• Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Empress of Mars

    @ps1l0v3y0u @nerys Interesting point about the High Council lady. Is it possible that Bill is an orphaned Time Lady? And the Doctor ‘stole the President’s wife’. Is the Moff hinting that Bill might be the Doctor’s (other) daughter? (But if so, shouldn’t she have regenerative powers? Maybe not, if they were a technological feature…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Empress of Mars

    @ps1l0v3y0u Well Bill did have only the one series to develop in. Some might say getting turned into a Cyberman was rather too much ‘development’ 🙂
    Although the professor-student relationship can be entertaining when the Moff writes it, in small doses, it isn’t really what Doctor Who is about, at least for me. ‘Who’ is relatively…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    @nerys I really liked the first one, Goldeneye. Natalya Simonova is one of my favourite Bond heroines, and Robbie Coltrane as the Russian gangster is one of my favourite Bond allies. And the second, Tomorrow Never Dies, as I said, Jonathan Price as Elliot Carver is the best villain (IMO). And Michelle Yeoh was great as an action heroine…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Empress of Mars

    @ps1l0v3y0u Well much of that I would agree with (having just watched it) though I found it all a bit Indiana Jones. (Or did I say Edgar Rice Burroughs? One or the other). I much preferred Cold War (and I did like David Warner’s character). I didn’t really notice any dreadful inconsistencies such as in Kill The Moon or even the…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    @nerys Silva? Was he the guy with the private island? (Reminds me a bit of Blofeld’s ‘suicide garden’ in You Only Live Twice (the book version). As does Malek’s garden in No Time to Die, of course). He was good, as I recall. But I need to re-watch the arc.
    My favourite arch-villain (straying from the Craig arc) is Jonathan Price as…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    @nerys I’m going to have to do a mini-rewatch of all the Daniel Craig Bond films, since I’m quite hazy about them (in contrast to the Pierce Brosnan ones that I know quite well). The mention of an arc intrigues me. No Time to Die certainly linked back to Vesper Lynd who was in Casino Royale I think.

    I didn’t find Malek particularly…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    I’m afraid my infrequent choice of movies is much more lowbrow than nerys’s. One I did just watch for the first time was the last* James Bond movie, <i>No Time to Die</i>. (I did say ‘last’ not ‘latest’, I know that’s ambiguous but they did kill Bond off at the end, so maybe it will be).
    I thought it was well-made, one of the better Bonds…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Extremis

    @nerys I share your feelings about 13. (I’m shortly about to experience them again, I’m almost up to there, only 5 Moffs to go. I’ll just skim the highlights of 13.)

    @winston Eve of the Daleks was, in my recollection, far the best of 13.

    Ah well, on to Empress of Mars which IMO was the weakest of Season 10, very Edgar Rice Burroughs,…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    @winston It’s actually a ‘pook’, short for pukeko. Although they’re called ‘swamp hens’, they’re apparently not good eating, very tough (I wouldn’t know, I never tried, nobody does). There’s actually a recipe for cooking Pook – you put the pook in a pot along with a chunk of sandstone rock and boil it. When the rock starts to go soft and…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    @winston Yes, while the quality of the ‘swimming’ (mud-wading?) at Blockhouse Bay is just acceptable at best, the surroundings do make a big difference. Probably the best feature is the narrow high ridge on the southwest, which shelters it perfectly from the prevailing south-west winds. The second most common winds are north-easters, and…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Extremis

    @ps1l0v3y0u Well I think Moff is probably non-religious (like me), but I haven’t really seen any strong anti-Catholicism from him, other than maybe mild irreverence. If one was looking to bash the Catholic church one could find dozens of bigger skeletons in their closet than just old legends of ‘Pope Joan’.

    If the priests in Bill’s…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    @janetteb Well Piha is always swimmable (except for very rare occasions when it’s too rough, but often then one can take a dip at The Gap at the south end of the island). But there are always waves breaking so you have to like battling the waves. It can often be very breezy, too.
    Blockhouse Bay is a nice sheltered little micro-beach, but…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Extremis

    @ps1l0v3y0u

    Well that post of mine (immediately above yours) was written two years ago on my first pass through the series.

    Extremis is the best of the three episodes, for me. I don’t see it as bashing the Catholic Church by the way, the Pope seemed to be quite a reasonable sincere man. The Doctor’s old ‘friend’ Pope Benedict IX now, was not…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    Hi @winston Unlike @janetteb (Hi!) we’ve had a pretty warm summer, and it’s still holding up – generally mid-20’s (70’s in Fahrenheit), and the water is still nicely warm. Typically (when it’s not going bananas) the weather stays settled until Easter at least. These days I generally just go for a swim at our tiny local beach at Blockhouse…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The End of the World

    @vickymallard @winston @ps1l0v3y0u I found this episode entertaining. The Doctor flirting with Jabe the tree person – (Rose noticed – “You two go and pollinate”) – I really liked her, it was tragic when she died heroically. The theme of the Earth ending made me feel a bit – uneasy. But there were a host of interesting characters to…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Rose

    @janetteb I think ‘old Who’ worked perfectly well in its time. Just as, say, Blakes 7 did (even though the cast reputedly were a little bit disconcerted when the sets wobbled if they leaned on them). At the time, that was just the standard of special effects and production values we were used to. We used our imaginations to ‘fill in the…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Rose

    @vickymallard Well I was effectively a ‘new viewer’ with Rose, too. That is, I’d seen some episodes of Two and Three when they first aired, but after that I dropped out for many decades. So ‘Rose’ was a fresh start for me. I also had no idea the Nestene Consciousness had a past (until I looked it up a few days ago. I’d highly recommend…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    Just watched The Greatest Show in the Galaxy on DVD, with the seventh Doctor and Ace. I found it reasonably diverting, and since it was mostly about a circus the effects were adequate for the story, except for the moment when the Ragnarok gods try to shoot the Doctor with – little yellow pointers of light?

    Apropos of nothing very much,…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic The Winchester

    @winston Good luck! I’m not sure I can offer any advice, other than, list your requirements and intended usage as clearly as you can, (e.g. I guess you need plenty of ports to connect external drives etc to), and try to find a salesperson who seems to know what they’re talking about. And, I think the latest high-performance PC’s probably…[Read more]

  • Dentarthurdent replied to the topic Rose

    @vickymallard Finally 🙂 Yes ‘Rose’ is a good place to start. I would rabbit on about that’s where I started but I just said all that to Rewvian in the comment just above yours.

    The mannequins were creepy. So was Plastic Mickey. And I agree it was a bit of a stretch that Rose didn’t recognise the strangeness, but I think that…[Read more]

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