[Arbutus @replies]

@mudlark   @todeledo

I guess “invasive species” would be a more correct term. It does die back in the winter even when it doesn’t freeze, but it comes back and spreads massively in both wet and dry weather. And the one that has taken over where I live (in Vancouver, Canada) is a white flowered one that isn’t especially pretty, and if you dare go away for a few weeks in summer the things are strangling your whole garden by the time you get back! I live in a neighbourhood with a fair number of rental properties, so not all of the gardens are weeded regularly, so it’s impossible to eradicate. I just have to keep ripping it out when I find it, and in the summer when things are green, it’s easy to miss it growing up in the midst of the other plants.

@lisa   Your garden sounds wonderful. I have a south facing yard that gets very hot and dry in the summer, so I go for a lot of Mediterranean climate things as well. Some of them have to come inside for the winter, though. I have a lemon tree in a pot, that as I mentioned above I fight the ants off of. Also one grapevine (I made grape jelly two years ago, very fun), a small fig tree, and an olive tree that produces a lot of olives that never really get ripe. I like to pretend I live in Italy. Ciao, bella!

[Arbutus @replies]

@janetteb    Why oh why is it that no matter how horrible the weather, and how detrimental it is to everything we are trying to grow, it never stops the weeds? The nightmarish morning glory is rampant in my neighbourhood too, and grows up over everything the minute my back is turned. Queen Anne’s Lace is another one that shoots up in every available corner. But we keep up the fight!  🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

And to all the congenial hangers on of the Cloven Hoof, I had to share this: Now, that’s a pub.  🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

@fatmaninabox

Congratulations, Horticulturist! I smiled when you referred to “cute, fluffy garden pests”. In my garden, the pests are rarely that… although, I guess squirrels count, and since they ate up every one of my grapes last fall before I could get them harvested, that’s not just a pest but a Public Enemy. But Public Enemy Number One are definitely the ants, and their nasty little herds that they keep putting on my lemon tree. I wage a napalm-the-jungle style war on them every summer after I bring the tree outside, they are vile. My mother, who lives on the edge of the prairie, counts the deer as her Public Enemy Number One.

But your botanical garden looks lovely and I can see why you will miss it. What an uplifting place to spend your time.

[Arbutus @replies]

@phaseshift     Great post. I couldn’t agree more with Letts and Dicks that the “brothers” relationship would have been so boring. I read about that backstory for the Eighth Doctor movie long ago, and like you was relieved that it remained only a backstory, because while I didn’t love everything about the movie, what we got was better than that story would have been!

And you make an excellent point about Osgood and all of the Master’s earlier victims. It’s probably true that the main reason Osgood’s demise hit us harder than some of those earlier deaths is that we had gotten to know her better.

Isn’t it remarkable how you can talk through all the comparisons and connections between Missy’s behaviour and that of previous Masters, but with a simple gender change, suddenly it all boils down to “she wants to shag him”? Funny, really.

[Arbutus @replies]

@ichabod     Buddhism is definitely one of those belief systems that has the unfortunate fate of having been picked apart by those “spiritual but not religious” people (see @purofilion’s post from awhile back). We have loads of them on the west coast, and they tend to take all the bits that appeal from different faiths, and mash them together under a “Nature is my god” umbrella. I’m not sure what actual Buddhists make of all this, to be honest.

[Arbutus @replies]

@purofilion (and others)  Of course, there are good real-life reasons for why the Doctor isn’t constantly harking back to old companions (the legal discussion has been quite interesting!). But even if we stay in-story, I think the idea can be supported that the Doctor changes enough during regeneration that the nature of previous relationships might also change.

@ichabod has a good point about the compartmentalization of the Doctor’s memories. I also like the “mayfly” comparison, because as it seems that relatively few Time Lords actually leave Gallifrey for long, most relationships they have are with others like themselves. The Doctor is an anomaly, as his friendships are formed almost exclusively with shorter lived beings. (Ichi, I’m guessing you have read Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love?)

But with the Time Lords, it’s not just a question of long life, but of regeneration. @ichabod’s post says it perfectly, and even reminds us that the Doctor himself has referenced the fact that the change goes deeper than getting a new face. Of course, it’s complicated. Ten says “a new man goes sauntering off”, but Twelve says “I’m still me.” Both statements are true. But it’s clear that the essence, the “me” of the Doctor that remains unchanged, hides between the bits that are closer to the surface: is he patient or irritable, is he a hugging person or not, does he like wine or fish fingers and custard? And so on. And I think that these various characteristics would definitely influence the relationship he might have with different companions. Try imagining certain companions hanging out with different Doctors, and it doesn’t always work! I’m sure that, deep down, he remembers all of his friends with fondness. But you can imagine, for instance, Twelve thinking even for a moment that he might be in love with Rose? Or Eleven travelling with Donna? Or, to go further back, Four putting up with Tegan for one instant?   🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

And @purofilion, I would guess that Moffat already knew at the time of Osgood’s death that she wasn’t gone for good. He seems to play the long game most of the time. So my hope is that her return will be both convincing and cool!

[Arbutus @replies]

@purofilion

My theory about Time Lords, regeneration, and love, is that the extent of regeneration, the depth of it, would make long term relationships like marriage fairly difficult. We’ve never (to my knowledge, anyway) seen a depiction of marriage on Gallifrey (someone correct me if I’m wrong, there!). I suspect that intimate relationships are more ephemeral, although in the normal lifespan of a single regeneration, that could potentially be a good long time. But the idea that intimate relationships/love affairs don’t normally survive the regeneration of one or both partners would actually explain quite a lot! It would explain why the Doctor’s relationship with certain companions could change considerably in nature from one regeneration to the next (Sarah Jane with Three vs. Sarah Jane with Four, for instance). Rose is an excellent case in point here. She and Nine share a warm relationship, and view each other as special for some very good reasons; shift ahead a regen and suddenly they are “in love” in an often exclusive and not always admirable way (although I have written elsewhere that, in my view, the Doctor was more wanting to be in love than feeling the real deal). She gets jealous and behaves badly; he gives her up and treats Martha badly while he mourns her. And then he regenerates and lo and behold, Eleven never mentions Rose, or appears to even think of her, ever again. Similarly, Twelve doesn’t seem to miss Amy, he’s all wrapped up in Clara now.

This is why I am not sure that River Song could convincingly return; there’s no evidence to suggest that Twelve would view her with anything other than a warm nostalgia (much the way Ten seemed to view Sarah Jane when he ran into again).

Interestingly, this ties in to @ichabod‘s thought about Missy: I don’t think MixMaster sees anyone as “like” her in any way — except the Doctor, who, maddeningly from her perspective, refuses to acknowledge it. Yes, it must be highly aggravating for MixMaster to see that the Doctor seemingly invests more emotion and trust in these human companions, whose part in his life can only ever be temporary, while he pushes the MixMaster away. I wonder if he/she regrets the choice made as the Sim Master, to die rather than regenerate when the Doctor was pleading with him to live?

[Arbutus @replies]

A further thought on the Master/Missy that has just occurred to me: I realize that I am not altogether seeing the character as female, but more as a Time Lord who is currently female. In much the same way, I never really saw Eleven as a highly strung, energetic young man, but as the Doctor currently dressed in the body of one. This brings back the whole endlessly fascinating (to me, anyway) notion of regeneration and what it would actually mean. One of the reasons I have personally never been interested in the notion of a female Doctor is that the Doctor has also felt very male to me. By which I mean, whatever his incarnation, his personality treats, his strengths and weaknesses, seem to be what I think of as male ones. Now obviously, we have not seen nearly as much of the Master over 50 years, and don’t know him nearly as well, but I’m not sure I feel this so strongly in his case. Maybe its just that I haven’t seen enough of his character to make a judgement of that sort. Or maybe, the character that we have been given just works a little better in that regard, for me at least. In any event, I would think that switching gender on regeneration is probably not all that common, so it wouldn’t be something you would usually expect to see until it actually happened. When Ten changed into Eleven, he thought for a moment that he might be female, and seemed quite shocked by it. I wonder if the Mixmaster was shocked?

[Arbutus @replies]

@lisa   Is Clara how she sees her very younger self when she may have been the Doctors sidekick companion?

@purofilion made this comment about Missy and Osgood: Did her spontaneous reaction to Osgood come from a certain measure of envy? Possibly. I’m sure many 2nd year post modern, linguistic and psychological papers could be written analysing the Missy/Doctor/Osgood triangle. Though if there’s actually a triangle, remains to be seen.

There’s also the fact that Missy killed, or tried to kill, Kate Stewart, who is in a sense a companion of the Doctor. So it seems to me that there is very definitely an element of competition there: Mixmaster wants to be the Doctor’s companion, she “wants her friend back”, and doesn’t want anyone else standing in the way. I too wonder where this will go in the coming season. It’s not hard to imagine a confrontation of some kind between Missy and Clara!

[Arbutus @replies]

This issue of canon seems to come up repeatedly, not only here. The challenge with an entity like Doctor Who (and really, is there any other entity quite like DW?) is that it is so massive and has travelled in many directions over the years. It’s a little bit like asking what is canonical in Batman. I’m not sure that they ever have this argument in Batman circles, if there are Batman circles.

On the whole, I tend to view anything that happened in the TV show (and the TV movie) as canonical, although I will admit to a willingness to ignore a few things I just can’t bring myself around to (half-human Doctor, anyone?). I have a certain amount of space in my personal canon for the Big Finish audios, because they (mostly) feature performances by the original actors. This is arbitrary, I know, and won’t matter to everyone. But it seems to matter to me. I do not include novels or comics in my canon, although lots of people do. I have seen writing of baroque complexity that seeks to reconcile the conflicts between storylines in various media, and it is quite impressive.

But one thing relevant to the current discussion that I do not consider canon is anything that was conceived or planned but never made explicit in the show, such as the “Cartmel Masterplan”. Someone may go there in the future, and if they do, then there goes my argument, because I’m not making the show, so I don’t get to decide! But for now, I feel justified in saying that if we weren’t shown it, then it didn’t happen.

[Arbutus @replies]

@ichabod    Thanks for that link! I agree that it’s great we are starting to hear about these women who made an impact, and it’s shameful that they have always been so anonymous. My husband, who knows a fair bit about earth science, had never heard of Lehmann. Thanks for sharing.  🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

There has been much lunacy between the Delgado Master and Missy. It could be argued that the Master has traveled steadily down the lunacy path ever since The Deadly Assassin (see the conversation over there on the same subject). I’m not sure how I feel about that, and frankly, the Delgado Master was always my favourite, but it’s hard to deny that Missy is another step along that path. I agree with @denvaldron that Missy is not too far removed from the Sim Master.

Personally, I haven’t read Missy’s flirtatious manner as meaning that she wants to shag the Doctor. I think that she is reveling in the sexuality of her current persona, in much the same way as Eleven reveled in the fast-talking, arm-flapping, body-spinning aspects of that persona. The regeneration issue has always complicated discussion of the Doctor’s character, because it can change so much; no reason that this would not be true of the Master as well. I also agree with @purofilion’s analysis of “sex as power”, which is both a true thing and also a well-established trope with female villains!

I know that lots of people assume that the introduction of Missy was done as a trial balloon for a female Doctor. I’m not convinced of this. I suspect that it had more to do with a desire to bring something new to the Master (because really, how long do we want to keep seeing the same old psychotic, Doctor-hating, universe-conquering, lunatic?). Of course, this means that not everyone will be thrilled with the new direction. I’m lukewarm on Missy, myself. But I know that some people really dislike the new direction that Moffat and Capaldi have taken the Doctor, while I love it and have done since PC’s first moments on the show. So everybody is not always going to be happy!

***SPOILER ALERT***

I am actually on record as saying that I don’t care for the killing off of beloved characters simply to make a threat more real; however, having done it, I would have thought it best to stick with it! If the writers can make Osgood’s return convincing and interesting, then great, because I love the character. But her death made an impact, and her return would have to bring some pretty good payoff to counter that. The retconning of emotionally powerful moments is always dangerous (which is why I didn’t enjoy the return of Rose, and don’t especially want to see River Song back).

[Arbutus @replies]

I really enjoyed watching this again! With more recent memories of later mishandling and overuse of Gallifrey storylines, it’s easy to forget that this was the first time we got a look at the Time Lords and their society. It was pretty cool at the time, and as others have remarked, a source of lots of what we now take for granted about the canon (“the pipe wrench… of… Rassilon!”). On the whole, I thought that the portrayal of the various Time Lord characters was good, as there was a nice mix of the clever, the stupid, the honest, the venal, etc. I particularly enjoyed the castellan, and the rather nice moment at the end with Borusa: Go away, Doctor, you great nuisance… oh and by the way, nine out of ten!

I fully agree with others who have said that the scenes in the Matrix are the weak part of the story. I imagine that they were thrown in to placate those who might find the lack of action in the first two episodes a bit pokey. But they were far too earth-like, as @janetteb says: planes and trains? Really? An interesting concept that could have been better executed.

I’m not sure I agree with @jimthefish about the characterization of the Master. Certainly, from the point of view of the time, there was no hint of Delgado here. But with the benefit of hindsight, it does seem to me to look forward to Ainley’s interpretation. Certainly the “I want to destroy Gallifrey, and furthermore, I want the Doctor to see me do it” trope is something that we see quite a bit of later, and frankly is part of the reason I never cared for the Ainley Master. With this story, we get the first appearance of Really Insane Master, which is the direction the Master continues along and never really departs from later.

Oh, and regarding the companionless Doctor, I’d say it works here for the same reason that it works when it happens from time to time in AG Who, because the regular companion has been replaced by a temporary sidekick, in this case the castellan, who comes over to the Doctor’s side pretty early on. Like @jimthefish, I could see more of this structure, it works for me.

Anyway, I never get tired of watching Tom Baker’s Doctor, so this was pretty enjoyable. What are we getting next?

 

[Arbutus @replies]

@whisht   I’ve always been irrationally fond of Sweet Home Alabama! Not sure why as I’m not an especially big fan of southern rock. Except for Creedence.   🙂

Or maybe something more country? Or Fogerty’s solo hit, Centrefield (because, well, baseball).

@lisa    I think fondly of Viva la Vida because my son went through an extreme Coldplay fandom phase last year, and we spent an evening doing a poetic analysis of it for his English class. We discussed metaphors. My son is pretty literal-minded and doesn’t have a natural feel for the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of whatever the poem is about. But he does like pop music.  🙂

 

[Arbutus @replies]

@janetteb     I must be hopelessly optimistic, because I always enjoy election night returns. Especially now in the internet age, when my husband and I can look at interactive maps on our devices and follow the results from ridings of particular interest. Sadly, I have not had reason to celebrate a result either federally or provincially in a long, long time!

Oddly enough (for me), my first voting experience was a federal election in which I voted Conservative. The Prime Minister at the time was the thoughtful and gentlemanly Joe Clark, who was what was then known as a “red Tory”, and prior to his holding power, the Liberals had been in control long enough to have become rather cynical and unlovely in their behaviour. Mr. Clark led a minority government that didn’t last long, but I rather liked him. It remains the only time I have ever supported the right wing, but I have voted all over the left side of the spectrum since then. I enjoy shocking my friends with that fun fact!

[Arbutus @replies]

I have a feeling this has been posted before, but it bears repeating. A flawless piece of pop music, melodious with a touch of soul. Perhaps some balm for the wounded post-election soul?

[Arbutus @replies]

I followed the UK election story with a great deal of interest, and the ensuing conversation here as well. Wonderful that intelligent discussion can take place on politic matters as well as fictional ones! And I have enjoyed reading the family histories that people have shared.

@jimthefish    I completely understand your fears. When our Conservative party won a majority after two successive minorities, Stephen Harper embarked on a process of stripping government of as much democratic process as possible. To make matters worse, the opposition leader died of cancer a few months after the election, so as you say, there was no one to speak out in an organized way. The damage has been considerable, but if we can succeed in throwing the bums out in the fall, probably not irreparable. Fortunately, we have a strong and fairly activist Supreme Court, that has been able to hold Harper in check in a few areas at least.

@phaseshift    Thank you for sharing your thoughts in such detail. There are insights that can’t be gained by foreigners from any amount of Guardian-reading!

@mudlark   I agree about the stereotype of growing more conservative with age. Interestingly, a lot of the most firmly left-wing viewpoints I know abide in the hearts of older people, often those who lived through the turmoil of the sixties. As Puro says, the young people are often the ones most focussed on their own lives and interests today. My sister is an aboriginal rights lawyer who overworks herself fighting for the rights of First Nations; her daughter is a wonderful, bright young woman who has just been admitted to the Bar, and plans to work as a securities lawyer. This puzzles my sister, but her daughter has no interest in litigation or (probably) the massive amount of work involved in what my sister does.

@purofilion and @janetteb    What I envy in Australia is your voter turnout. At least people vote! In Canada now, our lack of turnout is appalling and embarrassing, and I wish that it could be made mandatory, as I believe it is for you? But of course, low turnout helps the Tories so they don’t care. And one of Harper’s greatest crimes is that he has trained the electorate to view the educated class, and people such as John Ralston Saul, as a threat to their values. However, the worm might be turning. Alberta, our most conservative province and the home of most of our oil industry, elected an NDP government last week (our version of Labour), overturning the Progressive Conservative party that had been in charge for 44 years! They finally got fed up with corruption and stupidity, enough to try something completely different. Most of us are now thinking “If that can happen in Alberta, it could probably happen anywhere!”

@purofilion    It is Mother’s Day here, too! Happy Mother’s Day to you and all the other moms on the Forum. I hope you are all being treated well! It also happens to be my birthday, a fact I share in a completely shameless attempt at collecting good wishes, something you can’t have too much of!   🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

Happy Easter, Forumsters!

We devoted a couple of hours yesterday to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and (because we really are music nerds) debating whether the invention of the chorale tune was the greatest German contribution ever to classical music (hubby said sonata form; I maintained that German composers didn’t actually invent that, only formalized it from earlier roots). Just an example of the kind of conversations that come up in our house on a Friday night!  🙂  But seriously, chorale tunes are wonderful and Bach’s settings of said tunes are sublime.

[Arbutus @replies]

@All    Okay, the Hive Mind has spoken. I will definitely give Buffy a try, once I have seen the saga of Dr. House through to its conclusion!

[Arbutus @replies]

@purofilion     Oh, absolutely, we travel a lot, weekend getaways and bigger trips as well. I should clarify that we are no longer what you would call “struggling”. It’s just that, back in the days when we should have been saving up for the all-important down payment, we were paying back the massive student loan. Also during that same period, property values in our lovely city absolutely shot through the roof. It’s insane what you pay for real estate here now. So we rent, along with about half the our fellow citizens. Some day, when the young Arbutus is a fully-grown tree and out on his own in the forest, we will likely downsize from our rented house into a purchased condo. Meanwhile, we live in a fabulous urban neighbourhood and enjoy a pretty nice life on the whole. No real complaints, only to point out the insanity of what Americans have to pay for a quality advanced education. Frankly, it’s not a path that any other country should be moving along.

[Arbutus @replies]

@scaryb   Yeah, yeah, we’re working on getting it sorted. In fact, some pundits here are following your election with close interest, because of the strong possibility of a minority result in our own election in the fall. Last time an attempt was made at a coalition here, the screams of outrage you would not have believed. “It’s not democratic! They weren’t elected!” and so on. Regardless of those of us who explained, it is democratic in almost every other parliamentary democracy in the world, and they were in fact elected. Sigh. If more people read a news website from somewhere other than Canada, they might be a little more informed. There’s no excuse for ignorance anymore, we have the internet now. Oh, wait…

Case in point, @lisa. I love reading the Atlantic, great journalism, tending to the left but not hardcore. I should add, having been kicking around for a long time, I get a massive deja vu hit whenever I see mention of “California Governor Jerry Brown” in the news! It’s nice that some jurisdictions are moving in the right direction, ironic that it takes a blast from the past to get it done.

[Arbutus @replies]

@scaryb  @purofilion

I’m in. I feel better already!   🙂   Salut!

[Arbutus @replies]

What my liberal arts education got me is an appreciation for this:

[Arbutus @replies]

@jimthefish   The war on humanities, another painful subject. And it’s becoming even worse as our government is encouraging universities and colleges to become job-filling machines, providing incentives for engineering, business, and trades, and discouraging both humanities and science. As stated above, our Premier has little respect for higher education, not having much herself. And our federal government routinely stifles anyone who disagrees with its policies, whether humanities-based intellectuals or scientists. We are seeing a growth of the notion that “educated elites” are the enemy of “real people”, and governments that encourage anti-intellectualism on the grounds that their constituency is grounded in ignorance.

I really was an “artsy” student who wasn’t much good at the nuts and bolts of high school science. But my husband and son are very science-minded, so there’s plenty of science talk and science telly around our place. There are such fabulously accessible programs available now that there is no excuse to lack understanding of basic scientific principles. We’re currently going through Brian Cox’s The Human Universe, such fun to watch and really interesting. Yet so many people know nothing, and don’t want to know. High school should be doing more than it does to get across why science is important, and teach it in a way that it doesn’t have to be a struggle to stay engaged. (I think the same thing is true about History, by the way; they seem to be teaching that in the same stupid, boring way they taught it forty years ago!)

Wow. This has been depressing. Thank goodness for thoughtful people and places like this. I shall head for my happy place and post some music.

[Arbutus @replies]

@purofilion      Mr. Arbutus, having been born in the US, was a victim of exactly that post-secondary system that you are talking about. He graduated from high school in Alaska, so the less-expensive home state option wasn’t helpful to someone gifted in science and music, and he spent five years doing a double degree at Oberlin College. He then came to Canada for his doctorate, and spent the next ten years paying for his Oberlin education. As a result, we don’t own a house in this increasingly expensive city– we have come to terms with this and are quite happy with our lifestyle and choices, but it is a fact that our non-homeownership can be traced back in part to the high price of an American education. Fortunately, there will be other options for our son. We pay in Canada, but it is highly subsidized and an undergrad degree is still relatively affordable. There is also no penalty for choosing an out-of-province institution, so our son could choose to go locally or elsewhere, and tuition would be comparable if not identical.

[Arbutus @replies]

Warning: Political views ahead, please ignore as desired!

@janetteb’s and @purofilion’s comments about government mismanagement of education hit home for me. In British Columbia, we have a highly-admired system that has avoided many of the problems that various American states are going through, and we have a government whose ideological stance seems designed to take us down that path as quickly as they can get us there. They have systematically cut back funding to public education while making policy decisions that have increased expenses for the system. They have introduced legislation that will force democratically-elected school boards to follow their cost-cutting instructions and allow them to fire any boards that refuse. (The phrase “the public good” is predominant in the government’s defense of this legislation.) They are now increasing the amount of funding that goes to private schools (which in British Columbia include both religious schools and high cost, elite, “prep-school” style institutions). Our Education Minister is an evangelical Christian and a former school trustee who once advocated book-banning and corporal punishment in the school system. His own education consists of a high school diploma and broadcasting school. Our Premier’s bio proudly declares attendance at various universities including the Sorbonne, but she holds no degree from anywhere. And yet there is a shocking lack of public awareness that the road we are travelling will lead to the privatization and segregation of education, with the well-to-do paying for the best, the poor being weighed down by the worst, and the middle class struggling to secure a future for their children, and paying through the nose for it.

[Arbutus @replies]

@purofilion  @jimthefish    I do much of my limited TV viewing on Netflix while on the elliptical trainer, and I am currently working my way through eights seasons of House MD. But my Netflix has now added Buffy, so I guess I will give it a try, as the much-admired Hive Mind seems to approve of it. No guarantees that the Buffy-speak and teen angst won’t provide more irritation than other aspects will bring pleasure, but it’s worth a shot!

@ichabod   @janetteb     Broadchurch has also shown up on Neftlix now, so I will probably give that a go as well, having heard lots about it of course, especially after the “American” version was filmed over in Victoria.

I will now go to the pub to wax critical about my government and education. You can pop in there if you care to know about it, or indeed, come in simply to have a pint and ignore the cranky Canadian in the corner.   🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

And as I’ve just seen the sad news that we’ve lost John Renbourn…

[Arbutus @replies]

Following the news last week of Richard III’s reburial, I thought I’d post something from approximately his time and place. England during the Wars of the Roses wasn’t a hotbed of great composition, but Robert Morton was active a couple of decades prior to Richard’s reign.

I read that there were people in armour at the ceremony, and wondered if @rob was one of them: couldn’t remember if you are a Yorkist or a Lancastrian.   🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

Have to go with the Kristofferson original, as it is the version I grew up with!

Thanks, @whisht, for this idea, it’s been great fun choosing and listening.

[Arbutus @replies]

I hovered between these two, decided to go with Sam Cooke, but in honour of @craig‘s birthday, I will put the Proclaimers up as well.

All the best tracks came out on 45’s!

This, rather frighteningly, used to be a favourite of my son’s.  I choose to believe that he didn’t really understand it.

[Arbutus @replies]

Joe Jackson, anyone?

[Arbutus @replies]

@whisht    “Forever on my System”– that should be a song.

@purofilion    Well, it’s only Thursday morning in my world. You’re so advanced.  🙂 Everyone pour yourselves a glass of sparkling wine,  sit back, and get high-class.

Or, if you need something short and sweet, here’s the wonderful Donovan.

 

[Arbutus @replies]

Curse this whole time zone thing. Puro used my first Wednesday choice (on Tuesday night in my world), and now I see that @jimthefish has beaten me to John Lee Hooker. So, my third choice is from Canadian classic rockers The Guess Who.

 

[Arbutus @replies]

This gets me Monday and Tuesday… sorry, cheap, I know.

 

[Arbutus @replies]

@ichabod

Actually, the Chinese have the Monkey King as a trickster hero. I’m not familiar with his stories, but he is definitely their guy.

I agree that while there are definitely trickster elements in the Doctor, it’s not the whole story. I like @bluesqueakpip‘s Odysseus notion, and someone awhile back mentioned Robin Hood. @jimthefish added the theme of the outsider, which is the trope of so many westerns. He definitely has a history of walking into situations and being drawn into them, resolving them, and riding off into the sunset!

[Arbutus @replies]

There have been some absolutely wonderful ideas, eloquently expressed, about the nature of the Doctor over the past few days!

@craig   I’m pretty sure that Campbell’s writing has come up before in discussion here. I would agree that I find the mythic hero at the root of all the stories a more convincing connection between the Doctor and Christianity, than the notion of a direct connection from one to the other. (As my husband likes to remind people, we are not descended from apes; we and the apes are both descended from something else!)

@lisa   That Bill Moyers series had a huge impact on me back in the day. I have since come to agree that the “Hero” motif as laid down by Campbell is not quite as pervasive as Campbell would have it, but it is still a common enough theme with a lot of pretty familiar tropes.

@bluesqueakpip   I’d say that uncontested views often make much less interesting reading on the whole.  🙂

@purofilion    Speaking as one who comes from a part of the world where according to surveys, many more people lay claim to “spiritual” beliefs rather than “religious” ones, I think that the difference may have a doctrinal connection? In other words, they see religion as following doctrine laid down by others, whereas spirituality allows one to invent one’s own doctrine.

I also loved the “Doctor as a balloon” metaphor.

@whisht   However the quality of the writing here on this forum is so high that its actually a ‘win’ for the readers not the trollers.   Hear, hear!

@ichabod    I forget whether it was you or someone else who originally mentioned “Trickster” in the nature of the Doctor discussion, but I wholeheartedly agree. Raven, certainly, and I love the Wile E. Coyote mention. What about Anansi? West African trickster and God of Stories?

[Arbutus @replies]

@bluesqueakpip

Oh, well done. Your drink is at the bar. 🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

@craig    What a wonderful experience that must have been! I have not meet McCall Smith, but I have heard him speak at a Writers’ Festival event here, and he was marvelous. Very funny, self-deprecating, and clearly absolutely at peace and content with his life, which is a wonderful thing to see in another person.

I enjoy all of his book series. I find that each has a very different feel, and I appreciate them all in a slightly different way. What they have in common, and what I so admire about his writing, is the something he does that many people claim can’t be done: he combines an absolutely correct and elegant approach to language with an easy readability and flow that never shows grammatical correctness in the reader’s face. I am something of a grammar geek, so it always makes me happy to read such impeccable prose. He is also a story-teller in a way that too many writers aren’t these days. I realized a couple of years back that I prefer to read something with a story that interests me about characters that interest me, and all too often, one or the other or both doesn’t happen. Last year I read the English translation of a Swedish book called The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared. It was the goofiest story imaginable, but it held my interest from start to finish, because I was interested in the characters and wanted to know what would happen to them. This has become a big motivator for me in choosing books to read, and McCall Smith, along with his beautiful writing, never lets me down in this regard!

[Arbutus @replies]

@ichabod    I wasn’t a fan of the story arc construction in Series 6 and 7, and one of my wishes for Series 8 was that it would be a lot less arc-heavy. Interestingly, while watching, I really felt as if I was getting that wish; it’s only retrospectively that I realize that there has actually been lots of “arc” in this series. I think that the difference has been that the arc has been more about character development and less about plot. Yes, we were given the Missy mystery (@purofilion, I loved your use of the term “Mixmaster”!), and the Clara/Danny relationship, but these never felt central to the series in the way that, for instance, “the death of the Doctor” did in series 6. Instead, we were thinking about myth, and morality, and other rather more introspective elements. As a result, I enjoyed the series as as whole much more, and I agree that it was really a well-crafted continuum.

@lisa  @janetteb   I’m really enjoying the speculation about the Doctor/Master past. It actually doesn’t matter to me if anything is ever made completely clear; in fact, it might be almost better if it weren’t. But it’s fun to think about the possibilities!

I try not to get into the audio world because I realize that most people on this forum don’t listen to the audios, but Big Finish has also gone into this subject now and again. There was a wonderful line of the Doctor’s awhile back where he talked about the two of them both leaving Gallifrey behind, but with different ideas about the universe: “I wanted to see it. He wanted to run it.” I thought that was a pretty great descriptor.

[Arbutus @replies]

@barbaralefty   @bluesqueakpip

Not as clever as the first two, but:

Three dimensional child, musing on his/her existence, thinks, “I am the centre of the universe!”

[Arbutus @replies]

@ichabod

That sounds like Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale from the Canterbury Tales. The knight is sent out on a quest to learn what women want most, as a punishment for raping a woman. Wasn’t Chaucer impressively forward-thinking for a 14th-century guy?

River certainly had no problem recognizing Ten in the Library even though she had never seen him before. Interesting too that she could say he looked “younger”, although by merely physical standards, he was no such thing. So yes, I would say that supports the idea that time lords see beneath the surface more readily than humans.

[Arbutus @replies]

@bluesqueakpip    plus one disastrous relationship that nonetheless saw ‘the promise’ as more important than ‘the emotion’.
And that’s what saves the world.       I love this, very elegant and absolutely true!

[Arbutus @replies]

@purofilion    the social conservative -”give marriage a go and then stay or damn well die doing it”

Well, I’m reasonably far from a socon (I don’t know if you use that abbreviation in Aus?), but I tend to agree that most people don’t go into a marriage with the right attitude. People do seem to treat it like leasing a car nowadays, don’t they? We on the other hand have had our Toyota for twelve years now (still going strong!).

It’s possible (even probable) that even with her full understanding of and love for the Doctor, Clara will ultimately have to move on, because she is still a human being with a human’s need to love and be loved by someone who will grow old with her.

Agreed that the Doctor should love onions (see the chip conversation earlier). Onion rings? And given fish fingers and custard, if the Doctor ever showed up at my house, I’d try him on some poutine (for those unfamiliar, a Quebec thing: fries, cheese curds, and gravy).

Yes, the conversation with Stormageddon ranks on my top 5 list of favourite Eleventh Doctor scenes: makes me weep every time!

[Arbutus @replies]

@barbaralefty     Thank you for your kind inclusion on a list of amazing people! And thanks to you to, for your lively and thoughtful contributions. There is a synergy on this site that is pretty unusual, in my experience. Many different approaches, interests, and personal styles create magic!

I admit to missing the acerbic comments of @phaseshift and @pedant recently. I hope all is well, and that the move has gone as well as can be expected for the Pedantic One?

@purofilion    We run to tea and cookies or chocolate most evenings, actually! Usually green tea or rooibos– bush tea, as Mma Ramotswe prefers. Does anyone else share my deep love of every word ever written by Alexander McCall Smith?  🙂

[Arbutus @replies]

@ichabod   Do you remember the lovely scene from Fiddler on the Roof, when Tevye asks Golde, “Do you love me?” Her ultimate answer is: “For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. for twenty-five years my bed is his: if that’s not love, what is?” Even as a teenager, I understood the truth in that, and loved it. Today, it makes me weep. Interestingly, even as a teenager, I never had any patience for characters such as, say, Anna Karenina.

“Love is not made out of orgasms.”   Fabulous. Can we put that on a fridge magnet, do you think?

I have always thought that there are only two possible ways for Time Lord marriages to work. One, that they might only be considered binding up until one partner regenerates, in which case they might be renewed, or not. Or two, that Time Lords really can see beneath not just the face, the way we do when our partners age, but beneath the “surface personality” of a particular regen, down to the deeper “I’m still me” underneath.

Clara gives Twelve a hug in DB, but she’s hugging the Eleven she recognizes in him, not the raw and terrified Twelve at all.   I love this. The Doctor said, “I’m still him,” and this is when she finally believed that. But the reality of course is deeper. Twelve is still Eleven, but Eleven is also Twelve. And Ten, which I don’t think she truly understood when Ten kissed her hand and said goodbye at the end of Day of the Doctor. You’re right, by the end of Last Christmas, she truly understands it. I suspect that no other companion before her, possibly barring Sarah Jane, really did. So part of the Clara arc in series 8 was really Clara as Companion, wasn’t it?

[Arbutus @replies]

Further attempts to get caught up with all I’ve been missing around here! Random bits of music occur to me during the day. Earlier today I had reason to think about the phrygian mode (that’s the one that always sounds as if it’s ending on mi instead of do). I don’t think it gets nearly enough love- what do you think, @purofilion? So here as a belated happy birthday to @whisht (just because you might think it’s cool), are two versions of a renaissance chanson usually attributed to Josquin des Pres, in phrygian mode: the lovely ensemble led by Jordi Savall, and a gorgeous cornetto version by Bruce Dickey.

Plus one more track, for drinking beer to!

[Arbutus @replies]

@ichabod        That is so very sad. I agree with @purofilion, it is the worst kind of loss, to watch a loved one disappear, from you and from himself as well. I’m very sorry for what you are going through; you seem to be moving through it with grace.

“Love as a promise” rings very true to me right now. My little family is going through a difficult time, not the worst kind of trouble, but the kind that means we have to keep reminding ourselves of all the ways in which we are still so fortunate. Number one on that list is that we really do have each other: like the sticks tied together, we can’t be bent or broken. We have reached half of your 45 years, and I hope that we will come through the remaining half with some of your wisdom!

Peace, Arbutus

[Author]

Posts