@dentarthurdent

the diving suit exploit was – improbable (I’d guess impossible), without a support crew on the surface.

Perhaps there was more to the diving suits than was apparent. For a start, the design was anachronistic – more 1890s than 1814 – so  they were presumably supplied by the Tardis and could therefore have incorporated Time Lord tech…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

1807: slave trade act – abolished the trade into the colonies

C16th-18th status of slavery not recognised in English common law and finally made illegal (not in the colonies). Indentured service was used as means of paying debt.

1833: the institution actually abolished in the colonies

Desperate people driven to the towns to…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

My least favourite story from series 10. There are a lot of buzzwords that could be plastered over a late Georgian story with a nod to slavery. It does come over as just that: a nod. And a monster in chains. And the reason the Thames froze was the climate was very very different.

It’s an uncomfortable salad of ideas. And the c…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent and @mudlark    Your talk of scary cellars and viaducts reminded me of our spooky cellar when I was  child. We lived in a very old log home built in the 1880s that had a very dark cellar with a dirt floor. I was about 8 yrs old and had a very active imagination and was convinced that people or pets were buried down there.For mon…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Thanks for the tip regarding the DVD. I didn’t realise that anything other than stills survived of the original Quatermass Experiment, because the only method of recording in 1953 was by filming either the live action or the image on the TV screen, and the resulting picture quality was sometimes more than a bit fuzzy. The s…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u  @dentarthurdent

Quatermass and the Pit:  I’ve never seen the film, so I can’t comment on that,  but I remember the live TV production featuring Andre Morell as Quatermass and Cec Linder as Roney very well indeed – December 1958/January 1959, so I would have been 16 and my brothers 11 and 13. We can still quote bits of the dia…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u Yeah, the endless exposition is one of many things that doomed “The Timeless Children” … if you have to explain everything (and have the Master, of all people, doing it), then that’s probably a clue about the quality of the storytelling. “Show, don’t tell.”

@dentarthurdent Yes, you and I were discussing Layer Cake. It may be worth a…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

I meant ‘The Girl who Died’; ‘The Girl who Waited’ was Tom MacRae; that was very good, ‘The God Complex’ too, a strong return after ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ aka the day the Third Reich disappeared.

I always wondered if ‘Midnight’ was a steal from AC Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust… just a bus full of tourists versus an incredibly host…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Q & The Pit, the film is a bit Hammery, and die-hard fans criticised it, but I thought it delivered.

I don’t remember the tv show. Spike Milligan lampooned the original version in ‘The Scarlet Capsule’

”unexploded German skulls? I hadn’t thought of that…”

@dentarthurdent

Black Orchid… I checked! Well the first 2 minutes anyway. The Tardis materialises at The Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. We get a brief glimpse of a 2 cylinder GW tank. I think it must be a guest loco or this was a composite shot because their current 7200 class is not yet fully restored and only left Barry Island in 1…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Apparently Taw Valley was used to promote the books, but Christopher Columbus thought it looked too ‘modern’

You can paint a Hall red. The newly inaugurated British Rail painted a ‘King’ blue!

Tom Anderson: “ain’t you the kids who painted my King blue?”

Butthead: “no no no…”

Beavis: “we made you sell your house and then rented…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Film adpaptions…

I have two theories about The Hogwarts Express:

1. The GWR actually sent 2 Castles to be tested against Gresley’s A3’s but the magical world liked them so much they snaffled one, obliviated everyone and painted it red.

2. It’s supposed to be a rebuilt Royal Scot. Kings Cross… St Pancras…

In any case, the c…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent Thank you – yes, I am currently making my way through the adventures of 10 and 14, but have meanwhile become fascinated enough that I will take a peek at other Doctors too. (As already mentioned in another post: I fully admit that I’m mostly here because of David Tennant, but I am by no means a member of the “DT-must-stay-forever”…[Read more]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>@dentarthurdent</p>
Yes. I should probably read Fleming. What am I saying? I really haven’t the stomach for it.

The best of  ‘The Schoolboy’ leads from Le Carre research into the state of Indo China in 1975. He was apparently so horrified that he abandoned his publisher’s wishes for a longer Tinker Tailor arc. Hen…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

sorry, the handle is an infeasible mix of letters and digits. My advice is type @ and copy the rest from the ‘grey’ unhyperlinked name from the previous email.

Some adaptation leeway is essential. Haydon is shot in the film. In the tv adaptation Prideaux rabbit punches him. In the book you just don’t know but Prideaux has previ…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Tinker Tailor… a lot of people got very angry about the film: Haydon wasn’t dispatched in the right way. Guillams’s girlfriend was the wrong type of flute player… I thought it was fine. The tv adaptation is probably superior though equally claustrophobic and dry.

Le Carre’s Britain is broke, scruffy, compromised and no one can c…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent  It took me 3 read overs to understand that rellies meant relatives, I thought it was a typo at first. Not a word we use here. I giggled at my own stupidity for a few minutes so thanks for the chuckle.

stay festive

@dentarthurdent   Your Xmas day sounds wonderfully chaotic, just how I like it. This year was fairly quiet but there are 2 more  family dinners before and after New Years to get through. The Boxing day party was cancelled because of illness so today was nice and lazy and 9C and sunny!

I got a Tardis book bag and David Mitchell’s book ,Unruly, wh…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent Layer Cake – I didn’t really like it, didn’t dislike it, but I couldn’t stop watching – just had to see how it all worked out. And I have to say I was expecting a bad ending, but then there were several reversals in the last few minutes and I thought XXXX was going to get away with it and the final shock came from a totally u…

[Read more]

@dentarthurdent   The line is from the Who Xmas special “The Christmas Carol” from the opening narration. Next one I watch is Husbands of River Song while I last minute wrap before I go to bed for a long winters nap. I like Last Christmas but it makes me sad and there is enough to be sad about without volunteering for it.

It is actually mild h…[Read more]