@winston   There probably are sharks but they never come inside the reef, it’s too confined for them.   The only thing people-sized organisms have to worry about is stepping on a stonefish – rare, but very nasty I believe – but any form of rubber-soled ‘reef shoes’ are a protection.   Oh, and the coral has the sharpness of coarse sandpaper if yo…[Read more]

@scaryb     – but someone’s gotta do it.   🙂

Meanwhile back in Auckland they’ve had the remains of another tropical storm, with high wind and rain warnings.   Hope our house (and garden) is undamaged when we get back in 1.5 weeks.   Nothing I can do about it here, so it’s fairly easy to not worry about it.   Just go and look at some more fish.…[Read more]

On a lighter note, totally unrelated to Who but the animal lovers might find this amusing. I was snorkelling around in the ‘lagoon’ (which in Rarotonga is just a pool amidst the coral, extends to the inside of the solid flat reef), looking at the small tropical fish, when, rounding a coral head, something huge and dark flashed past my mask. Whooa!…[Read more]

@winston I guess we all understand, and if you can’t talk to us who can you talk to? An ice storm is certainly an odd one in the way of natural disasters, but no less serious for that. I’m afraid I’d go spare if I was without power for a day, let alone ten. Pleased to hear your house at least is undamaged, but I sympathise with your feelings for…[Read more]

Hi all @nerys @janetteb @blenkinsopthebrave and @thane16
Just de-lurking from Rarotonga where I’ve been for 4 days; another 3 weeks to go. (Weather’s been OK, typical Raro which is to say unpredictable but generally warm. Lagoon’s great for swimming and snorkling and bothering the fish, not that they seem to be very bothered.) I’m watching a DVD…[Read more]

With all due respect, and I noted your caveat –

Who owns the Sun?   (Googles)    Rupert Murdoch.   Thought so.

Says it all, really.    🙂

@winston   I wrote a short comment but it seems to have disappeared.  I think I edited something – it seems to happen when I edit a comment.

Anyway, to keep this short, I think Day of the Doctor is the best ‘special’ by far, it’s brilliant.    For more, see my long comment about five up in this list, I’ll spare Craig the bandwith of posting simil…[Read more]

@winston    So  The Star Beast / Wild Blue Yonder / The Giggle  were supposed to be the 60th anniversary special.   Didn’t feel much like a special to me, even though I rate WBY highly as an episode.

The finale double-ep of the following season,  The Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death, had more of that ‘special’ feel to them, mostly in brin…[Read more]

@nerys    Wild Blue Yonder was the peak of the Tennant revival for me.   The episodes before and after were a bit too Disney for my liking.   But WBY I would add into my list of top episodes from any season.

I have been known to rant that CGI and special effects are no substitute for good characters or plot, but I have to admit the CGI in WBY wa…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u    I think Trump has a very simplistic view of the world.   He sees every transaction as a zero-sum game – for one party to win, the other has to lose.   (The concept of ‘win-win’ is beyond him, if he ever heard of it he probably dismissed it as woke nonsense).   I think this explains why he is so gratuitously obnoxious – the more he…[Read more]

@winston   @nerys    The way I see it, tRump’s proposed invasions of Canada, Greenland and Panama are just diversions to distract from his less-than-stellar appointments to senior government positions.    It’s not like they’re policies that anybody else wants, so in a few weeks he can quietly forget about them and nobody will object or scream…[Read more]

@winston   Actually we’ve had pretty much a perfect week.   The high tides have been the right times (late morning to mid-afternoon), the right height (near the top of their range), and the wind has been from south-west so the beach (Blockhouse Bay) has been sheltered behind a ridge.   Next week – not so good with the times or the depth…[Read more]

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

I wish you luck with the Who DVD’s.    It may well be a licensing thing to do with the change of franchise, it’s always frustrating when I try e.g. a Youtube video and get ‘The uploade…[Read more]

Well a Happy New Year to all.

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

Today (New…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u

Well, I don’t know if there’s any official definition, but fantasy seems to range from Harry Potter to Alice in Wonderland to those curious pseudo-mediaeval novels that start ‘Sir Edric sat pensively on his mighty charger as he surveyed the broad sweep of the Homelands, and pondered when the marauding hordes of the Hilldwellers would…[Read more]

@winston   No excusing needed.   The more the merrier, I for one am perfectly happy to hear from others in the room.

Sci-fi and fantasy are adjacent genres and frequently blur into each other.   I would have rated the ‘Hitch-hiker’ series as strictly scifi but as ps1l0v3y0u pointed out, it strays into the edge of fantasy on occasion.   I used to…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave @ps1l0v3y0u

Well, old Who did sort of stray into fantasy with e.g. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. As nuWho has done, such as Rings of Akhaten. I agree, it should try to stay on firm sci-fi ground, but it frequently strays.

The line between sci-fi and fantasy can get blurred. A favourite comparison/contrast of mine is…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u

I agree about UNIT, I was never very happy about it as a dumping ground for old Companions. (And as a supposedly elite agency, one has to wonder what special skills a randomly-chosen person who happens to become an associate of the Doctor’s, is likely to have. I suppose one could argue that there’s something about some people that…[Read more]

@janetteb    I haven’t read all the posts in this forum (but I will).    But this double-episode has so many details in it, I’m sure a re-watch (or several) will bring up all sorts of things I overlooked first time round.   Especially in the time window.

As seasons go, yes I’d rank this one as quite good.

So in the first four minutes, RTD just killed *everybody*. Like, not just impersonal universe destruction like the Flux, but all the characters get turned to dust individually.

(10 minutes later) I was wrong, Sutech’s dust of death *is* destroying the whole universe. This is going to take one hell of a Reset button.
The ‘everybody’s dead’ reminds…[Read more]