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@barbaralefty   Thirded! That is a fabulous description. And thanks for the link, I have just discovered yet another way to spend time I don’t have! It’s so rare to find people writing about DW who can actually write (which, of course, is why we enjoy this forum so much).

Regarding the “it’s not science” brigade, I confess that I can sympathize with them a bit. It’s not a problem for me at all, because I live in a realm of the imagination in which facts are usually just a convenient framework for human interactions. This can even be true of historical facts, about which I am much more passionate than scientific ones. As long as the framework is constructed in a reasonably convincing manner, it doesn’t bother me to know that it is not precisely accurate.

However, I love with two pretty hardcore science nerds. Mr. Arbutus has enjoyed fiction at times, but is much more interested in facts. He finds in them all the beauty and wonder that I find in a beautifully imagined story. I think that inaccurate science would annoy him– he saves himself that irritation by simply not watching things where it might come up! Which is of course the problem; there is a portion of fandom that expects DW to be scientific. While it has been more or less so at different times throughout its history, I don’t think that was ever meant to be the point.

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So much watching to get caught up on. Local Hero, a long-time favourite. The John and Yoko story, seen once long ago. The Love Child, completely unfamiliar to me. Fun! Not to mention my Series 8 rewatch, which I haven’t even started. But first, The Daemons, an old fave of mine.

After 6 weeks, Doctor Who in brilliant technicolour!   🙂  The Doctor at this point is still a hard-core scientist- nothing happens that isn’t based in science. I was never all that crazy about Jo, she just came across as such a ditz. Three was condescending toward everyone, not just his companions, but it’s hard to fault him for being that way toward Jo.

And how I adored those soundtracks! My housemate and I used to have endless fun inventing Dudley Simpson-style incidental music and imitating the Brigadier. Good times, good times.

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I know there is not a lot of love for the Sixth Doctor, but does anyone remember his episode The Two Doctors? It was a multi-Doctor Six-Two combo, and it was all about food. I seem to remember some kind of insane cannibalistic alien chef, running around with the Second Doctor who had somehow lost his mind, and they were talking about food and eating in gourmet restaurants. At the end of the story, I remember Six telling Peri that he thought they would be sticking to a vegetarian diet for awhile!

Out of all the BG Doctors, I can only imagine Seven going for chips (although I don’t specifically remember him doing it!).

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To add to the meal list for AG episodes, the Ninth Doctor had what looked like a very lovely dinner out with the Slitheen woman in Cardiff. There was wine!

Eleven definitely viewed the concept of work through a child’s lens– his big concern at UNIT HQ was if he had a desk! (Or was it an office?) And his moment of “I could be a curator” had a bit of a child-like ring to it as well, now that I come to think of it– that moment that young children have when a new career idea occurs to them. “We went to the fire hall today and saw the trucks… I could be a firefighter.”  That sort of thing. Whereas, Twelve is definitely a grownup. (At least, as much as the Doctor ever is!)

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Wow, wow, wow. There have been some fabulous ideas put forth on this thread recently. I won’t even try to comment on all of them, just a few more recent ones that have stayed with me.

@ichabod    What a very eloquent discussion of choice and what it means. Ever since I discovered DW many years ago, I always in my daydreams chose the Blue Box. But if I am honest, I know that I would choose home and loved ones. Every time.This is of course why it is so important that there is Doctor Who (as well as all the other fabulous books and videos). It can transport us into that adventure when it isn’t in us to take the steps ourselves. @janetteb‘s comments clarify for me why the companions are almost always young; because for most of us, that is when we are able to pull up and leave everything behind, with nothing but a backpack and an open ticket.

As to travelling in time to make those small changes in the past, to me that implies that our past choices were wrong ones. I suppose I see most of my choices as having been right at the time. Again, like Janette, when I was younger I could never have predicted that I would be where I am today and be happy there. Recent personal events have reminded me that all our experiences contribute to who we are, good and bad, and that doesn’t end at a predetermined age!

Then again, I have just read that scientists have found that a strong lack of anxiety is a genetic mutation (the article compared it to natural marijuana in the brain). So that’s me explained.  🙂

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Late to the party but I got here in the end!

I really enjoyed this. It had a very different feel to it, an entirely human threat which was already unusual in DW even by Troughton’s time. (He must have really enjoyed playing Salamander. I do enjoy “evil alter-ego Doctor” stories!) It had an almost cinematic air and a great soundtrack. Interestingly, I had almost forgotten I was watching Doctor Who until we saw the underground base and its oddly-dressed inhabitants!

I wonder if the modern show would be allowed such a departure from the usual tropes of the show? But I always enjoyed it when the Doctor had a break from fighting alien monsters, and got to go up against simply bad people from time to time.

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Re the Guardian. That TV premieres guide was appalling. I don’t think that trying to compete with Buzzfeed is really the way forward, myself. But what really floored me was the arrogance of the nitwit in the comments who was unwilling to accept that criticism might be valid. Nice way to engage with your readers!

@scaryb   They’ve been using that format in the US version of the site for some time. My browser kept wanting to default to the US site, due to geography, and I had to retrain it by retyping “.co.uk” until it stopped showing up on my screen. All for nothing now, apparently.

Okay: Writing, check. Football, check. Politics, check. Journalism, check. That’s me done. Time to go and make up some lesson plans for a pre-school music class. A little sol-mi, choose an animal song, have to go and buy a squishy rubber ball. It’s not conducting orchestral scores, but it’ll do me.   🙂

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@purofilion    Congrats on Queensland’s great election result. @ichabod   You Are Not Alone. Canada is of course still sitting in the anti-progressive waste bin, here’s hoping we can finally do something about it later in the year.

@scaryb  I wish I could believe that the internet actually gets more people properly informed, but I suspect that too many are still only reading what they want to read, and dismissing that which does not suit their world view.

The Greek result was indeed heartening. This is what can happen when voters see that the accepted wisdom did absolutely nothing but make their lives worse, and the issue isn’t clouded by social politics the way it often is in North America. I absolutely loathe the way people here will vote time and again against their own interests because they have been fooled into believing that there is some threat against their “way of life” that must be fought. When the actual threat comes from policies that will impoverish them and their families.

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So much to catch up with! Thanks to everyone who generously shared their outside world writing. There are some immensely talented people on this forum! (I especially enjoyed @pedant’s Snow Goose piece. Excellent prose is hard to find these days.) I am realizing that I need to make time to check out the fan creativity page, which I have neglected. (Also need to get caught up with the Enemy of the World rewatch. ).

@barbaralefty    without more background info I tend to see things in rather black and white terms, but I will be attempting to remedy this with the only answer to any shortcoming – more information!       There is simply not enough of this attitude in the world. Kudos.

@jimthefish     That periodic table is brilliant.

@nick1235    Kind thoughts to you in your difficult time. Hang in there!

Amused by the soccer talk this weekend. I must admit that in our house, we were preoccupied yesterday with “the other football”. Living close to Seattle and with my husband having grown up in the Boston area, Superbowl was a lot of fun this year (at least, fun for a game that can take half an hour to move a ball a yard down the field!). But there was actual suspense this time, and a last minute pull-out for New England, and it was worth the first-half tedium to see Tom Brady at the end, literally jumping up and down with joy (the man never cracks a smile normally). And some happy Patriots fans in the house this morning.  🙂

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@purofilion       I love these intimate looks into the education systems in other countries. It’s too easy sometimes to forget that most other places don’t do things very much the way your own place does. There is pretty much zero essay-writing in the high school science courses here, the most writing they get up to is lab reports. And I am certain Arbutus Jr. has never had to write anything for PE, other than a couple of brief tests on the rules of some sport. Most recently, they did a unit on karate, leading me to tell the teacher, when we met the other week, that I didn’t think giving my son the power to say “I know karate” in the course of a conversation was a good idea! (Yes, we had Parent Night! I kept thinking of Clara and Danny.)

On the other hand, Medieval Europe vs. Medieval Japan is a fabulous idea, wish we did that here.

Grade Seven does seem young to be in with the almost-adults. We have 8-12 here, and even then for much of the first year, my son’s approach to school was very tentative. He spent the whole year dressed in shades of grey (not his usual style at all). But he made some nice nerdy friends from whom he is now inseparable, and he walks tall. Hopefully it will go as well for Boy Ilion!

Congrats on your good work with the Black Death. (That makes you sound like someone from Medecins Sans Frontieres.   Hee hee.)

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@juniperfish     That’s a rather lovely remark by RTD. In a way, it mirrors what happens in other art forms (painting, sculpture, music), where the original work is put out there, and has spawned, sometimes over a very long period of time, a “conversation”, as @ichabod puts it. I think I agree that the “Big Conversations” aren’t exactly the same as the FanFic chat, as it were. The problem is that I think that there can be serious overlap, at times. (Like a hybrid fruit, or is that an analogy too far?  🙂  )  I read the fan fiction entry in Wikipedia and found that those writers took take a much broader view of its meaning. But really, as it isn’t something I’ve thought much about before today’s conversation, I’m not best equipped to judge!

In any case, I “heart” @ichabod’s comment for the phrase “commit serious ship”.  🙂

I also like the “engineer” analogy. I have read series in which the writer probably should have taken a more engineer-like approach, as I encountered internal inconsistencies that could easily have been avoided. The interesting thing about reader insight (or viewer or listener insight, as the case may be) is that you even find after a certain point, that the critics themselves won’t accept any insight that deviates from received wisdom about a work. I have encountered this attitude in both English and musicology , where only a certain take on a work was considered “correct”.

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@ichabod      I don’t think that’s fair at all. I rather like pewter.   🙂

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@pedant   @ichabod

Fascinating. I can only assume that Mills & Boon et al know who their intended audience is, and aren’t especially interested in reaching outside it.

And yes, @pedant, you’re quite right about McCaffrey. I tend to do a basic dragons=fantasy equation, especially nowadays with all the dragon-based children’s lit out there, but her writing is definitely more science-based. I haven’t read the Pern books in a long time, but I really did enjoy them. I’ve always had a soft spot for the “humanity in the far future having forgotten their roots” theme, in any form.

(Yes, Kate Wilhelm, but I hadn’t heard of Vinge. I will check her out.)

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@bluesqueakpip   To be fair, they do teach them how to reference the internet. His objection is the old-school bib assignments where they give you a topic and you have to include examples of various types of sources. I tell him that, while the day might come when all useful information resides freely and openly on the net, it hasn’t come yet. (Particularly in the area of scholarly journals, where they still want to force you to either pay for access, or get on the bus and trudge out to your local university library to look at the physical copies! At least in musicology this is definitely true, and personally it drives me mad that the sources are available online, but I can’t access them without paying outrageous fees.)

‘Don’t cite Wikipedia’ would be more honest, I think.        Absolutely agree with this. I actually think that Wikipedia is a very useful aggregator, but it took us a few tries on research projects before he got it into his head that he should only use the info he finds there if he can cite the source the article got it from.

@pedant     The issue is the stubbornness of a teenage boy with very vocal views on what is and isn’t a waste of time, and (as yet, anyway) very little ability to just get it done for an easier life.    🙂

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@ichabod     I too love LeGuin’s writing, although I’d say my personal favourite is probably The Dispossessed (with an honourable mention to the poetic beauty of the Earthsea Trilogy). Like @barbaralefty, years ago I read widely of the old school sci-fi writers such as Asimov, Heinlein, and so on, and never missed the female viewpoint. Interestingly, it was my husband who introduced me to LeGuin, as she was the only sci-fi writer who interested him at all. (He also introduced me to the fantasy writing of Anne McCaffrey, so I guess he was more of a feminist reader than I was!)

women and girls who had been waiting for SF to address issues from sociology and culture rather than mainly engineering or space war strategy and tactics

This is interesting, because it makes me realize that the mainstream, male-written sci-fi that I read did tend to be less about “space wars” and more about society. Because of course, there was a load of popular sci-fi that I never read, because I wasn’t interested in battles. I loved Star Wars when it first came out, not because of the laser battles, but because of the world-building.

Yes, the lack of gatekeepers is both good and bad. The same thing is happening in the music biz, with more and more young artists going the indy route and putting their stuff up on the internet. Some great stuff shows up this way, although it’s hit and miss whether you discover it. I’m inclined to think it’s a good thing, as pop music was another area in which I tried and failed because of “powers that be” getting to decide what was worth listening to and what wasn’t. I love to see the young groups today that aren’t afraid to go with unorthodox instrumentation and styles, because the audience can decide for themselves what they want to hear!

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Oh, and I meant to say that I think the “Writer’s Retreat” idea is a great one, although it might be a good idea to title it in such a way that people don’t think they have to be writers in order to participate. I like “The White Hart”.  🙂

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@pedant     Well, me and the BBC.   🙂   Seriously, though, you’ve made the point I was trying to make, which is that the terminology is problematic.

(I should say that, after resisting the PD James book because I didn’t expect to like it, I finally read it and lo and behold, didn’t really like it. Not that it wasn’t well-written, but for me, it was neither Austen nor sufficient not-Austen, if you see what I mean. I think Mrs. Darcy Versus the Aliens actually sounds a lot more interesting!

Interesting note about your LBGT romance-writing friend. This makes a lot of sense to me precisely because of the strongly formulaic nature of romance writing. I took my shot at that field many years ago and failed because back then (in the early eighties) you still had to write to a plan that was essentially of another era, and I just couldn’t see my way to it. I think the genre has moved on quite a bit these days, but it still has to fulfill certain expectations and so on. I’m not surprised that your friend’s best writing would happen outside those constraints.

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@ichabod   Do not get me started on the funding of public education. Here in British Columbia that is a battle we are fighting every day. We have a great system that they are quite literally penny-pinching to death. My husband is a PAC chair (like the PTA) and sits on a couple of school board committees dedicated to improving infrastructure for cycling and technology, and there is lots of talk and little action, largely because no one wants to spend any money. Some days, I would truly like to put our provincial government in front of a Dalek firing squad!

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@bluesqueakpip   @purofilion    @janetteb

(Just looked over this post and it got a bit lengthy… sorry!)

Well, yes. Arbutus Jr. is a very bright boy, a delight in most respects. He is however living in optimism that when he reaches the promised land of uni, he will neither have to take any humanities courses ever again, nor have to write any papers that will require the use of anything other than the internet for research purposes. A product of his generation, he truly believes that there is no useful information that can’t be found online. Since I can’t seem to argue him out of this view, I usually end by telling him to suck it up and just do the bib assignments!   🙂

The issue of English curriculum is bound to always cause debate, I think, because there is value in the core classics, but I also understand the “try to keep it relevant” approach to some degree. When I was in school, as Puro and Janette say, we did novels, short stories, Shakespeare, poetry, etc., every year. (Note to Janette: in Canadian high school, we all had to read Handmaid’s Tale, because, you know, CanLit!  🙂  Still true, apparently, as Arbutus Jr. had to read it last year.) I enjoyed it all, pretty much, because English was one of my strengths. My son, on the other hand, while a strong reader, has always viewed writing as a torment, and because he resents having to view anything through a lens of symbolism, loathes literary analysis. (Anecdote: When he had to do a writing assignment involving Freudian thought, he was completely offended by the whole concept and just could not bring himself to do it. I suggested that instead, he write a short essay explaining Freudian analysis to demonstrate that he understood it. He wanted to call it “Freud or Fraud?” I suggested that unless he were going to actually research opposing theories, that that wouldn’t be an accurate title, so he agreed not to go down that path.)

They do seem to take an “old-school” approach to curriculum here as far as I can see. In Grade 8, the focus was on essay writing for the most part: my son spent the entire first term learning to write a thesis statement. In grade 9, they did a lengthy poetry unit, during which they had to compose many, many sonnets. I’m still not quite sure why the huge love affair with the sonnet. Poetry is not fun for my literally-minded boy (except for Haiku, which he appreciates for its directness). They also did the Atwood novel, and Romeo and Juliet. (We had some hilarious conversations about this, as he felt that everyone behaved very stupidly in that play, and I remember feeling exactly the same sense of frustration when I studied it years ago!) They also did a journalism unit, which I thought was great, as I think it is so important to understand the different kinds of writing we encounter in the media, and what to take away from them.

What I would really love to see (and I wonder if they are teaching this in any other places) would be a realistic examination of the internet. Currently here, the official line tends to be along the lines of “don’t trust it unless it’s an educational site, never use Wikipedia, etc.” This sort of fearmongering isn’t helpful, because it doesn’t teach them how to assess the information that they find online. I have taught my son that Wikipedia can be very useful, if the article hasn’t been flagged for any issues and has citations which can be followed up. They never tell them this at school, they just say “don’t go there” like they would say “don’t talk to strangers”. The world of the internet, like it or not, is the world that our children have to navigate, and simply telling them to ignore it isn’t any more helpful than trying to prevent teen pregnancy by saying “Don’t have sex.”

Oh dear, now I’ve gone on a rant. Sorry, this got very long. But we’re allowed to shoot our mouths off in the pub, aren’t we?   🙂

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@ichabod    I will definitely look out some of your work! Kudos to you for getting it available in e-book format relatively early on. In my world, there is a definite place for both e-book and hard copies, and some writers/publishers have been terribly slow in getting on board. I find that the electronic option keeps our fairly small home from drowning in books!  🙂

@janetteb     Three teenage sons! Dear heaven. Someone should give you a trophy!

I would read a food blog written by someone who neither cooks nor eats; it would probably be a nice change of perspective. I do both, and probably too much of the latter.  🙂

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Such fascinating conversation going on here! Where to begin?  🙂   (rubs hands together)

@bluesqueakpip    Though, truthfully, the difference between the best ‘fanfic’ and ‘professional writing’ is often rather like the difference between amateur and professional actors.     Namely, the one is doing it for fun, the other gets paid.

Case in point: PD James’ Pride and Prejudice sequel Death Comes to Pemberley. We don’t call that fanfic. But we do call Bluesqueakpip’s (no doubt excellent) Buffy novel fanfic. It may be that the label itself is unhelpful.

@ichabod also makes a great point about the writers of fanfic who write to fill the gaps, as it were: people whose own cultures and experiences are missing from the mainstream body of work.

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@purofilion     I would argue that you are a great kind of writer… relaxed about it, and very eloquent! I so agree about the uni students. As an undergrad, it was my job one year to correct the papers of the first year music history students for composition as opposed to content, and some of them were so horrific that there was no simple way to explain what was wrong about their sentences without just rewriting them properly. Unbelievable. The problem at my school was that School of Music students were excused from most of the interdisciplinary stuff that the Arts Majors were required to take, so no English survey, no “Moons for Goons”, etc.

Out of interest, what do you tell the Year 10’s who argue that there’s no need to learn how to write a proper bib, as no one looks up information in encyclopedias or books anymore anyway? (Referencing a recent conversation with the 15-year-old in my house!)

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@barbaralefty    I think they were going for aubergines!    🙂

As to what I write, I have a blog which is mostly about travel and always sadly out of date, as the balance between being the primary homemaker and chauffeur/cheerleader for a teenage son, and my own artistic endeavours is a constant challenge for me. As my son would say, the struggle is real! I also have several unfinished novels of different genres which I hope to finish one of these days (no sci-fi, though). Many weeks, coming on here and composing a few paragraphs about the nature of the Doctor, or whatever, is the most writing I get to!

@lisa    Thanks for the kind word. I think almost everyone on this forum has loads of interesting ideas to contribute, which is what prompted me to break forum silence for the first time. Great fun altogether!

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@barbaralefty    Agreed. There are an awful lot of readers out there, and its probably fair to say that if you care about the story you are telling, then someone else probably will as well. The trick is getting to them!

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I see we’ve gone all C&W around here. Apparently I have a lot of listening to catch up on!

Ward Swingle, the founder of the fabulous Swingle Singers, died this week. Rather than the usual Bach arrangements (which are wonderful), I give you this:

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@barbaralefty       I write as well. There are definitely others here who do. Bring it on, I say.  🙂

I take it you mean in the context of a story, ideas are expressed that might offend someone? I’m not sure that you can avoid it, if you want to express anything valid or interesting. Certainly fiction doesn’t have to be respectful of everyone’s viewpoint, that’s not what it is for. (In my opinion, anyway.)

 

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Well, I’ve had my laugh of the day now.

https://twitter.com/NicFildes/status/558298910465466368/photo/1

 

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@purofilion     Confusion of writers.    Is that anything like a flock of seagulls?   🙂

I’m enjoying all the activity on this thread. Although I haven’t seen most of the shows in question myself, I know enough from others that I can follow people’s thoughts a bit. The conversation would be instruction for certain people on other forums who don’t seem to know how to disagree (even strongly disagree) without giving offense. As always, kudos to everyone around here!

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@janetteb   You have hit on exactly what was in my mind throughout this story. There’s no way that anyone who had ever seen this could make some of the claims that we frequently see about the way they feel the show has “changed”. This story is not pure science fiction in any sense that I am accustomed to. The science/tech is completely invented, and the threat is almost insignificant (not in its potential result, of course!). This is a contrived situation designed to move along the development of the characters and their relationships with one another. I found myself thinking of Midnight at one point, which was similar in its dependence on a threat that was invented specifically for the manner in which it threatened, and the insight it could provide into character.

@barbaralefty, I had the same feeling that the Doctor reacted quite strongly to the sight of Barbara dealing so calmly with Ian. This is no more a story designed solely for children than those we watch today (another complaint I sometimes see- “Too dark, it’s supposed to be a children’s show!”). People who demand a heroic Doctor and a faithful companion should be made to watch Barbara ripping into the Doctor here!

I sometimes suspect that those who are loudest in their “I have watched the show since the beginning, and the old show would never have done x, y, or z!” complaints, really only climbed on somewhere during the UNIT days, and their fond memories of dodgy monsters and tech-based stories really come from the Third Doctor’s era. Just as the ones who complain about stories being based on earth have never really watched anything prior to Tom Baker.  🙂

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@spider  @cubefox

I too felt during Series 7b that I had preferred the “Claricles” (particularly Victorian Clara) to the real Clara. I didn’t mind her, but at the same time I only really warmed up to her in Day of the Doctor (post-Impossible Girl, I guess). Although I haven’t always liked her behaviour in Series 8, I actually found her arc more interesting than the impossible girl mystery, which felt forced to me a lot of the time.

It’s a point that none of Tennant’s companions stayed as long as Amy or Clara; maybe because those actors were ready to leave? I confess I never longed for more of Rose or Martha, not because of any dislike of the characters but more because of the treatment they received in the story arc. Sometimes I think a companion can stay too long; I felt that way at times about Amy during series 7a.

I think that the change of Doctors has indeed given Clara new life. I am enjoying her now, but I confess I wouldn’t mind seeing her leave after one more series, so we could see Capaldi’s Doc with a different type of companion!

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Yes, well, I thought about trying to be funny. But in the end, I knew that @pedant and @phaseshift would do much better job of it than I could, so I settled for earnest and slightly sarcastic. Well done, y’all, as always!

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@havoc     You don’t get to make derogatory statements about The. Best. Doctor’s debut.  Or Buffy. Not while you’re someone who was 11 quite recently. And ESPECIALLY Not when you quote Revenge Of The Clones or whichever rubbish film Lucas Put Out (pun intended) in your short and entitled life.

Actually, I’m pretty sure we are allowed to hold whatever views we like as to the quality of an episode, or a Doctor, or any other TV show or film, regardless of our age. And we are welcome to share those views in a courteous manner, and others are welcome to respectfully disagree.

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@purofilion    Well, sadly, not all medievalists are as cool as I am!   🙂   But you are cooler still. You have spoken with Ziggy Stardust.

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@ichabod  @barnable  You have hit on something that I have wondered about as well. How much of the dream do any of the dreamers remember? They are all slightly disoriented upon first waking. “Sexy” seems startled to find herself in a wheelchair; Shona reaches for her to-do list and immediately checks off “Forgive Dave”. The Doctor awakens on the fiery planet and knows immediately that he has to help Clara. So to me, the implication is that the dream will be remembered. This is far more satisfying than the alternative, of course, from a storytelling point of view. We want the Doctor and Clara to have reached some kind of resolution, otherwise there wasn’t much point to the story. (Other than a Christmas frolic, which is fine, of course, but at the end of Death in Heaven, it was clearly implied that the dire state in which things were left would be resolved at Christmas!)

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@spider     Regarding the trailer, I don’t remember seeing those visuals, but the spoken lines come from Into the Dalek.

@ichabod   Spending time on this forum will definitely change your day. Witness the following:

@barnable   Mostly Santa dreams he is as cool as the Doctor.  and    I can understand not wanting to think about Santa being involved in something controversial.

Furthermore:  @lisa  attributing some very unusually dark behavior to Santa with that thinking

You have to love a forum where phrases like these can be used in all seriousness!

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@lisa   You can count me in with those who find Capaldi’s Doctor seriously attractive!  🙂  And @ichabod and @mudlark, I hope I am never too old to enjoy a bit of a crush (see above remarks about inner self vs. outer self).

Thanks @purofilion (and @pedant elsewhere) for the mention of the Brian Cox series. We have “Science Sunday” in our house, when we watch a DVD every week after dinner. We have just about finished Cosmos, and have a three-episode series called “Your Inner Fish” still to do, and will then need something new. I see that “Human Universe” is available on DVD, so I think we are now covered until spring!  🙂

By the way, “Deep Breath” is a fabulous title for this episode, isn’t it? So many ways in which it is meaningful.

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@purofilion   I think most of us probably have an inner version of ourselves, and sadly, as we get older, that version differs from reality more and more! In my mind’s eye, I am about twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter (and maybe a wee bit taller!). Less grey in the hair, as well.  🙂

@ichabod   Love your point about Method acting. It’s especially true inasmuch as many people do not broadcast their emotions in a physical way. Far better technique to work out the subtle ways in which the character would show emotion, and use those, as you describe so well with Capaldi and Coleman.

Loved the thoughts about hugging. A small boy of my acquaintance told me very seriously that he himself is a “hugging and kissing boy” but his younger brother definitely isn’t– an impressively insightful remark from a four year old! There are those who are and those who aren’t, and I suspect that for those who aren’t (not me, btw) a hug is an incredibly powerful gesture.

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@ichabod    Thanks for taking us back to the beginning of the season… I really do want to watch the whole thing through over the next few months! I’m just getting caught up on the conversation here and it’s lovely.

It’s a very interesting speculation that a rejection of the new Doctor by Clara could have led to a Valeyardification. I wonder if a new regeneration cycle contributes to this, because you’re right, it seemed as if it wasn’t just the companion needing to accept the new persona, it was the Doctor himself. And I don’t remember this being a huge issue in the past. I am reminded of The Christmas Invasion, where Ten feared that Rose might not want to travel with him anymore, “because I changed”. But he didn’t seem to have any problem himself with his new incarnation, he seemed quite pleased with it on the whole.

I enjoyed what you wrote about voices. I agree that voices display huge amounts of personality. Think about Eleven and his scattered, frantic diction, and the sense of wonder and childlike amusement that always came across when he spoke. I could probably listen to one of his episodes all the way through without any visuals at all and still get the sense of him. Twelve has a wonderful measured way of speaking, somewhat monotone and with lots of space, that makes him feel very intense. (I am also reminded of a moment in Human Nature, when after listening for most of the episode to Human Ten, we were suddenly treated to a brief burst of “Doctor”; it really was a different person speaking!)

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@purofilion    That little number is in Dorian, but proper Dorian with B naturals. So lovely and ancient-sounding. A lot of that stuff is sadly unavailable in transcription, outside of a few big mid-century collections in university libraries.

As it is Twelfth Night (according to my reckoning, anyway), here is a little “Twelfth Night” party tune!

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@pedant    Agh. Of course, that’s it. That’s why it didn’t seem obvious in the first place. That’s what I get for waiting almost two weeks to watch again. I forget what I thought the first time through!

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@barbaralefty   I also believe that the Doctor has, for better or worse, come to terms with his past and present, and will be inhabiting his new incarnation with less angst going into Series 9. I had that sense already throughout Last Christmas, that we had really left the “Am I a good man” debate behind. Missy really did give him that gift, he knows who he is again.

@ichabod    I have been meaning to say that I am really enjoying your posts! I haven’t had loads of time for posting as it has been Christmas break and lots of family stuff happening, but the sheer number of thoughtful and interesting remarks from you has been impressive! I loved the remark from the pastor about “Jesus of Gallifrey”. So hilarious.

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I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get in a proper second viewing of this episode. I have to say that I loved it even more the second time through. Fundamentally, the complicated plot full of dream layers serves as a base for a lot of fabulous moments… great dialogue, characterizations, emotions, and Santa!

Christmas trash talk between Santa and the Doctor! I could actually watch Santa and the Doctor all day… all year, even. The Doctor’s nicely underplayed “Shut up, Santa” is possibly the greatest line in Who since Rory shoved Hitler in the closet and said, “Shut up, Hitler”. I just don’t get tired of the Doctor’s interactions with the Jolly Old Elf.

The opening scene at the base makes it even more clear on second watch that reality isn’t really hanging together. In hindsight, the whole notion of people’s fantasy worlds is really well done: Shona’s dancing saves the day, Clara’s math skills save the day, and so on. And of course, Badass Santa saves the day!!! 12 kinds of awesome. Every line out of Santa was brilliantly played: “That is why I feed mine… magic carrots.”

I have loved Capaldi’s Doctor since he first stumbled out of the TARDIS in Victorian London, but I really loved him here. We saw so many faces, so many sides of this incarnation. His wicked smile when telling Ashley that he travels by “phone kiosk”. (It’s difficult knowing fantasy from reality because “they’re both ridiculous”.) His (and Clara’s) underplaying of emotion as they realize they have both lied to one another, and that instead of giving one another comfort, they both grieved alone. His attempts to “one-up” Santa, even after seeing him for what he was! His pure, childlike joy while flying the sleigh.

Clara under the table was possibly the scariest thing I have seen in AG Who. The blackboard scene was also really well done. It was so sad seeing the lovely life that Clara and Danny might have had, and the moment when Danny remembers that he died shows us that in Clara’s dream, Danny is still the hero who loves her above all else. (It’s really hard to imagine how anyone else could ever follow that act for Clara!) Telling her she can miss him every day for five minutes felt so sad because we would all want the chance to say that to those we love if we had to leave them! And I caught my breath at the brief exchange with the Doctor: “Brave.” “Dead already.”

The return to reality of the three “scientists” was very moving as well. I wish we had seen a tiny bit more of Ashley, it’s not clear why she would be a candidate for dream-crabbing. She seems to live alone in a beautiful home. Maybe, like Clara, she lost someone? I can only imagine that a bit of that was lost in the edit, but I could have used a bit more of a clue. Like seeing Bellows in the wheelchair: a tiny moment only, but so expressive. And Shona, so obviously lonely even before we see her in her apartment: “You text me, we can go for a curry.” Like Clara, she didn’t want to let go of the dream.

Clara’s “just a little longer” to Santa reminded me of Arbutus Jr., who says something similar almost every morning, and I know that he has no intention of getting out of bed until I drag him out it. I don’t think Clara wanted to wake up. At that moment, she has no idea that the Doctor will come for her. She only knows that she doesn’t have him or Danny.

I’m not sure how I didn’t realize in the first place that “old Clara” had to be a dream. If the dream crab had stayed on her that many years, she would have been long dead by the time the Doctor came. And she wouldn’t have had that life. (As an aside, I wonder if Clara’s dream house is meant to be the house she was living in when we first met her in the Bells of St. John?)

I love the tangerine. It makes a clear implication when the Doctor says, “I don’t know who to thank”, that it was Santa who fixed things for him and Clara. But it is subtle enough that if we just aren’t happy with that conclusion, we don’t have to buy into it! Perfect “Miracle on 34th Street” ending. Altogether great Christmas special, possibly my favourite ever.

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@janetteb    I too have been looking at some photo and video stories. Fire is really frightening, and so horrible for the people whose lives have been altered (hopefully not lost!). They have fairly big forest fires in the interior of British Columbia and what is particularly scary is when the wind gets up and the fire can change directions in no time. Hopefully if the weather cools a bit they will have a chance to get things under control.

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@jimthefish     Or how about the fact that the original Master’s plans for world domination were usually foiled by him suddenly realising that he’d be for the chop as well.

Has anyone ever compared the Master to Wile E. Coyote? Someone must have at some point; if not, I will happily claim it as a brilliant creative insight!   🙂

 

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@elbalk-kev       While you aren’t the only viewer who would like to see a different approach to the science in Doctor Who, I don’t think it’s fair to simply reduce that criticism to a generic one of “bad writing”. I think that the underlying themes of AG Who have always skewed toward the metaphysical and emotional; RTD brought in the character-driven plots from the start. This, I think, is the reality of the show in the 21st century.

While there have been episodes this series that I felt contained plot holes, I really didn’t see it here. I didn’t see the number of dream crabs as something that needed explaining. There were six. Why not six? We know only the bare minimum about them, nothing about whether they are a society or act in a thinking way. We know that they infected the Doctor somewhere and followed his mind to Clara and earth. I had no problem with the logic of this.

You claim that there were never any plot holes or stretches in believability in the old series, but then you bring up the Master. As others here pointed out frequently during Series 8, the BG Master was frequently killed (apparently) and always came back with little or no real explanation as to how he survived. Moffat is just following tradition in this! Sometimes, I suspect, we call it a plot hole or bad writing when an event happens that we find unlikely or a character behaves in a way with which we don’t connect.

As a North American viewer of many years who has also seen the old series in its entirety, I can’t say that I feel the series has been “dumbed down” to accommodate me. I have had to adjust to a new style of story telling, as has everyone my age (and not just on Doctor Who, but in TV and film generally). I don’t think it’s fair to criticize Moffat for making TV for the current generation; that’s his job. Personally, I used to watch the show back in the day because, by and large, it made me happy. It still makes me happy. Sorry if that makes me a “sentimental apologist”. I actually don’t think I’m stupid. I don’t watch a lot of TV, and when I do, I pay attention. I can respect your view and understand that you aren’t happy with certain elements of the show today; I respect you less when you express that view in a manner that belittles my own enjoyment of the show.

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@purofilion     Oh my goodness, yes! I have a mental image of a manic grin as he suddenly challenges Santa: “How do you fit all the presents in the sleigh?” As though he thought he could catch Father Christmas off his guard!  🙂

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@janetteb    Oh dear. I hope they can get it sorted quickly, but I know how that goes… once it’s the season, it’s just a constant struggle until the weather changes. But stay safe, and try to stay cool!

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Happy New Year! I hope everyone has fully recovered from any indulgences (over- or otherwise) during the year end festivities.   🙂  Onward to Twelfth Night and (eventually) a return to Real Life.

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@bluesqueakpip     I think it’s probably down to Capaldi’s gaunt bone structure and intense expressions. There is just a look about him that screams “conjurer”!

@mudlark   @purofilion    Yes, I think we have left the “Oncoming Storm” well behind. I’m not sad about that. Much as I always enjoyed Matt Smith, the Doctor as superhero never sat well with me. I much prefer the idiot in a box!

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Plenty of fun tunes people have been posting in the last few days. You have to particularly love Kate Bush, and Grace Slick, and… the Monkees! Oh, yes. Altogether, a nice eclectic set for New Years.   🙂

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