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Well we (NZ) are quite slow in the vaccination process  (Mrs D and I are due for our second shots in a couple of weeks) but that’s more due to supply limitations rather than vaccine resisters.   If they eventually do require vaccine ‘passports’ I’m okay with that.   (It’s not really a passport, I think.   Real passports entail long  queues while Customs or Immigration grill you about your intentions.   So far as I can see, vaccine ‘passports’ would be a matter of show it and you’re in, nobody’s going to delay you.   Less hassle than your drivers licence.)

We’re currently in lockdown because Delta got here.   We’ve had a requirement for masks on public transport for many months, now our government has just made masks, and scanning or signing in, compulsory in stores (during Covid alerts).   Up until now it was just strongly encouraged, and almost everybody complied.  I think those who didn’t were just being lazy or inattentive rather than ‘objectors’.   I eventually relented and bought a new $65 (!)  smartphone because my old faithful Samsung S2 won’t run the Covid tracer app (its operating system is too old a version) and ‘signing the book’ was losing its novelty.

Not one of our political parties, not even ACT (who are the nearest to libertarian that we’ve got) saw any mileage in questioning Covid control.    So we’ve been lucky in that respect.

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@winston  Miss Kizlet (I can’t help calling her ‘Miss’) –  well acted.   Even at her most evil and villainous, she was an intriguing character.  (The Moff has a talent for intriguing female villains – Madame Kovarian and Missy, for example).   But ultimately she was a victim of the Great Intelligence too, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her at the end – which I hadn’t expected to feel.

@janetteb    DON’T apologise for Covid.  We were going to get an outbreak sooner or later, from somewhere in the world.   On the whole, we’re getting off fairly lightly.   Just personally, it doesn’t affect us much since we’re retired.   Due for our second jabs in a couple of weeks.   I went for a walk yesterday (permitted under lockdown rules, so long as we ‘stay local’) to our local park, as usual there were a fair number of people walking around in intricate patterns designed to keep a distance from each other.

I think Bells of St John is the best ep of that half-season  (excluding Day of the Doctor, which was a special).   Great fun to watch.   ‘The woman in the shop’ – I’m not sure.   It might have been a throwaway line and Moffatt then had to invent an explanation, but alternatively he might have planned it from the start – he’d be entirely capable of it.

I’ve since watched Rings of Akhaten, which for some reason reminds me strongly of a Farscape episode – they were always visiting alien planets with weird alien inhabitants.   I had a little bit of a problem with perspective – how could they be so close to the sun without getting fried?    And the question of atmosphere was – probably best ignored.

Cold War was a fairly good ep.   The submarine was quite convincing, assuming a nuclear sub is a little more roomy than its diesel predecessors.   (I’ve been in one sub, S-56, which is preserved as a war memorial in Vladivostok.   It wasn’t too cramped, there was room to stand up everywhere.   But it was liberally bestrewn with pipes and valves.   The only thing that might give one claustrophobia was the circular watertight doors at intervals, like the one shown in the episode.   Still, there’s nothing would persuade me to embark in a submarine for real.)   The light grey walls are the right shade of grey.   And of course there’s nothing adds authenticity more than a few signs in Cyrillic script.  (And they didn’t say rude things, as one of the producers in the commentary postulated.   The most prominent one said ‘Missile Bunker’.  Sadly, most were out of focus.)

I did like the old professor Grisenko (David Warner), even though the cast was fairly stock – sensible Captain, fanatical second-in-command, benevolent Professor.   I also liked Clara confidently asserting she didn’t speak Russian and then finding out that she was.   Which raises the question, how long does the Tardis’s translation circuit persist?

 

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Just watched The Bells of St John, which is the first appearance of the ‘real’ Clara.
And it’s classic Moffatt, full of lovely one-liners and loaded meanings that make me flick back the DVD to appreciate them better.

I love that ‘The Bells of St John’ literally refer to the phone bell on the Tardis beside the St John logo.
Monk: Is it an evil spirit? DW: It’s a woman. (Monk crosses himself)

“Actually, he’s about to go on holiday. Kill him when he gets back. Let’s not be unreasonable.” The Moff does casually ruthless better than anyone else. Oh, and it seems HR is responsible for, errm, terminating surplus employees. Nice.

“Did you just hack me?” “Because you changed your mind?” “I hope I did.”

“When you say ‘mobile phone’, why d’you point at that blue box?” “Because it’s a surprisingly accurate description.”

“Human souls trapped like flies in the world-wide web. Stuck forever, crying out for help.” “Isn’t that basically Twitter?”

When they walk out of the Tardis on the bank of the Thames, it’s almost a copy of the scene in Rose. In many ways this ep reminds me of Rose.

“Blue box. South bank.” “Are we sure this time? Earls Court was an embarrassment.” I seem to remember reading, one of the few surviving blue police boxes really was at Earls Court. Nice verisimilitude.

“I can’t tell the future, I just work there.”

So now Clara – this Clara – has been uploaded to the Great Intelligence cloud and downloaded, twice. So what has that done to her intelligence, I wonder? She’s retained the computer skills package (which includes some pretty good ‘social engineering’).

And this manifestation of the Great Intelligence was far more convincing and threatening, I thought, than the Snowmen.   Altogether an ep that was great fun to watch, with something happening every minute.

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@syzygy I’ve avoided streaming services so far. Partly because Mrs D is in charge of the TV. One of the channels is a ‘old series’ channel, 50’s to 70’s TV shows, and it’s painfully obvious that for every classic there are a hundred which are mercifully dead and I never wish to see again 🙂 But she likes them. So I just hunker down with my laptop and headphones and Youtube or DVDs, and leave her to it.

Also, it’s a smart TV, I barely understand how it works, and I don’t think Mrs D has a clue. We have Youtube on the TV too, but the vagaries of the Youtube algorithm are truly bizarre to contemplate. At one time, for several nights, we had an entire series of a Hmong soap opera (I deduced it was Hmong by feeding the credits into Google Translate. No I’d never heard of Hmong either. But their incidental music was quite pleasant and after a couple of episodes Mrs D was able to tell me the entire plot, just from observation 🙂
Currently we’re having (on Youtube) a whole series of funerals (the Vietnamese ones are the most tuneful). Mrs D finds them interesting, anyway. That at least is better than the string of birthing videos we had at one point (why people put their most intimate moments on Youtube for strangers to gawp at, totally baffles me).   I’m squeamish.

Oops, we’re back to birthing videos.   Up with the laptop screen, bury my head in it, and ignore the noises coming from the TV…

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@janetteb   Yes I like browsing through second hand shops for DVDs.   I used to like second hand bookshops too, but I eventually had to stop myself – I currently have ~1500 books and I’ve got no more room!    Now, I only buy a book if it’s one I really, really want to read…

 

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Oh, the forum just got busy!

@thane16 syzygy – Yes, I sort of thought River had time running backwards (which is impossible and hurt my brain to try and reconcile it) so pretty much managed to wave it away until Darillium made it obvious that view was wrong. I eventually worked out that time ran the same way for her and the Doc (as for everybody) but of course being time travellers, they jumped around so their meetings were ‘random’. So now my brain hurts a little less 🙂

Probably the fact you get few updates about SA is a good sign (for them) – no news is good news. Nobody really wants to live in ‘interesting times’.

Yes I have seen Firefly – in fact I have the DVDs. A friend sent them to me. It very much is a space western. I also have Serenity on DVD. IIRC they also had a remarkable character named River (in fact isn’t River on the cover of the Serenity DVD in memorable pose brandishing an axe thingy?)

At the time I was halfway through Farscape, which coincidentally was also about a band of galactic fugitives in possession of a large spaceship fleeing from the Federation… (oops, no, the Federation was Blakes 7)

So possibly for that reason Firefly was okay but didn’t really ‘grab’ me. I should probably re-watch it without the distraction of an ongoing different show. I have the DVD’s (he says). As I recall, Serenity was pretty much a standalone movie, not so much a Firefly follow-on.

As an aside – The Warehouse (our biggest retailer) has just stopped selling DVD’s. Wtf?? I suppose broadband and streaming video has killed the market. As far as I’m concerned, DVD’s were/are the best consumer medium by far. Obviously way ahead of VHS, in quality and usability (by that I mean, you can jump to any point instantly), but also satisfying to have a thing you can hold onto, you don’t need an internet connection or to pay some monthly fee, and NO ADVERTS. And also they often come with extras like commentaries and ‘behind the scenes’ which are sometimes rubbish but can be very illuminating. And I used to love wandering through video rental stores. There used to be a store near where I worked that specialised in ‘cult TV’ series like Trek, Who, X-Files, Monty Python, Galactica… you name it.

@winston Love the cute fez story. Maybe you’re lucky she didn’t call your bluff on the fez, though.

I remember that ‘everyone’s looking at me’ feeling. I eventually cured myself when I was about 20 by reflecting that most people are 99% absorbed in their own affairs and won’t notice much else. (Google ‘the invisible gorilla’). What forced this realisation on me was this – I was at an annual prizegiving dinner and went to the washroom. Which had small circular handbasins and very stiff pushbutton taps that would shoot a jet of water down into the handbasin and up the other side all over the front of ones trousers. Which it did. So then I thought ‘everybody who sees me will think I failed to make it in time’. Oh the embarrassment. So after much headscratching I reasoned, 1, most people aren’t going to notice and 2, anybody who does notice isn’t going to say anything anyway. So I walked back to my seat and – nothing happened. 🙂

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@oochillyo The 50th special – The Day of the Doctor? – that was a great episode. And yes, the Doctor did save Gallifrey.

(Someone correct me if I get this bit wrong, and I’ll try and avoid too many spoilers:)
But time is long, and Time Lord gratitude not quite so long. There was a prophecy that a creature known as the Hybrid would one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey, and the Time Lords thought the Doctor knew something about it. So they – Rassilon – trapped the Doctor in a ‘confession dial’ (getting Clara killed as collateral damage – Face The Raven) to force him to reveal all. But he withstood it for billions of years (Heaven Sent) until he finally escaped – in Gallifrey – and had his confrontation with Rassilon (Hell Bent).
More than that I won’t say (spoilers). Other than, those are three fantastic episodes.

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@oochillyo

Hi Declan

I’m pleased (for you) that you like this episode a little bit better.   Good when that happens.   It’s not one of my favourites, but I do like it better than the previous Master one, Last of the Time Lords.    The Master was a much more interesting person when he wasn’t all-powerful and 100% evil  (and it turned out Rassilon was the real villain of the piece, who woulda thunk it?).   I did like the Master’s last-minute decision to take out Rassilon and save the Doctor.

(Though Timothy Dalton was certainly the best Rassilon, I think.   The one that tried to shoot the Doctor and the Doctor banished was pretty good too (‘How many regenerations did we grant you?   I’ve got all night…’)

I know there have been episodes (and ongoing story arcs) that I’ve liked a lot better when I’ve gone through them in my head and sorted out the way the story ‘works’.   Notably the River Song saga, after I realised that the idea of River living her life ‘backwards’ was misleading and also, not possible.   I was being too literal about the sequence of their random encounters.

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@oochillyo

Umm, yeah.   I did wonder about the Doctor crashing straight through that glass dome and splatting on the floor without so much as a cracked rib – was it ever canon that he was extra springy?

The End of Time – that certainly did have the look of Fate bringing all sorts of disparate threads together (the Master, the Time Lords and didn’t Timothy Dalton make a great Rassilon, the rich guy who wanted to make his daughter immortal, even the vinvocci (cactus people) who were kinda fun).

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@blenkinsopthebrave

I was thinking of things like the first Cybermat which looked like a plush toy (probably because it probably was a plush toy). Also the first Cybermen who were only too obviously human extras in sacks. That is, I found them horribly unconvincing until Moffatt re-did them in World Enough and Time, and *of course* they were just humans in sacks! That’s what Cybermen were.

But I partly agree with you. FX and CGI are not the end, they are the means. Exactly the same way that wide-screen colour TVs and stereo sound are. They all help to tell the story. They don’t help much if the story is rubbish.

So I think, special effects and CGI are necessary up to a certain level of adequacy. Below that, you notice their lack (and in Old Who I did notice their lack. Also in Blakes 7, where even the Liberator’s walls famously wobbled if an actor bumped into them). But I could willingly make allowances for the sake of the story. If the story was good and the acting (I loved Kerr Avon’s sardonic sarcasm) I’d happily watch.

‘Adequate’ isn’t the same as ‘perfect’, by the way. CGI isn’t quite there yet. For decades James Bond avoided CGI and did it the hard (and dangerous) way with real-life stunts, and it really did show. When they finally started using CGI (Tomorrow Never Dies, I think) the movie suffered visibly in places because of it. I don’t mean the invisible car, that was well done, obviously had to be CGI, and it worked because we have no comparison to judge it by, but when e.g. Bond’s ice yacht fell off a cliff, the motion was just wrong. Modern movies that rely too much on CGI with exaggerated perspective and dizzying zooms – it gets tired.

Back to Who – I think the FX and CGI in modern Who has been perfecty adequate. e.g. Asylum of the Daleks – looks great, and nowhere does anything look ‘false’ to me. Or the ‘spoonheads’ in The Bells of St John that I just watched. It props up the story perfectly and that’s all it needs to do and all it ought to do.

Old Who – um. Watching ‘Survival’ I really want to think all the actors are cat people but it stretches my powers of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ beyond their limit. I still like the episode, love Seven and Ace.

I first watched in the 60’s too (wasn’t allowed to watch Quatermass though, maybe I was too young). I agree, imagination made up for a lot of deficiencies and doubtless my expectations of ‘FX’ have risen with the surroundings. Imagination *still* works well – just think of ‘Listen’ and how scary those totally unexplained noises where there should be no life, were. And that bedspread rising into the air behind ?the Doctor and Clara? – just a bedspread?

I talk too much.   Love the Slyther, though.

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@oochillyo @janetteb

Fate piling up on characters – it depends how it’s done. I found Wilf in The End of Time, quite annoying. I didn’t mind his character before, but he *would* go and get stuck in the cubicle with a deadly dose of radiation building up, wouldn’t he?
On the other hand, Clara’s death in Face The Raven was just as much a case of the circumstances neatly falling into place as if Fate was stacking the deck. But I didn’t mind that, and much though I loved Clara, I think it was a fitting way to go. (And also, unlike Wilf, Clara – and not the Doctor – paid for her mistake. Well, the Doctor later paid a terrible price, but that was a different episode and also, it was really the fault of Rassilon).

(For a series where fate really was weighted against them, see ‘Farscape’. Anyone who saw ‘Henson’ in the credits and thought ‘Muppets – warm fuzzies’ was sadly mistaken. One episode that I perversely like (because I don’t generally like ‘gloom’, I like my escapism escapist) was the standalone ‘Different Destinations’ where the crew are visiting a monument to a historic ancient siege when they get zapped back in time to the event, and everything they do to try and help the besieged (a group of nurses and a few soldiers) just makes things worse and by the time they are zapped back to ‘now’, the monument is to a massacre).

I did like Thomas Hardy when younger. Partly as a reaction to Dickens, whose style I found to be far too elaborate and heavy-handed, particularly when he was trying to be humorous (I wouldn’t dare say ‘funny’). A simpler style of writing seems to age far better. And also, I grew up in west Hampshire, and when we moved to Auckland in my early teens I was slightly homesick, and Hardy really seemd to have a ‘feel’ for his Wessex countryside. That counted for me more than his slightly Victorian characters.

Things that really ‘bug’ me in Who? Not many. Donna’s unfortunate first appearance when the Doc was just mourning the loss of Rose and Donna crashed in and shouted at him. Season 11 on – many things (and I won’t get into that).
Some of the truly terrible ‘monsters’ from Old Who. I make allowances for limited budgets but I guess modern FX and CGI have rather spoiled us.

Something that bugs me but Who is mercifully free from (prior to S11 anyway) – characters who preach little morals. If the story doesn’t provide its own lesson then having some character telling you what it is, doesn’t help. When I was a teen and cowboy Westerns were a thing, in some series at the end of every episode one of the characters would do a little homily on the moral of the story and it would make me cringe. Probably why I’ve liked black humour ever since, I’m a reactionary.

And – this is a weird ‘bug’ – the ‘Charlies Angels syndrome**’ – group scenes where all the characters get one line each in turn. As in the scene at the end of Journeys End where everybody turns up and they’re all taking a hand in helping to fly the Tardis – this is patently phony since it’s usually flown by one. Fortunately Who doesn’t do that often. (**Because it was rumoured that the three Angels in the original TV series had contracts that guaranteed them equal time, to the point of their agents counting lines in the script).
[End of ‘Things that Bug Me’]

 

@janetteb

Yes, I definitely liked Snowmen better on a re-watch. I think the first time, comparing it mentally with Asylum of the Daleks (which was spectacular) and Angels Take Manhattan (which was – dramatic), it suffered a little. Tough comparison.
Tardis interior – well, really Smith’s new Tardis and Capaldi’s are the same, just with the addition of a few furnishings. Either one is gorgeous, and streets ahead of any others. And it is three-dimensional, it leads you to expect more rooms off the control room (in a way that older ‘classic’ Tardis interiors didn’t. You tacitly accepted that they existed, but weren’t really deep-down believing it). I’d guess I’d give the edge to Capaldi’s, but it’s close. Obviously the Tardis couldn’t ‘redecorate’ too much, with Clara inside.

 

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Well, just watched The Snowmen and couldn’t resist bursting into print…

I’d remembered this episode as sort of middling, probably due to its Victorian setting (not my favourite period for stories). But it’s a lot better than that. The Great Intelligence is a fairly uninteresting villain, and the snowmen not very frightening, but it’s the frills on the story – Clara and the Vastra menage – that make this episode interesting and enjoyable.

Vastra, Jenny and Strax are a great vehicle for comedy, offending stereotypical Victorian sensibilities at every turn. “Good evening, I’m a lizard woman from the dawn of time, and this is my wife.”

The first acquaintance with Clara, she’s bold, rash and willing to take risks. In someone with less personality than Jenna Coleman, I’d find her really irritating – as it is, I find her highly attractive.

The business with Strax, Clara and the memory worm is hilarious. And Clara is as quick as lightning on the uptake – talking the Doctor out of using the worm on her, for example.

The Doctor has found a clever new way to park the Tardis – in a cloud of invisibility, hovering in mid-air (so no-one’s going to bump into it). Pity Clara’s nerve fails her at the last minute and she runs back down the staircase, leaving only her scarf behind (isn’t that a quintessential element of fairy stories?).

So then, much later, Clara is the first human to see the new Tardis interior – and it’s truly beautiful. Clean, spacious and elegant, it makes the previous one look like a junkyard. The best Tardis by a mile. And the Doctor has finally figured out that Clara (who likes souffles, by the way) is The One – his new companion – and Clara (who as I said is lightning quick) – divines exactly what he’s thinking. “I never now why. I only know – who.” And gives her a Tardis key. This is the first time we’ve seen the Doctor cheerful since he lost Amy and Rory. And Clara is thrilled and excited and ready for adventures with the Doctor… At which point, just like the Angel that got Rory, the ice woman grabs Clara and drags her to her death. The Moff did it to us *again*. The effect on the Doctor must be devastating. (And for all the fans who knew Jenna was the new Companion – they weren’t expecting that!)

And there’s a major anachronism – the biscuit tin in which the Doctor offers Simeon chunks of the ice woman has an Underground map on the lid – first designed in 1931. Though I suppose the Doctor could well have picked it up on one of his travels, so I guess it isn’t an anachronism at all. Kind of difficult to have anachronisms with a time traveller. Oh, but then the Doctor points to it and identifies it as the 1967 version. (So much for my wannabe geekery.) Which I guess proves that humanity survived Simeon’s plots anyway.

And then Clara dies, echoing Oswin’s words, and sets up the mystery of who Clara Oswin Oswald really is. I love a good mystery.

 

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@winston I do agree with you about endings – even if they’re not going to be ‘happy endings’ they can be sad but hopefully not depressing. I guess Doctor Who is escapism and I want to be entertained and not depressed. This is absolutely not to say that Bad Things shouldn’t happen, bad things are what heightens the drama. But I do very much like the way Moffatt handled the exits of all his companions. Much better than ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’ or its modern counterparts (which just illustrates that getting rid of a surplus cast member is an age-old problem).

@janetteb Yes, there is the problem of, why would anyone give up travelling with the Doctor? That problem was half acknowledged in the last couple of Ponds episodes, when Amy and Rory tried to establish an ordinary life on Earth for themselves and had problems settling down.
However, I disagree that Martha’s initial exit wasn’t fitting. I liked Martha, she was highly intelligent, she realised she was hopelessly in love with the Doctor and he was never going to get over Rose so she did the only sensible thing and walked away. Was she the only companion who ever left the Doctor for their own good? The only NuWho one, anyway, I think. That was fine, to me. I actually think her couple of recurrences with Unit or with Mickey kind of devalued that a little bit, but not enough to upset me.

 

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@janetteb Of course you’re in SA. I know that perfectly well! I just had an absent-minded moment, listening to the news from Victoria. My apologies for my error. I do hope SA can continue to evade the virus. Our (NZ) vaccine rollout continues to progress slowly but steadily, and I don’t think we (as a country) could really justify trying to jump the queue on vaccines.   But navigating the hazards of covid is a balancing act for most governments.

Yes Moff is good at handling the exits of favourite characters. I really do like the way he manages to soften the blow. We really do have it both ways – there is the shock of a loss (the angel that gets Rory and Amy, Clara’s Raven, and Bill getting Cyberised) – but then he softens it in some way. Some fans criticise that that undercuts the dramatic impact of the loss, but I don’t see it that way.   It makes the loss less abrupt, less final, less … wrong.

But then Moffatt is very good at characters in general. I just watched The Snowmen and it struck me how engaging the characters of Vastra, Jenny and Strax were, and particularly (of course) Clara. They’re characters I instinctively like. If some writers suit some actors particularly well then the Moff and Jenna Coleman were an ideal pairing. But then the Moff’s writing goes well with many actors. Anyway I couldn’t restrain myself from writing a lot of comments on Snowmen, which I’ll post later.

Cheers

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@janetteb I see the covid has reached you (again), hope the lockdown is only needed for 7 days.

I just got to Angels Take Manhattan – imprisoning people for their time energy, now that’s a real lockdown. And a horrific idea.

The ep starts off almost idyllically (is that a word?), but the moment we see that angel fountain it’s obvious there’s danger around. The fountain’s real, by the way, not down to the BBC art department, Streetview shows it’s the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. What an ideal ready-made prop.

I thought the Angel Statue of Liberty was a brilliant idea that suffered in the practical execution (how could it move around without being seen?. Also, we know it’s actually hollow and made of iron and copper, not stone). But there was some real tension in the roof scene and Rory and Amy falling off the roof (even though we’d been told that would probably be the Reset button). And then, just when we thought the drama was over, a stray Angel zaps Rory. That really was a shock the first time I watched the ep. So naturally Amy has to follow him. It was never stated what the Doctor did about that Angel, but considering the fate of the Family of Blood, I imagine it would be something suitably drastic. They can be damaged, as the Angel in Grayle’s possession illustrates. Volcanic lava lakes or quarry stone crushers come to mind.

But overall, a good episode, if not outstanding, and a worthy finale for Amy and Rory.

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@janetteb    The only episode I remember fondly from 13’s first season is the Norway one.   I didn’t mind the frog.    The Punjab one would have been okay as an episode in a historical drama but there’s hardly any sci-fi in it (and what there is, resembles Testimony from Twice Upon a Time).

I’m afraid I can’t warm up to Jodie Whittaker, what kills it is the way she goggles like a goldfish when anything surprises her.   I think she could have been a lot better with better writing and direction.

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Oh, and I did like the brief guest appearance of Brian Cox early on in the episode.

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To be fair to Chibnall, apparently (as JimTheFish noted in Who News) much of the brevity of the climax of Power of Three was down to Steven Berkoff, the villain, who sabotaged most of the takes.    (According to the Internet which as we know is always accurate).   This would certainly explain why the villain’s appearance was so brief and why he was so easily defeated with a wave of the sonic, why his ship conveniently blew up with an overload, and why the Doc so easily reversed the casualties.   Solomon (in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) got far more screentime and he was only endangering a ship full of dinosaurs and six humans, not the entire population of Earth.

Still leaves the motivation for the cubes a little thin, though.

I do agree that ‘Ravens of Death’ has a distinctly Moffatt ‘feel’ to it,  of course there’s also the raven in ‘Face the Raven’, I wonder if Moff suggested that or if Sarah Dollard picked up on the Raven reference?   (And my virtual apologies to Chibnall if that was indeed his phrase).

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@jimthefish    Now you mention them, Jamie Mathieson or Sarah Dollard have both written good episodes.   Though Whithouse certainly has showrunner experience (I think he did ‘Being Human’ for example)

Re Power of Three, a quick Google seems to confirm that Steven Berkoff was, um, ‘difficult’, and I guess that does explain why the climax was so very short and the villain so easily dealt with.   The first two-thirds was a good steady (and intriguing) build-up.   Though I still think there’s a logic gap in that a race that could build such technologically unbeatable impervious cubes shouldn’t need a whole year to perfect an assault that would only kill a third of their intended target…

Neil Gaiman would be a good choice, and he’s got heaps of experience I think.   However, on his website he’s just announced he’ll be doing Good Omens 2 and Anansi Boys simultaneously, so I guess that rules him out.  Though it depends how long a hiatus between seasons Who undergoes, I guess…

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… and so, on to The Power of Three.   (Ponds don’t have long to go…)   Started well, with the enigmatic cubes, they were mysterious and entertaining.   And went well till 2/3 the way through the episode.   The problem is, having started so strongly, what do you do for a payoff?   Well this was an anticlimax – a wave of the sonic and everything is fixed.

And, the absurdity of studying mankind for a YEAR in order to figure out you can electrocute them?    And then, only doing a third of the job, and having to send a ‘second wave’ of cubes – which no human is going to go near after what happened with the first lot…   this super-advanced, able-to-manufacture-indestructible-cubes-that-far-exceed-human-technology race is really, really dumb.

I did like ‘Ravens of death’ – though, given the nod in The Day of the Doctor (‘The ravens are looking a bit sluggish. Tell Malcolm they need new batteries’) I rather uncharitably (uncharitably towards Chibnall, that is) suspect that line was inserted at the suggestion of the Moff.

 

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OK I’ll toss my cup of petrol onto the fire   🙂    Just been watching  A Town Called Mercy  (Toby Whithouse)  followed by  The Power of Three  (Chris Chibnall).   And I can’t help contrasting them – Mercy was brilliant and gripping all the way through.   Power of Three started with an intriguing concept (the cubes) but wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.    And I couldn’t help reflecting on the theories that floated around when the Moff was about to retire, that Toby might have become the new showrunner.   What might have been…

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A Town Called Mercy – I really like this episode.

Had some classic lines in it.   Written by Toby Whithouse, but worthy of the Moff.

“Why would he want to kill you? Unless he’s met you.” – Amy (to the Doctor).

“I speak horse. He’s called Susan, and he wants you to respect his life choices.” – The Doctor.

“Everyone who isn’t American, drop your gun.” – The Marshal (to Amy).

“Frightened people. Give me a Dalek any day.” – The Doctor.

There was real tension when the Doctor faced off Walter (the 18-year-old) with a gun and talked him out of shooting. Marvellous scene.

I hardly recognised Bill Browder (Crichton of Farscape) as the Marshal, but he was a really good character. I was *not* expecting him to get shot half-way through.

What I liked was that nobody was simply malicious or evil, not even Kahler Jex or the gunslinger. All their questionable actions – the Doctor trying to throw Jex out of town, Walter and the townsfolk wanting to do the same, Jex trying to avoid the gunslinger’s attentions, the gunslinger wanting to kill Jex – were all based on either self-preservation, wanting to protect themselves and their families, or a desire for justified retribution. The gunslinger just wanted Jex and didn’t wish to hurt innocent people (in that way Jex had programmed him well). Jex’s terrible actions in the past – creating killer androids – he made a powerful argument that they were prompted by patriotic motives in a terrible war. And Jex redeemed himself at the end by blowing himself up.

“He behaved with honour at the end. Maybe more than me.” – The gunslinger.

As Western episodes go, this was a really good one. Well-written, and the motivations of all the characters were entirely convincing. And visually striking.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys    Well, I have plenty of space, or did have.    My problem is, it inevitably fills up with interesting things which I can’t bear to throw out.   (So really, I’m the problem).   For example, 500 VHS tapes (remember them?)   I disposed of 300 a few months ago, there are still around 200 in the living room which I must bite the bullet and dump (because, though I never watch them, they’re all catalogued and indexed).

DVDs are far more compact and manageable, and of course far higher quality picture and much more usable.   And of course, frequently DVDs have all sorts of extras on them, varying from highly interesting to pointless.   In the case of Doctor Who there are all sorts of ‘Webisodes’ which add to the ongoing story…

I also have ~1500 books which are a much more intractable problem…

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@craig    Minor website matter – in Dr Who News on 24th June, ‘osdffdsfg’ or somesuch posted a mountain of rubbish with several commercial links in it.   May I suggest respectfully nuking it from orbit?  And maybe banning Mr alphabet soup.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys   Well, first impressions definitely matter.   In my case, having seen Asylum, I was definitely well-disposed towards Clara (and Clara lookalikes), though the loss of Amy was a shock.   (All right, and Rory too, originally he was a bit of a dork but he improved as time went along.   Liked him better than Danny Pink, anyways).

If you’d seen the loss of Rose then maybe you would have shared my doubts about Donna.  Or not, I can’t say how you ‘ought to’ feel!   But Rose was, at that point, *the* companion (in NuWho terms), an impossible act to follow.   I think Martha was fortunate in that Donna intervened for one episode, so by the time Martha appeared the pain of losing Rose had subsided a little.

But if you only found Who again with Silence in the Library, you missed a huge chunk of Who – some of Rose, all of Martha, and some of Donna.   This is why I prefer to do my watching off DVD, no longer a slave to the TV programmers.

I recall when Blakes 7 was on (in re-runs) in the 80’s, I used to dash home from work (they put it on at 5-30, for the ‘kiddies’, then had to reschedule the final episode because it wasn’t suitable for the kids what with everyone getting shot 🙂  – but anyway, my boss used to notice me rocketing out the door at 4-30 on Thursdays and I’m sure it didn’t help his opinion of me.   He never actually said anything, so I didn’t have the opportunity to point out that I usually worked a few minutes later on all other days (and besides, admitting that I was dashing off to watch a kids sci-fi programme?   Uh, no).

Umm, Midnight.    That was a mini-classic.   And they never did find out the stewardess’s name.   Probably RTD’s best episode.

Good Omens, I got the DVDs.   I got them because I like Pratchett and Gaiman, liked the book.   The TV show had a lot of new things in it, but (seen on DVD without ads) didn’t seem at all frenetic to me.   One thing I enjoyed having the luxury of DVD – when the witchfinder sticks a pin in the map to show the cottage – that’s a real OS map.   And I found the location – they changed the name on the map in the episode, but by freeze-framing I recognised the general area and the actual spot on the map is named Colstrope Farm.   And here’s the thing – Googling tells me the actual cottage they used for filming *was* Colstrope (just north of Hambledon, near Henley-on-Thames).   Nice touch!   It really didn’t matter for the series, any map would have done, not even the nit-pickiest map-obsessed geek would have complained if the map was arbitrary, I guess it qualifies as a well-hidden ‘Easter egg’.   Really DVD with its sharp freeze-frame is a gift to geeks of all varieties.

Oh, and I just ordered the DVD of Staged (both series).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   I’ll be very interested to see your Red Dwarf podcast.

@nerys   I basically agree with all of that.   Oswin was such a dazzling character, and so tragic.   And The Snowmen was not one of the best Christmas specials (in my opinion).   So though The Bells of St John was a good episode, with some witty interaction between the Doctor and Clara, it does suffer a bit by comparison with Asylum.   It (Bells) has some of the feel of Rose’s introduction in ‘Rose’.   The Rings of Akhaten was also a so-so episode (IMO).   Its ‘alien planet’ reminded me of a Farscape scenario for some reason.   ‘Hide’ I liked, and ‘Journey to the Centre of the Tardis’, but none of those Clara + Smith episodes were outstanding until DotD.

And yes, the sudden loss of Amy and Rory in ‘Angels Take Manhatten’, just when we thought the peril was over, was shocking.   I know the feeling.   I could never really warm up to Donna after her first appearance at the end of Doomsday when the Doctor was grieving the loss of Rose and Donna literally burst on the scene.

Day of the Doctor was possibly the best Who episode ever (at least in my personal list).   Even though it didn’t feature my favourite Doctor (Capaldi), Smith + Tennant + John Hurt made up for it.   Clara was great in it, as was Rose (aka the Interface) – it was great to see her again.   And it had Osgood too, another intriguing character.   Generally, more is not better (as in Journey’s End – too many people), but in the case of DotD it all worked well.

I’ll see if I can get ‘Staged’ on DVD.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   I agree with that, specifically Rose’s costume (I know nothing of the history of fashion, but Rose’s costume in Unquiet Dead would surely have started a riot.   Although, IIRC, I think I personally liked the look of it).   And generally, that some things we can accept and ohers not.   I think in the case of Unquiet Dead, the essential difference is, that spirits in the pipes is sci-fi (wherein we know anything is possible) while Rose’s attire is mundane reality and so is judged by different standards of credibility.

This is why McGyver always jarred on me.  I’m an (ex) engineer by profession and an amateur mechanic (in the sense that I always fix my own car) so I have a strong sense of what works mechanically and nothing McGyver did would ever have worked.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys    Well, Asylum of the Daleks is obviously one of my favourites too.   Whether I’ll find the ‘impossible girl’ debut of Clara disappointing on second viewing, I’ll know in a few days since I’m re-watching in episode order.   Certainly liked her the first time round.

I don’t know Staged (but yes it’s certainly OK to discuss other shows in this forum, I think).   Looks as if it’s worth a watch.  Michael Sheen and David Tennant – last seen in Good Omens, I think?   That was a pretty good mini-series.

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Oh, and yes, the cyborg in Mercy does look remarkably like Kryten.   But I don’t count that as a negative.

I think it probably also resembles Yul Brynner’s android in Westworld, but I must admit I haven’t seen that movie.

Incidentally, the concept of a droid-populated environment (as in Westworld) was also borrowed by Red Dwarf in (Googles)  ‘Meltdown’.   Red Dwarf covered a huge gamut of fascinating sci-fi concepts, it was far more inventive than it’s usually given credit for, I suspect it’s under-estimated because it was also a comedy.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

I agree about Dinosaurs.   Okay to watch but not high on my list.

Haven’t rewatched A Town Called Mercy yet (haven’t had time) but it’s next on my list.   I don’t hate all Westerns – they’re a very mixed bag.   There was an awful lot of rubbish produced, with a few really good ones; but you could say the same of sci-fi.  At the moment some TV channel is re-running all 15,000 episodes of Bonanza, which Mrs D watches while I try to bury my head in my laptop.   But I do have a liking for Sergio Leone’s ultimate Spaghetti Western, Once Upon a Time in the West, (the European version with the longer running time), not least because of Ennio Morricone’s amazing score, and Leone knows how to build up tension.    Incidentally, it was shot in the same area of Spain as A Town Called Mercy.

It feels like just about every long-running sci-fi and fantasy series has done a Western episode at some time or other – Farscape, Red Dwarf, Who.   Not sure if Firefly did one specifically but then that whole series was a ‘space western’.   And Blakes 7 similarly.   Oh and of course The Prisoner, with ‘Living in Harmony’ – a good episode IIRC.

But anyway, from memory of my first watching, I really like ‘Mercy’.   As I recall Amy gets really irate with the Doctor and threatens to shoot him – Amy on the warpath is truly impressive.

The Power of Three (which I’ll watch after Mercy) – I loved the concept of the cubes.   They lent themselves to some really quirky and entertaining moments.   And in their studying us while we studied them, that’s reminiscent of (I won’t say ‘copied from’) the mice in Hitchhiker, where Arthur Dent tells Slartibartfast he’s got it back to front, we study the mice and Slarty replies ‘ingenious, aren’t they’ (or words to that effect).   So, anyway, so far so good for the cubes.   But that build-up really needed a better payoff, just looking to kill us with electric shocks to effect an invasion – why would that take a year of study by the cubes to arrive at?   A technology that could create the cubes could defeat us in two weeks flat.   So, I found the build-up great but the payoff disappointing.   But I’ll see on re-watch.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb    In NuWho days human life is sometimes pretty cheap too, specially when Daleks are around…   I don’t think Darla is ‘recoverable’ either.

And Tasha Lem died, as the Dalek said, ‘Several times’.   (The Moff can really make a couple of words chilling).   (Incidentally my latest Thinkpad is named ‘Tasha’ – when I install a new operating system I have to give it an arbitrary name so they’re all named after sci-fi characters)

I’ll note Dalek Invasion of Earth for future, but I think I’ll continue my trek through NuWho for now.   I just watched Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, which isn’t bad, but suffers a little from the comparison with Asylum and A Town Called Mercy.   Talking of cheap human(oid) life, Solomon murdering all the Silurians was pretty nasty, I didn’t mind at all that the Doctor sent him off for missile target practice.    I liked Nefertiti, I just couldn’t figure her getting stuck with Mr White Hunter.   Might have worked if he had more charisma and less ego.    She would have made a good Companion if the position wasn’t already occupied by the Ponds and booked for Clara.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Those earlier instances, did the dalekised humans fully retain their original human shape?   Or were they humans trapped inside a Dalek ‘tank’?

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Incidentally, thinking back to Asylum, was Darla the first occurrence of a Dalek ‘skin job’?   (Not sure what the correct terminology is, I borrowed that from Battlestar Galactica).    I think the next occurrence was Tasha Lem in ‘Time of the Doctor’?

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@winston    Now you put it that way, it is in fact the classic fairy story.   But quite the most entertaining one I have ever seen.   And yes, I think it’s my favourite Dalek episode too.

I think I half-guessed that there was something not quite right about Oswin (dare I say ‘impossible’?) but my emotional self just didn’t want to know.    Much of this was due to how well Oswin was written and how well Jenna Coleman carried it off – perfect casting, I wanted Oswin to be real.   I think the gradual reveal (like, the Moff was throwing hints at us the entire episode) actually added to the emotional impact because we were sort of primed for it – if it had come out of the blue it would have been more of a shock but maybe less deeply felt.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   Oh yes, I noticed that.  Clever Doctor.     For an alien who’s sometimes socially – odd, he can also be remarkably perceptive.

In many series, the Amy – Rory rift would take an entire episode of angst all to itself.   Here, it was just a subplot.   There’s just so much happening in this episode.

Cheers

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Absolutely agree about it being one of the great episodes.   And I think having a novel situation (like the Doctor being required to save the Daleks from their own insane casualties) is conducive to entertaining dialogue.

There was a nice exchange just after Rory’s comment that you noted –

DOCTOR: You’re going to fire me at a planet? That’s your plan? I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it.
RORY: In fairness, that is slightly your M. O.
DOCTOR: Don’t be fair to the Daleks when they’re firing me at a planet.

But there’s far too much to quote.    “Where d’you get the milk” is one of those apparently irrelevant asides that turns out to be highly significant – just as the Doctor insists.   I get the impression that the Moff is enjoying himself, waving tantalising details at us which we are most definitely going to ignore.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@bluesqueakpip    I think you’re probably right about the Lancaster.   Lancasters are ‘iconic’ and there are probably quite a number of them around; less so, Wellingtons (although more were actually made, throughout the war).   Wikipedia says, just two exist (and one of those was fished out of Loch Ness!)

My ‘favourite’ ‘wrong’ artefact (which still niggles me) was the train in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, about a 1910 London – Paris air race.   They went to great lengths to build authentic-to-the-period flying replicas (and in 1965 this was a big expenditure for a movie.   There was a book about it – the replicas, not the expenditure).   The villain, after crossing the Channel, crash-lands on top of a French train (and then a tunnel comes along…)   Except the that train was being pulled by the very distinctive, historic, well-known and un-French looking Highland Railway (of Scotland) Jones Goods 4-6-0.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Asylum of the Daleks. Truly fascinating from start to finish, with a plethora of understated yet chilling lines.

DARLA: My memories are only reactivated if they are required to facilitate cover or disguise.
DOCTOR: You had a daughter.
DARLA: I know. I’ve read my file.

HARVEY: I died outside, and the cold preserved my body. I forgot about dying.

Even the Daleks get some good lines:
DOCTOR: I thought you’d run out of ways to make me sick. Hello again. You think hatred is beautiful.
DALEK PM: Perhaps that is why we have never been able to kill you.

AMY: (on being Dalek-ised) What comes first? How does it start?
DOCTOR: With your mind. Your feelings, your memories, and I’m sorry but it’s started already.
AMY: How do you know?
DOCTOR: Because we’ve had this conversation four times.

And the neatest reason ever for Amy and Rory being dragged into the action – “It is known the Doctor required companions.”

Oswin Oswald – a brilliant character. But in retrospect, there are clues stacked up ceiling high that she cannot be ‘real’ any more. Keeping Daleks out with a couple of planks. Hacking the Dalek computer systems (‘very easy to hack’. Doctor: No it isn’t). Or the fact that Oswin can see the Doctor, Amy and Rory but they can’t see her – the script even lampshades it. But she is such a dazzling character that my mind just didn’t want to entertain the idea that she might be a Dalek, even with the example of Darla and Harvey right in front of me.

It was a master bit of plotting when Oswin saved the Doctor by simply deleting him from the Dalek database. And then, one of the most tragic moments in all of Doctor Who, as Oswin’s excited jubilation at being rescued is contrasted with the fact that she is now a Dalek and beyond help. First time I watched it, this completely broke me up, I was so sure they were going to rescue her.

So then Oswin takes the security system down so the Dalek fleet can destroy the asylum (and her), and the Doctor and friends can escape by teleport to the Dalek command ship where – the Daleks don’t know who he is. “Doctor – Who?” indeed.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Carrying on with the ‘weather’ theme – a couple of weeks ago the east coast of South Island had unprecedented flooding around Ashburton, now it’s the north-west end from Nelson to Westport getting record floods, and the south end of the North Island also flooding.   Also wind warnings.

I’m more complacent about wind these days – there used to be a huge acacia growing right beside the house, which could have caused major damage if it fell in the wrong direction.   I bit the bullet and had it cut down a couple of years ago (it hurt, because I love trees) but I’m no longer quite so paranoid if severe wind warnings are issued.   We still have plenty of smaller trees but they’re unlikely to do much more than wreck the guttering.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

They “used what they could and hoped nobody would notice?”   With respect, that is the most forlorn hope since, umm,  Eddie the Eagle.   The intersection of the sets of [Who geeks] vs [WW2 geeks] vs [Aviation geeks] is surely very large.   They could easily have fixed it by dating the telegram ‘1943’ instead of ‘1940’ though whether that would have fitted with them evacuating from London, I’m not sure.

Possibly no-one on the production team who would know the rough timeline of WW2 aircraft (and I’m sure there must have been some), noticed the date on the telegram.   But anyway, it didn’t spoil the ep for me, since the type of bomber Reg was flying was not critical to the story.

Hope SA manages to evade the virus.   I would imagine our (NZ) authorities are feeling quite nervous as so many Oz states that we have (limited) air travel with, fall over.   Wellington seems to have managed to contain its little blip recently (makes a change from it being Auckland).   I guess we’ll all have to get used to the situation changing repeatedly as little outbreaks occur here and there.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well I just re-started Doctor Who watching, next up was The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe. Which I tend to rate quite low among the Christmas specials, but I think that’s more a tribute to the quality of the other specials, or maybe the adjoining episodes, than any great deficiency in this ep. It was well cast, Madge was a sympthetic character, and I really liked Lily – intelligent and determined. Enjoyed the comic relief – “Okay, we’ve put our guns down, can we interrogate you now?” Their craft bore a strong resemblance to an Imperial Walker but with an extra leg; but when Madge started piloting it that was inevitably reminiscent of Ripley driving the loader in Alien.

Just one major anachronism – Reg got lost over the Channel in his bomber in December 1940 – that was credible, in 1940 raids on Channel ports were about the limit of the RAF’s capabilities, and in 1940 Reg would most probably have been flying a Vickers Wellington. Only, by some miracle of time travel, the plane he’s flying is an Avro Lancaster, which didn’t come into service until c. 1943… (Chrissie’s marvellous transcripts site, Chatokeya.net, was similarly puzzled, and hazarded that it might be a Stirling, based on the date – OK, not bad for an educated guess, the Stirling had four engines and pre-dated the Lanc – except that it didn’t come into use until early 1941, so still doesn’t fit, and Reg’s plane is absolutely, unmistakeably a Lancaster.) Sorry, Doctor Who – that’s a huge anachronism and nothing can save it.

The only other thing I can nerdily date, the etching of a GWR Castle carrying a ‘Bristolian’ headboard on the bedroom window, is fine since they started pre-war. Oh, and the model Spitfires on the wall are OK date-wise too. And so is the Morris 8 Series 1 tourer.
[/geek mode]

Next, Asylum of the Daleks. I’m so looking forward to that 🙂

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hi @janetteb    Hope you’re OK, I heard there was a covid surge in Victoria (which of course is not that far from you).
I think just about everyone is taking note of what the climate is doing, other than a few head-in-sand reactionaries on Planet Trump.

South Auckland had a tornado a couple of weeks ago that destroyed a number of houses.   Apparently tornadoes are quite common in this region but they very rarely cause anything more than minor damage, so people don’t notice them much.   So that’s new, and disconcerting.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   The trouble with bears (from my point of view, not that I’ve ever met one) is that they’re bigger than me, they can run faster than I can, and they can climb trees better than me.   There aren’t many other animals with that disconcerting combination of abilities – leopards, maybe?    🙂

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston You must be truly rural if you get otters, I think.

Otters are cute. It’s odd – slinky little animals (like, say, rats) are anything but cute (usually). But make them a little bigger, put big tails on them, and they become cute (though I doubt if their food would agree 🙂 Make them even bigger and you get capybaras, which look dumb, dorky and benign. Okay, I’ve just realised otters aren’t rodents, they’re mustelids. My mistake.

Not too sure about the bears. One of the great things about New Zealand is being able to walk in the bush, barefoot even, and the worst thing that’s ever likely to attack you is a yellow wasp. There are reputed to be wild pigs in the more remote parts of the country. And of course cows, but not in the bush. The biggest hazard in the bush is just getting lost or falling off a cliff, or, I suppose, tripping and breaking your ankle.

The weather, being Auckland, is all over the map. Today’s forecast was for really heavy rain, clearing late in the day. Well it was all over by 9a.m., which was just as well for the guys from the power company who came to trim our trees (under their 110kV lines). Sunshine, even, by mid-day. That’s typical Auckland weather for you.

Just got a text to book for Mrs D’s second Covid jab, which I reserved online for September 7th. I expect they’ll ‘fit me in’ at the same time, as they did with the first jab. Actually this carries a lot less emotional weight here, mostly protected by our quarantine wall, than it does in most countries. It’s more a ‘nice to have’ than a desperately needed shot. Our vaccine distribution is quite a slow process since NZ’s place in the vaccine queue is fairly low, for good reasons.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   Well, I can’t say I’ve noticed it being ‘unnaturally warm’.   Though my memory tends to be short-term, like the last couple of weeks only.

I wonder how they average out these things?   Certainly summer seemed to last a very long time – I was swimming until May Day, which is getting on for a month later than I typically do – before it fell off abruptly into winter.   So depending when they calculate the seasons from, the tail end of summer might be pushing up the average.   The seasons seem to run late, here, but this year summer ran even later than usual.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston    Meanwhile, here on the opposite side of the earth, we’re getting unusually cold weather.   It is winter, but in the last couple of weeks we’ve had it a few degrees colder than usual and a lot more snow in the southern half of the country.

Maybe nature is ‘compensating’***, but I think we’d all rather it compromised than counteracted.   🙂

(***I have no knowledge of any physical mechanism by which this might happen)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@eja1985    Hi EJA    This forum is as good as any  (On The Sofa is the other one)   Generally its pretty relaxed about where posts go.   On The Sofa is (I think) supposed to be about general TV viewing, it also attracts comments about episodes,  Kebab is for ‘other stuff’, but topics tend to drift and nobody seems too worried.

Anyway, welcome  (I’ve been here for about 6 months).    It’s not a very busy site, but most folks are fairly friendly.   For some reason it reminds me of the little social group in Love & Monsters.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   It may well be that English lit has progressed a bit in the six decades since my schooldays.   In those days the texts we had to read were such as Shakespear (which I liked, the dude was at least reasonably concise with his plots and there was plenty of action); Dickens, who I found rather depressing and his style of writing was insufferably overblown, particularly when he was trying to be funny.   H G Wells (the only sci-fi writer as I recall), who was similarly hampered by a Victorian style.   The most ‘modern’ writer was Graham Greene, specifically ‘The Power and The Glory’, which I found the most tedious, dreary, depressing dirge I had ever read, and his heavy religious overtones really offended me.   What I read for enjoyment was Conan Doyle, Arthur C Clarke, John Wyndham, Leslie Charteris (whose style is probably as dated now as Dickens’ was then 🙂 – but they were all far too modern to make it into English Lit.   Also, they were probably deficient in Character Development.   And innumerable non-fiction books on railways, mountaineering, aviation and motor racing.

Coming back to text analysis – I’m not sure what’s involved.   Though I do know when the audience is being manipulated (but isn’t that the job of a  film-maker?)   I just hate that when alleged ‘based on real events’ so-called docu-dramas do it.   Don’t care when it’s 100% fiction.

But I don’t do that on my first viewing of an episode.   I decide whether I like the ep just based on how it strikes me.  Frequently (particularly if it’s a Moffat episode) I re-watch a second time, when the plot/timeline is easier to follow and the knowledge of it provides a bit of background that lets me appreciate the events more.   Like, say, Hell Bent.    *If* I liked the ep, I then do quite like to discuss it (not sure if that’s ‘analysing’ it?)  with others, such as in this forum.

And I would very strongly argue that sci-fi and fantasy is a very significant part of literature (I know you agree on that :), and allows writers to explore theoretical situations, make allegories to human institutions, and explore moral dilemmas, all without the baggage that would accompany a novel set in actual ‘reality’.    And as such, it is very often much more enjoyable to read.   Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ novels are a classic case of that (plus he has a fantastic way with words.   I’m a complete sucker for clever, inventive phraseology.   In fact, many popular writers (such as Arthur Hailey, Robert Ludlum) leave me cold, because their prose is so – prosaic, I can’t get through more than a few pages.   Really.   I started reading The Bourne Identity because the movie was so good, and couldn’t get through the first chapter.   Maybe I was expecting too much.)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@missy    I think I agree with you.   I’d rather enjoy a story than analyse it  (is there an official way to ‘analyse’ a story?   I don’t know).

Although (as an engineer) there’s a part of my brain that keeps tabs on continuity and physical credibility, that’s not what decides whether I like an episode.   If it’s well-written, with original dialogue and engaging characters, I tend to give it considerable leeway.    It takes a very large inconsistency to throw me out of the story (like Kill The Moon for example).

If I start noticing minor plot points, that usually means the characters have failed to ‘grab’ me.

McGyver, for example, I could never stand, because it seemed as if the writers had deliberately made every ‘clever’ trick McGyver came up with, as absurd and impractical as possible – I was actually offended by the gratuitous absurdity of it.   James Bond gadgets, on the other hand, I could usually go along with, partly because they were more ‘science fiction’-y – the more a gadget is ‘high-tech’ or removed from everyday reality, the more likely I am to ‘suspend disbelief’ for the sake of the story.

Anyway, back to analysing stories – as I recall, at school, great emphasis used to be placed on ‘character development’.   But then there was an implication (this was the 60’s, I’m ooold) that most sci-fi probably wasn’t literature.  Except possibly H G Wells, who was sufficiently antiquated to qualify.   I couldn’t give a toss about ‘character development’ – either the characters were interesting (in which case development might happen or not) or there was some other good reason to like the story, like for example a really clever plot  (as in Heinlein’s ‘By His Bootstraps’ – time travel) or an intriguing twist in the tail (Arthur Clark’s ‘History Lesson’) or interesting situation (‘The Sentinel’).    Besides, short stories didn’t give much room for character development.    In fact I’d say my love of reading came in spite of, rather than because of, English Literature.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb @missy    I do like it when the writer tells you what s/he’s going to do, then at the end of the episode (when you’ve completely forgotten about it) s/he saves the day by doing exactly that.   For some reason this makes some people very cross, but I love it.   I love the audacity of it.   And there’s a certain neatness to it.

I wish I could think of some examples (I know there are, just can’t bring them to mind).

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