in those courtrooms. Limitless dollars thrown into the shutting down of people’s views, and environmentalists being spied upon by the government, and insane things that you never thought you’d see in this country.

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Just watched this again. I’d forgotten how really good and scary and moving this episode was. Definitely a future classic. I’d also forgotten how massively irritated I was with Clara at the beginning. She just seemed so dense! So insensitive! So… Doctor-like.

@TheConsultingDoctor    Yes. Watching the scene with Clara and Orson, I remembered why we were all so certain in the first place that Orson was Clara’s descendant. It was because of this scene, in which Orson behaved as though he new perfectly well that Clara was his great-grandmother. He didn’t act as though he suspected that she might be, but as if he were certain that she was. He earlier denied having seen photos but that only means that he didn’t want to share.

In light of later events, it seemed possible to assume that Orson was a red herring, some kind of relative of Danny’s but nothing to do with Clara. But that would be to ignore the evidence of this story. As you say, Moffat has left threads dangling through multiple series, and I’m sure that this is another such. I have no idea how it will be resolved, but it’s nice to think that Danny Pink’s arc might not end up leading nowhere, that he will have a significance beyond just the fact that Clara loved him and lost him.

@lisa    I would guess that this is the planet after the humans and monster-humans were gone. Because, in fact, they all left, didn’t they? The humans left on the rocket that was supposed to take them to Utopia, and the monster-humans were taken away by the Master, to help him conquer the Earth. The idea of the end of the universe, of time, of everything, is massive and incomprehensible and terrifying, isn’t it? A suitable setting for a portion of this story, I thought!

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@missy @ichabod

This was the other one I watched over the weekend. Even at this late date, I still had the same big goofy grin as the first time! So much fun to see the CapDoc showing his lighthearted side, as well as the beautiful BBC work to create a storybook twelfth century– “It’s realistic, I’ll give you that.” Like the Doctor, I spent the whole story waiting for the other shoe to drop, and was a little surprised when it didn’t, so I found that knowing that Robin Hood really is Robin Hood puts a different spin on it.

I remember that a lot of fandom at the time were incensed by the silliness of this story. It was high up on a lot of “worst of DW” lists. But really, can’t we laugh? I loved the Doctor and Robin’s game of h-o-r-s-e with bows and arrows, and then when the Doctor decides “This is getting silly”, he pulls out the sonic and blows up the target. And the intensity of the Sheriff’s plans: “For Nottingham is not enough. After this– Derby.” OMG. And Clara telling the Doctor that he would need a plan that doesn’t include the word “sonic” should have made the crankiest fans happy.

I loved one moment even more this time, when the Doctor and Robin discover the space ship: “At last, something real. No more fairy tales.” It was always amusing, because of course giant space ships are just another kind of fairy tale in our reality, but knowing the ending gives this line new significance– if Robin Hood is one kind of fairy tale, the Doctor is another. “I’m just as real as you are.” The intensity with which he said that line gave it extra weight. While of course, we know that in reality, no real person’s legend would survive 800 years so perfectly intact, but this was our first indication of the myth and fairy tale thread that would run through this whole series. And just so perfectly done.

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@fowl    I love WOTE!  🙂  My teenager introduced me to them and they are fabulous. I like a lot of their songs, but this one is my favourite:

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I’ve finally started a proper rewatch of the last series, which hopefully will flow nicely into the start of Series Nine, and got a bit of viewing in over the weekend. This wasn’t one of my favourite episodes on first viewing, but it was interesting to come back to it. In many ways, it was our real intro to the new Doctor, now fully functional and in charge. I liked his intro, facing Journey Blue with two cups of coffee in his hand, chastising her for threatening and demanding, rather than asking nicely. Imagine being on the point of death and suddenly waking up inside the TARDIS!

We are given a man who appears very confident, quick with snappy remarks and sarcasm, and enthusiastic about new and interesting things. But we are also shown immediately, through the brief scene in the TARDIS with Clara, that underneath it, he is still trying to work things out.

I really appreciated his cold, calm survivalist attitude in the face of Ross’s death – there is no one with whom to plead or argue, so he doesn’t waste time sobbing but takes steps to save the rest of them. I loved his absolute lack of filters. I realize that these things are what many people found off-putting, but I actually warmed to them instantly. (Not sure what that says about me!) But it reminds me of my favourite BG Doctor, my Doctor, the Fourth, who demonstrated a complete lack of sentimentality- something I found as crisply refreshing as a fizzy mint drink after the emotional Ten and Eleven.

Knowing the ending brings a little more perspective, and when Journey Blue made her decision to give the Doctor a chance to “do better” rather than destroy Rusty (and herself), it struck me forcefully that this was the moment when she stopped being a soldier, despite what the Doctor said later. It felt sad to know that her choice wouldn’t be rewarded in the end. And Clara’s lesson for the Doctor- “What did we learn today?” doesn’t seem to have sunk all the way in. The Doctor accepted that a Dalek could change, but didn’t seem to think that a human soldier could. And maybe, based on his experience of the day, she couldn’t. After all, Rusty didn’t.

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@purofilion      A pair of showrunners mentioned that there are people who run, not one, but three series at once: therefore “they have to drop the ball. I mean come on!

Isn’t that what the Moffat-haters are always on about? “He’s giving too much attention to Sherlock, so Doctor Who suffers… He should leave DW to someone who has the time to do it properly!” Conveniently ignoring the fact that there is so little Sherlock actually produced that it’s hard to believe it’s taking all that much of his time to do a few episodes every couple of years. Artists in other areas (I’m thinking here of the worlds of literature and music) seem to keep multiple balls in the air a lot of the time, with a fair bit of success.

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@craig    Thanks for posting the link to the Iannucci speech. He was at times intelligent, emotional, and hilarious- in short, fantastic. If I could, I would warn the British not to underestimate what they’ve got, and cheap themselves out of a fabulous cultural resource. I have watched as the CBC here in Canada, which is funded directly through government, has had its funding cut and cut over the years, forcing it into a race to the bottom that has resulted in a decimation of the institution with which I grew up. Once advertising was introduced onto the TV network (years ago now), programming became a popularity contest based around hockey and reruns of American programming. Gone was much of the uniquely Canadian content that made it special, and so people can legitimately say, “Why are my tax dollars supporting this network, when lots of it is crap and the private networks do better?” (Because of course the private networks can afford to do it better than the sadly denuded, underfunded CBC.)  Now radio is going the same way, with many of the thoughtful programs that linked the nation gone, and most of the music programming devolved to generic “singer-songwriter” pop that, while sometimes worthwhile, is a drop in the bucket of what is really going on in this country musically. If one wants something more, of course, one can go to the various internet-only channels the CBC now provides, that stream various types of music free of hosts, commentary, or depth.

The fact is that this governmental fear of individual thought and criticism has been going on here for a long time, and it predates our current Conservative government. However, the fear of intellect and creativity that has arrived more recently seems to be spilling over from Tea-Party thinking in the US. Not to mention the notion that the free market will provide everything a society needs, which is ludicrous when applied to many areas of life. In this case, private broadcasters plan programming not just on the number of viewers it will get, but the number of viewers from the correct demographic, as that is what their advertisers pay for. Good luck to you finding something to watch if you aren’t part of that demographic.

Sorry for rambling on, but you have something wonderful that we in Canada have thrown away, and I hate to see the same mistake being made in Britain! Rant complete; as you were.

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@purofilion     Wow, congratulations. A Silver Wedding so that would be… Cybermen?   🙂

I purchase my AG Who through iTunes, and new episode downloads become available at midnight on the night of broadcast. So I am usually able to see each new episode sometime on Sunday, usually in the early afternoon when Mr. Arbutus is napping and Arbutus Junior is tucked up in his cave with his skype friends. It’s painful avoiding the Forum on Sunday morning, and I am always a day late to the party.

@lisa   Arbutus Jr. used to be a passionate Lego collector, and has among other things a lot of Town Plan stuff. One set included a little Lego bride and groom. Some good friends of ours got married a few years ago, a very lovely nerdy couple that we knew through Mr. Arbutus’ IT work, and the bride, a Lego fan, joked that they should use AJ’s Lego figures on their cake. Well, in the end, they did, and it was adorable, and AJ was very proud that he had provided the cake topper!

Oh dear, we’ve gone pretty far off topic, haven’t we?

 

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@missy @all

Personally, I’m pretty sure that this is a non-issue. We always knew that Capaldi was unlikely to stay for more than three, or just possibly four, series. He has done one and has wrapped or is wrapping (not sure which) two. So the speculation begins, but nobody really knows anything, and Capaldi hasn’t really said anything, except what we already knew, that he won’t be doing the gig forever. There’s too much else out there to do and DW doesn’t really allow for it. But I would assume that we will get at least one more series out of him, unless something pretty fabulous comes along to tempt him away (which could always happen, of course). But the only other modern Doctor to stay for fewer than three series was Eccleston, and we know that he was unhappy.

Furthermore, if Moffat is signed on for Series 10, then I agree with @bluesqueakpip, that Capaldi is likely to stay on slightly longer, to avoid a repeat of the challenges associated with Series 5. Because it’s hard to believe that Moffat isn’t feeling ready to move on sooner than later, he’s been living and breathing this show for an awfully long time. On the whole, I’ve been a fan, so I’ll be sad to see his era come to an end. But I’m pretty sure that the show will continue to be great without him, just different, as RTD’s show was different. I didn’t dislike RTD’s Who, just on the whole have enjoyed Moffat’s era more (with the exception of Series 4, which I loved, and Series 6, which I loved less).

Now Jenna Coleman is another story. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her depart soonest of all, because she’s been at it longer than Capaldi, and because it’s hard to see how much further her story can go and still stay interesting. But, as the Curator said, “Who knows?”  🙂

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@ichabod    You’ve inspired a great longing in me for a range of useful sonic devices for around the house… sonic can opener, sonic corkscrew, sonic piano tuner. And so on. And a sonic device for clearing clogged drains would be really useful.  🙂

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@pedant – Congratulations! I’m sure the bed will soon follow.    🙂

@Rose2112   Gluten and dairy, wow, that’s tough. My experience with “gluten-free” products has not been positive, they often taste pretty bad. My father-in-law is gluten intolerant, and his solution is to eat a lot of corn product. This is a natural for him due to his career as a biologist, he was a corn specialist!

@purofilion    That vegetarian would be me! (Although I think @janetteb said that she is as well?) The Kitchen Aid is a brand of electric mixer. Mine is very sturdy and comes with a dough hook, a paddle, and a whisk. It takes a lot of the physical work out of baking, and it has a sort of portal on the front that allows special pieces to be attached. I have the pasta maker and have just started learning how to use it. Haven’t yet progressed to ravioli, but that is definitely the end goal. A friend of mine has an ice cream maker that attaches to it! Believe it or not, I have never had a microwave and don’t miss it, but I wouldn’t want to go without my Kitchen Aid!

@lisa    We have Whole Foods quite near us, and I find it very useful for certain things. I tend not to buy their produce, because it is usually more expensive than I like, but a lot of other things are actually priced better than elsewhere around here. I like that they are pretty accurate about telling you exactly where things come from! Their house brand frozen organic veg are really useful, as they are American produce as opposed to Chinese, and reasonably priced as well.

@janetteb   I might actually try your goggle idea. We use a lot of onions, especially in our Indian and southeast Asian cooking, and I can never tolerate them long enough to dice them decently.

Arbutus Jr. at 16 will still give me hugs, and occasionally when he’s feeling blue will hang onto me for a cuddle. He and his dad do a sort of air fist bump in public, subtle enough that it won’t draw attention. In the privacy of home, though, we get plenty of hugs; he is, as we say, a “hugging and kissing boy” and probably always will be.

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@Rose2112     Wow, haven’t you been having a time? I can’t even begin to imagine cooking for so many people. It sounds like the best office barbecue ever.

Your soup sounds great! I enjoy making soup, but I am also not the greatest at dicing things. My husband is actually much better at it than I am, he is more coordinated. And onions are a particular problem because they really hurt my eyes. Any recipe that calls for finely diced onions simply has to take large chunks and like it! But Rose, what on earth is the point of a cookie without flour or butter?  🙂 That really is more insane than what’s actually cooking!

A nose repiercing, wow. “Not full of awesome” is a great way to put it! I finally got my ears pierced in my thirties, and then I had a baby, and after a few weeks of new momhood and not wearing earings, I found that one of my holes had filled in! I was so annoyed, because it really hurt the first time. So the second time I left my sleepers in for so long that I ended up with a very large hole, and for a couple of years I used to lose earrings all the time!

Your son sounds lovely. I remember thinking the same thing as my son begged me to sit with him and watch interminable episodes of the Magic School Bus, and various Hot Wheels movies. Now he is sixteen and makes me watch long highlight reels on YouTube of various soccer matches. His hair isn’t all that long, but it is definitely not short, and he uses so much product that I can’t keep it in the house. Between that and the super soaker of deodorant every day, he smells like a salon when he leaves the house.  🙂

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@mudlark     I know that the long proofing process is part of the problem. There just isn’t the cultural interest here in the kind of time that the traditional process requires. I knew about the baguettes traditionelles, and they are definitely the ones to get. The last time we were in Paris, we were in and out of the local boulangerie twice a day. It was heaven.

@purofilion      My Kitchen Aid is my friend! I mix up bread dough, pizza dough, cookie dough, and cake batter in it, and I now have an attachment for making pasta, so I’m learning to do that as well. Charming as the idea is, I have tried the long, long kneading thing, and I just don’t have the patience for it.

@lisa     I recently bought a new pizza stone at Williams & Sonoma, made especially for the BBQ. It is in two pieces that fit together, and air is trapped in the middle, so there is more space between the pizza and the flame. It works really well. We have done a reasonable approximation of a thin crust brick oven pizza with it. We are also lucky to have a local organic flour mill in the area that produces a lot of different flours, including a “00” Italian-style pizza flour. We like the Neapolitan style best, with simple toppings and home made tomato sauce.

@blenkinsopthebrave     Bring the wine up with you into the kitchen, you will have more fun that way!

This Forum used to make my head spin; now it just makes me hungry.  🙂

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@ichabod  @mudlark  @lisa         Oh, bread. (happy sigh) I love good bread. We have a decent bakery in our neighbourhood, and a few pretty nice French patisseries around town. (A really good croissant is one of the happiest things I can think of!) There are a few very fancy “foodie” bakeries that do make fabulous bread, but the prices make me shudder. What I cannot get here is a proper baguette– and by proper I mean what I have had in France: fresh, crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside. For whatever reason, they never get them quite right here, although interestingly I have had them in Quebec, where they seem to have an intuition for French-style bread and cheese that just doesn’t exist here.

I bake a pretty fair loaf, with the help of a liquid starter I learned how to make and my Kitchen Aid. I don’t do much fancy baking– a few old-fashioned cookies, an occasional spice cake. I do make a nice pie; and braided Ukrainian Christmas bread (Christmas really ups my game!). And Mr. Arbutus is The Muffin Man. He can make the most delicious breakfast muffins without even using a recipe, not a skill of mine.

I am however determined to learn to master a thing we had in Italy called a pasticiotto, which is a kind of flavourful little cake with a cream-filled centre. They were fabulous.

@lisa    That thing with chocolate chip cookies when they are crisp but also chewy is magical!

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@indigomoose    I too like the idea of an explanation that includes the Romana and Six regenerations. It would have to be a cleverly done, and we know Moffat is up for that! And like @bluesqueakpip, I can’t believe that we are completely done with the Danny/Orson thread. For one thing, the existence of Orson is a big loose end; for another, as long as Clara’s arc continues, I think that Danny will remain relevant.

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@bluesqueakpip    And never forget the Doctor Who zealots– Moffat must die for sins against canon!

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@janetteb       I don’t know the Swedish buns, they sound fantastic. We had Ukrainian ones filled with cream cheese.

@lisa        Whenever we have travelled to the U.S., we have always been delighted to be served entirely unsweetened iced tea. This is not something we ever see up here (except at my house!) and definitely goes against the usual expectation!

@purofilion       I’m sure we’d all love to see your aurat. 🙂

All this talk of buns and marzipan is giving me ideas! I may have to go and bake something. Except the boy is away this week, hiking on glaciers in Alaska, and neither Mr. Arbutus nor myself need any extra calories at present (too much rose being consumed on the terrace!).

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Oh, and @purofilion, you make your own marzipan? I am massively impressed. Can I come to your house for tea?   🙂

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Oh, I love these conversations!

@bluesqueakpip     Ha. I should have realized that that was the case, as we had already been discussing other language variants. Fascinating!

@janetteb    If your story had happened to us, we would never have heard a thing about it, as Arbutus Jr. really does drink tea every night (of the non or lightly caffeinated variety). If I don’t happen to be making it myself, he will inevitably ask me, usually by text message, “Tea?”

@mudlark    Cool. I am familiar with the two styles of serving, but hadn’t heard the terms “a la Francaise” or “a la Russe” before. I grew up with the first, but I have learned from the Italians to enjoy the second as well. Interesting, in a way, the whole distinction between sweet and savoury. When we serve a squash bake (definitely sweet), it is part of the main meal, but a pumpkin pie is always “afters” (@pedant, I love that expression!). The idea of savoury puddings used to be more common here as well, but I think it has dropped away over time.

I had a conversation not long ago with an Italian-Swiss friend regarding meals. Our mutual language (but not the first language for either of us) is French, and he corrected me when I used “le diner” for the end-of-day meal. He told me: “le dejeuner, le diner, le souper”. I told him that in Quebec French, which is what I learned many years ago, it is “le petit dejeuner, le dejeuner, le diner”. So I guess they have these same conversations on French-language forums, between French speakers of different nationalities?   🙂

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