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12 December 2023 at 12:03 #74978
Bloody hell. (Am I allowed to say that? Well I just did 🙂
Who has gone full Henson with this one! Reminds me of Labyrinth, though this goblin king is a lot less good-looking than David Bowie. An upbeat, cheerful, catchy song about – eating babies. Ironically I guess, it’s pretty much in the Christmas tradition – most fairy tales were quite remarkably gruesome, after all.
It’s certainly – different.
8 December 2023 at 09:05 #74849@translatorcircuit Your last sentence rings a bell. I should perhaps say that I’m absolutely not a gun lover, nor do I wish to raise the issue here, but in past decades when American sitcoms (which Mrs D had a regrettable tendency to watch) were replete with cute smartass kids delivering ‘clever’ one-liners to a laugh track, the only way I could stay in the room was to fantasise walking onto set holding a Thompson gun and emptying an entire 100-round drum magazine into the assembled cast. It made me feel so much better. 🙂
These days sitcoms seem to have been replaced by ‘reality’ shows as the nadir of television dreadfulness.
7 December 2023 at 03:40 #74835@oochillyo I’ve got that movie. It’s insane, but entertaining. Luc Besson on LSD 🙂 The ‘Pearls’ remind me strongly of the aliens in Avatar. Rihanna’s character ‘Bubble’ is entertaining (and sexy 🙂 Visually, it’s spectacular. Fun to watch.
Though, I think, it suffers compared with Besson’s earlier ‘Fifth Element’ (get that if you can, if you liked Valerian you’d love it). Sort of demonstrates that ‘more of everything’ is not always better. In fact I got Valerian because I’d watched and loved Fifth Element. It (5th El) has Bruce Willis who was excellent, Milla Jovovich absolutely fantastic as Leeloo Multipass, and Gary Oldman as the ultimate buttoned-down Bond villain Zorg. And all the myriad little details are nicely thought out. I liked the wannabe robber who has a picture of scenery on his hat to fool those little front-door peepholes.
It feels a little more coherent than Valerian but is just as much fun to watch. Probably my favourite sci-fi movie. ‘Alien’ impresses me because it’s so well-made and atmospheric (and scary as hell); Fifth Element I love because it’s so much fun.
6 December 2023 at 05:22 #74828@craig Thanks for your efforts on this site (I bunged a small donation towards the kitchen as a token appreciation)
30 November 2023 at 11:33 #74714<span class=”useratname”>@ps1l0v3y0u</span> Oh, and I forgot to mention Paul McGann. Excellent in The Night of the Doctor short. I’ve seen the movie and it didn’t feel like Doctor Who, it was an American cop show disguised as Who. He would have made a great Doctor, in proper episodes.
And of course the War Doctor, John Hurt. He too would have made a perfect Doctor – of course.
30 November 2023 at 11:23 #74713@ps1l0v3y0u I think you’ve summed up the Doctors pretty well. My favourite of NuWho would be Capaldi. But the others were good – Tennant maybe a bit too emotional. Smith started out too young but he aged into it (a bit like Roger Moore as James Bond).
Old Who, I only ever saw glimpses of Hartnell, Patrick Troughton who I liked very much, and Jon Pertwee who had style. I’ve recently gone back to Sylvester McCoy’s last few stories and I like him, and he had a definite chemistry with Ace. If only oldWho had had special effects even up to the level of Series 1 of NuWho… (and that goes for Blakes 7 too, though they didn’t have quite so many painfully naff aliens as Who)
29 November 2023 at 07:51 #74700@devilishrobby I just Googled and ‘steelbook’ is what it sounds like – simply a steel DVD case. Personally I’m perfectly happy with the usual polythene DVD cases, less likely to get scuffed (because their labels are slip-fitted paper under a clear plastic cover). Steelbook issues apparently typically have more ‘extras’. But I’d be a tad unhappy if the standard version was deliberately skimped on extras in order to big up the Steelbook. Actually, the idea of a steel DVD case sounds curiously old-fashioned and steampunk, to me 🙂
29 November 2023 at 04:34 #74699@winston Yes, I found the bit where they all turned against the Doctor hard to watch. The stewardess – who was initially suspicious of the Doctor – redeemed herself at the cost of her own life and – icing on the cake – nobody even knew her name. And, IIRC, most of the passengers didn’t seem to have learned anything from the experience.
The fact that we never find what ‘it’ was doesn’t bother me. I’m intrigued but the information isn’t essential to the plot.
29 November 2023 at 01:10 #74695@devilishrobby Often ‘bottle shows’ are among the best, if the writer and cast are good. I guess Moffat’s equivalent would be ‘Listen’, though it used several locations (so maybe it wasn’t quite a ‘bottle’ show) but the cast was only four people. Again, it had two truly hair-raising scenes, one with the silent bedspread monster and the other with the noises in the empty base at the end of time – and again, we never saw the monster.
28 November 2023 at 22:20 #74692@thereet Much as I’d love it to be, it doesn’t seem to be. I see @<span class=”useratname”>ps1l0v3y0u has already answered.</span>
If you’re searching for similar information in future, I can recommend tardis.fandom.com which has a full synopsis and cast list for every episode. And chakoteya.net has a full episode transcript (which helps a lot in identifying characters’ names).
(I have no connection with those sites other than using them all the time)
But people here will be happy to talk about episodes. Your random choice was fortunate, Midnight was (IMO) Russell T Davies best episode.
28 November 2023 at 22:05 #74691@craig Yes, one suggestion. Is it possible to make the list of ‘Recent Forum Posts’ on the homepage longer than 5, or maybe set it so it lists the 5 different forums most recently used? Currently, with a little bit of chitchat between two people on, say, On the Sofa, they all point to the same forum and a post someone made yesterday somewhere else gets swiftly buried.
Having fiddled with a bit of coding in the past, I’m aware ‘simple’ suggestions often aren’t simple at all, so please don’t bother if it gets complicated.
28 November 2023 at 12:26 #74681@janetteb I know just what you mean about your ‘handbag book’. I was using Moving Pictures in similar fashion, which is why it took me so long to get through it. In fact I’ve learned from experience that if I chauffeur Mrs D anywhere, especially if her very large family is involved, I make sure I’ve got a book handy in case of emergency. That way I can settle down in a spare corner while they talk family things at length.
I wish you success with your family watch-through. And I do hope RTD’s new episode is a success. I probably won’t get to see it for some time, until it comes out on DVD. But I can wait. 🙂
27 November 2023 at 00:52 #74662@janetteb I’ve just started (re-) reading Reaper Man (he says, blithely ignoring the excitement going on nearby over New Episodes!) I guessed you’ve finished it by now. I think it’s one of Pratchett’s most entertaining books (and of course it features a favourite character, Death). The Auditors of Reality remind me of management consultants. The sort that ‘advise’ making half the workforce redundant. I expect they invented kpi’s. In the Who universe they would be Daleks, I think.
23 November 2023 at 12:00 #74572@nerys Well, ‘Layer Cake’ finally arrived in the mail. I just watched it. Yes, I did have some trouble following the complicated plot, though that did help with giving the impression that things were spinning out of control of XXXX (Daniel Craig’s character). Interesting how they managed to never mention his name without that ever being obvious until the end. (I found Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels similarly confusing on a first watching, it got easier second time round when I could identify the cast a bit easier). 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 unexpected (but in hindsight quite justified and predictable) quarter.
But I think my favourite film in the British crime genre is still Trance, with its ongoing puzzle of who’s controlling who.
18 November 2023 at 03:05 #74558@ps1l0v3y0u I must admit that my memory of the episodes from Chibnall’s reign are a little hazy, having only watched them once so far. I think Spyfall struck me at the time as an improvement on previous eps, but I wouldn’t want to put it stronger than that without rewatching. I can understand your reservations about Noor Inayat Khan (or any other recent-historical figure). ‘Churchill’ always bothers me, though I suppose (like Hitler) he’s been so often portrayed in fiction that varying interpretations have lost some of their annoyance.
Asylum of the Daleks I absolutely loved. “You had a daughter.” “I know, I’ve read my file.” Ouch! The Daleks chanting ‘Doctor, save us!’ And of course Oswin, who was dazzling. I love it when Moffatt fools me, as he did with Oswin the Dalek. He put up clues all over the place – Oswin keeping out the Daleks with a plank and some nails, ‘where does she get the milk?’, a tiny part of my mind knew what was coming but I subconsciously didn’t want to believe it just because Oswin was such a vivacious character. And I say that as someone who frequently has problems with logistics, physical realism, call it what you will. I will say not many writers or actresses could have pulled that off.
Akhaten for example, I kept having problems – for example the space speeder – in a vacuum? And the planets all looked far too close to each other. Or were they all just little planetoids drifting in an asteroid field in an oxygen-rich atmosphere? I just couldn’t rationalise the environment.
Journey to the Centre of the Tardis was okay for me. Nightmare in Silver, so-so.
I thought Jenna Coleman fitted Clara perfectly, so we differ there. Pearl Mackie was good, though I preferred Clara. But the only nuWho companion (excluding Chibnall years) that I didn’t like was Donna. Too shouty and aggressive, and her first appearance was unfortunate – the Doctor had just lost Rose and Donna bursts in destroying the mood.
Apparently Bill is quite intelligent and observant, for example noticing the rug under the Tardis. Though she did take quite a long time to fully grasp the idea of the Tardis – I don’t blame her for that, anybody would have trouble, and it was an amusing sequence. The pictures of Susan and River were I suppose just a symptom of the Doctor feeling a little lonely. I was wondering why there wasn’t one of Jenny too, but then I guess he only met her for a few minutes.
I did like the way the end of the episode ‘set it up’ for the final moments of The Doctor Falls – again, that took me completely by surprise at that time, but of course Heather would do that, wouldn’t she.
17 November 2023 at 13:16 #74554Just re-watched The Pilot. I do like this episode, and better this time round. The first time, I was slightly (and unconsciously) biassed against Bill. Nothing personal, just that Clara was a hard act to follow and I was missing her.
Bill is quite a plain-looking girl, but her mother (in the photographs) is beautiful. That was a lovely Christmas present from the Doctor.
I rather like idea of The Doctor, man of mystery (even though we know the answer). And this is one of the better Tardis reveals (and of course Twelve’s Tardis is far and away the most glorious and impressive one of the entire batch).
Nardole is excellent comic relief. “Human. Human alert. Do you want me to repel her?”
I think Moffatt could rival Oscar Wilde for epigrams. “Hardly anything is evil, but most things are hungry. Hunger looks very like evil from the wrong end of the cutlery.”
It’s rather nice that the liquid menace pursuing them across time and space is so simply resolved. It just wanted to be friends.
A thoroughly enjoyable episode, and we still don’t know what is in the vault.
17 November 2023 at 13:07 #74553@ps1l0v3y0u Well I’m a Southern Railway fan primarily (I grew up in LSWR territory) but I think Gresley certainly had the best-looking of all modern locomotives. (It’s great to see that a P2 is being built btw). I acknowledge Churchard’s lead in e.g long-travel valves but (IMO) Churchward having made great advances, his successors were reluctant to change anything and were overtaken by other lines of development. But yes, as so often happens, Gresley’s was the name that stuck and others were eclipsed. This always happens, in the public imagination there’s only room for one name. Going further back Brunel gets all the publicity as a Victorian engineer and other engineers just as capable, like Robert Stephenson and Joseph Locke, get eclipsed.
By the way, when I said I know ‘quite a lot’ about early railways I wasn’t claiming to be any sort of expert, I was comparing myself to the average extent of knowledge. I certainly wouldn’t claim that my hobby could match a professional interest, a bit disconcerting to find that you had one. 🙂 Just that it gives me sufficient background to see how much gets left out of popular accounts.
Looking at Chibnall’s pre-Chibnall episodes (as it were) – 42, Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, Dinosaurs, Power of 3 – yes Power of 3 was undoubtedly the best, for sufficiently small values of ‘best’ 🙂 Stephen Berkoff was okay as the villain except that the ending was rather rushed. We didn’t get to see much of him. Reminded me of Solomon, a bit.
There were a couple of Chibnall-written episodes from Chibnall’s reign that are possibly equal/better than Power of 3 (at least in my recollection and I’ve only viewed most of them once) – Resolution, Spyfall, Fugitive of the Judoon (co-written), Eve of the Daleks (which I think is the best thing Chibnall has written).
As an aside, and just to prove you can’t believe everything you see on the Internet, I was googling ‘Chibnall Dr Who episodes’ to remind myself and this page https://guide.doctorwhonews.net/person.php?name=chrischibnall listed among Chibnall’s writing credits – wait for it – Asylum of the Daleks(!) Nooooooo! I had to go to Tardis.fandom.com to reassure myself that I wasn’t going bonkers, I *know* it was written by the Moff, it has the Moff’s fingerprints all over it, unmistakeably, it introduced Clara and I recall seeing Moff being interviewed about it. And it’s one of my favourite episodes.
15 November 2023 at 13:58 #74546@ps1l0v3y0u I deduce that you’re some sort of historian or history fan. 🙂 I’m not really, except in a few specific areas.
Take any subject, like, say, sailing ships, or the English Civil War, and what the average member of the public (including me) ‘knows’ probably amounts to about half a paragraph. Usually it boils down to just a few anecdotes. That’s inevitable. I mentioned the early history of railways because I do know quite a lot about that, and therefore it’s obvious to me just how much popular accounts are leaving out (which is most of the story). I don’t mind that so long as the result isn’t actively misleading, and really, from a general social history point of view, I guess it doesn’t matter much who made which improvements so long as somebody did. Doubtless most popular accounts of the Civil War are leaving out just as much but I wouldn’t know. I just have to hope the writers aren’t misrepresenting anything, because that is not acceptable.
I would apologise for introducing Arthur, except that in the context of ‘mythical British historical figures’, omitting Arthur is a bit like talking about ‘Scottish legendary monsters’ and forgetting Nessie. 🙂
I didn’t care for Dinosaurs on a Spaceship much either, I’d forgotten Chibnall wrote it, what a surprise. I should probably have thought of a better example of not clashing with history. The only character I really liked was Nefertiti. Riddell was obnoxious, which is why the last scene where Neffy had apparently volunteered to be Great White Hunter’s servant girl really peeved me.
Um, better example – The Unicorn and The Wasp. Apparently Agatha Christie really did disappear for a while with no explanation.
The Power of Three, since you mention it, was really good until the last few minutes. Loved the idea of the enigmatic cubes, studying us. (Echoes of the mice in the Hitchhiker series – projections in our dimension of pan-dimensional beings, and all the time that scientists were studying lab mice, the ‘mice’ were studying them. There’s nothing new in sci-fi. 🙂 BUT if the cubes were studying us for a year for some subtle reason, why the crudeness of just killing a third of the population? Why did it need a year of study to do that? Am I missing something?
15 November 2023 at 04:08 #74544@ps1l0v3y0u Well the classic mythical figure has to be King Arthur, I guess. Based on (presumably) some ancient chieftain. But the most mythologised-about has to be Cleopatra whose existence is very throughly documented. It’s fun to play with historical figures, but ideally it should dovetail in to known history and not do violence to it. So for example I was okay with Queen Nefertiti being on a spaceship and deciding not to return to Egypt (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) since apparently she disappeared from contemporary history quite unexpectedly (I read that somewhere, sorry if I got that wrong). I doubt that Who episode is ever going to confuse history. (What I wasn’t happy about was her going off with that misogynistic Great White Hunter ass Riddell, but that’s another issue).
You said “a historian also needs to think very carefully before they make something plausible or entertaining from whatever facts THEY have to hand.” Ditto for fiction writers!
History is, unavoidably, just a collection of ‘stories’ about historical figures and events. Most things in the real world are complicated, and telling a coherent narrative demands massive simplification. For just one example, I’ve read extensively about the early history of railways and the steam locomotive, and the popular historical account which tries to compress it into five minutes and five people has to leave out a vast host of details. This is inevitable if it’s going to be fitted into a general history course. You could say the same of any topic. So as soon as you start to make a story out of it, the question of what to leave out skews the story – even if the teller is unbiassed (and of course history is, notoriously, written by the victors).
But then modern stories, even totally fictional ones, can overlay and obscure the historical record. For example there is a persistent attack by American commentators on the character of George III (‘mad King George’). Reading his detailed Wikipedia page I get the impression that he was an enlightened King for his day and his relatively short periods of mental illness late in his long reign do not define him. And how many Netflix watchers now think Cleopatra VII Philopator was black? (I hope that idea doesn’t stick. Really, anyone deliberately putting counterfactual information in a self-styled ‘documentary’ should never be allowed to make anything for television ever again).
14 November 2023 at 06:01 #74534<span class=”useratname”>@ps1l0v3y0u</span> Hi, I can’t really comment on most of that since I’m essentially a nuWho fan. I have watched the last few of Seven and Ace’s episodes on DVD, and I know all the old Doctors, but that’s about it.
I’m okay with such concepts as travelling to ‘the end of Time’, but I just find that – dramatically – threats of universal destruction are overwhelming and tend to overshadow the stories of the characters.
Robin Hood’s authenticity never worried me at all, I just accept him as a mythical figure. Like King Arthur. (I had to Google ‘Robert Hode’, it seems there are varying candidates for the original of Robin Hood). So that aspect of Robot of Sherwood caused me no qualms at all. I was mainly concerned with the impossible ballistics of shooting the spaceship with a golden arrow, and how could an arrow stuck in the hull be processed quickly enough to boost the engines? Never mind that gold is a remarkably unreactive metal so unlikely to be a usable power source.
I do agree that – *if* the conflicting dates of ‘Robin’s origin were common knowledge – then the Tardis would be an excellent solution. The only drawback (from my point of view) is that almost nobody in the audience is aware of the anomaly, so it would be a solution to an unknown problem.
13 November 2023 at 07:37 #74527@janetteb It’s probably a symptom of my disinterest that I can hardly remember what the overall plot of the Flux series was. Or maybe it was just quite obscure at the time. The Flux eating the universe actually reminded me of episodes in that weird series Lexx where robotic heads were eating everything and changing it into more robotic heads, sort of like cybermen on steroids.
I dimly remember Kate, I seem to recall she was quite a good character. (Resorts to tardis.fandom.com where would we be without it?) Oh, you were talking about ‘The Power of the Doctor.’ Kate Stewart. I was thinking of someone else, I thought you were talking about The Flux.
Um, as I recall, I found The Power of the Doctor ‘not too bad’ though that’s more a reflection on what came before (viz. the Flux series). Just browsing tardis.fandom.com to try and figure which later companion I’m thinking of. Nope, can’t do it. I’m going to have to re-watch the series at some point, I guess, I seem to recall some incidental characters who deserved better treatment. But it’s hard to write a coherent series when the apocalypse meter is off the dial all the time. Sometimes, the most effective episodes are the ‘small’ ones where the peril is finite and only a few people are at risk. I’m thinking of ones like The Girl Who Waited or The Doctor’s Wife or World Enough and Time or Face the Raven, for example. Or even Eve of the Daleks, the best episode of Chibnall’s tenure IMO.
Well, on to the first of Bill Potts’s episodes, The Pilot.
12 November 2023 at 14:06 #74525@ps1l0v3y0u I agree with most of what you say. And specifically re Kill the Moon/Forest of the Night. Robot of Sherwood had big problems with the golden arrow (as far as I’m concerned) but it was light-hearted enough I could overlook that.
However I think any show has to be internally self-consistent, and that has to come from the showrunner and writers. Directors and actors can detract from that, or possibly even improve it though I don’t know if that has ever happened. (I’d love to know if a regular character has ever said ‘No I wouldn’t do that, three episodes ago I did the exact opposite’ and had their point taken up.)
Sci fi of the Doctor Who flavour has to be about characters, since ‘ideas’ are hard to show on screen, usually boring, and if of galactic-sized phenomena (e.g. Independence Day) they require hugely expensive special effects for which no Who before the 2020’s had the budget, so either looked impossibly lame or just couldn’t be done. And as Independence Day and Chibnall’s Flux series demonstrated, FX are no substitute for a good strong coherent plot. So Who had to be very much character-driven.
And I also agree that, with Companions, more is less. Take for example Journey’s End, where the Doctor and half-a-dozen favourite Companions were playing at flying the Tardis towing the Earth back into place – that was so contrived and every-companion-gets-a-line it makes me cringe. The Tardis can be flown solo ffs, why did it need a committee? Amy and Rory were just manageable (with Rory taking a definitely secondary role), Chibnall’s menage was just too many and I agree it would have been much better with just Yaz (and I wouldn’t care if every lesbian refugee from Xena and Gabrielle had jumped on the fanfic wagon 🙂 Oh, and ‘Fam’? Please. Moffat wrote the Doctor as a humanoid alien with slightly odd quirks and a lack of comprehension of accepted human behaviour, Chibnall’s Doctor was more like a hearty and unbearable Girl Guide leader.
12 November 2023 at 13:27 #74524@janetteb There’s no particular reason why you might amend your view of the Hogfather TV adaptation when you read the book, first acquaintance is a powerful influence. 🙂 Hogfather is one of his best books, by the way.
I’m up to ‘Moving Pictures’, one behind you with Reaper Man. Reaper Man is a good one, IIRC. Are you reading them in any particular order? I have all his books in order in my bookshelf and tend to read them in order of publication, though it’s really not necessary. As far as I can tell, all his books are in chronological order, he never (?) went backward in time, though he did jump from one place and set of characters to another, and some characters overlapped into different threads. Of course various fans have published ‘reading order’ guides, I found a useful one for information (even though I don’t follow it) was Kryzsztof Kietzman’s (see if this link works) https://d4804za1f1gw.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2019/07/24165448/Discworld-Reading-Order.jpg
I liked Doug Adams’ ruler of the universe, too. And he was fond of cats, which is a plus for me. One of the strands of Doug Adams humour was looking at things from a skewed point of view, such as ‘Much of the unhappiness in the universe was concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” (I’ve misquoted him, I’m sure). While Terry Pratchett takes common human tropes and deftly adjusts them to suit the quirks of his characters, such as when Angua the werewolf had gone missing, “Her bed hadn’t been slept in. Neither had her basket.” That is the only time he mentions her basket, but *of course* a werewolf would need one from time to time. And Death of course is a fertile source of those little quirks.
12 November 2023 at 08:41 #74521@nerys I would say (from memory) that the TV series quite closely followed the book. As I would expect, since Neil Gaiman was apparently closely involved in the TV production. (I think in general it does make a difference to ones viewpoint which version one saw first, since the first-seen tends to establish itself in ones brain as the yardstick by which other versions are judged. I couldn’t avoid that, for instance, when reading the Moff’s novelisation of The Day of the Doctor, the TV version kept interrupting. I must read it again). That said, I think I can recommend the TV version of Neverwhere if you get the chance.
@oochillyo @janetteb I definitely think that stories have to follow their own internal logic. And that credibility depends partly on our own background and viewpoint – I’m an engineer for example. I (too often) quote Kill the Moon as an example – I have no problem at all with the Tardis (which violates every law of physics) materialising inside the hold of the Space Shuttle – *but* the Space Shuttle (which is a glider) gliding to a landing on the airless Moon makes me snort with disgust, in reality it would just make a new crater. The Tardis and the sonic screwdriver I accept because they’re Time Lord technology (hence equivalent to ‘magic’), and thus fully explained within the internal logic of the show. The Space Shuttle – isn’t.
Messing with history also meets with a mixed reaction from me, I get annoyed that Tesla gets credited with the development of AC electricity supply when the major credit should go to George Westinghouse. Non-engineers would probably be baffled by that. 🙂 But Martha prompting Shakespear with some of his best lines – I love that.
Other people have their own boundaries of what they’ll accept, and those boundaries are often irregular or even fractal.
janetteb, I trust you’re enjoying Sir Pterry, I have all of his books and I’m slowly re-reading my way through them. They are explicitly magical, the Discworld exists in a strong magical field and (so far as I can tell) the laws of Discworld ‘physics’ are quite consistent. It’s notable that Sir Pterry incorporates every spook and monster ever invented by man in his books sooner or later. And under the guise of magic and fantasy, he manages to impart a strong humanist (is that the right word?) feeling, without ever sounding preachy. And his characters are masterfully defined. (My favourite characters – Vetinari, Angua the werewolf, the Librarian, and of course Death).
Incidentally, going back to the book vs film question, I don’t think Terry Pratchett’s work translates quite so well to film. Even though I do like the TV movie of Hogfather. Partly because his writing style is just so good, so amusing, so wryly funny, and much of that cannot be translated to a visual medium. And of course portraying orang utans or talking dogs or Death (an anthropomorphic personification) on screen is always going to be difficult.
I find that Sir Pterry’s books often remind me of Doug Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’ series. Just something about the fantastic flavour of both. It’s interesting because I would unhestitatingly class Hitchhiker as ‘sci-fi’ and Discworld as ‘fantasy’ but they are remarkably close in tone, or at least they seem so to me. I used to think there was a sharp line there but I no longer do.
11 November 2023 at 10:41 #74514@nerys In related news, I’ve almost finished reading Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’ (having watched the DVD series with Capaldi as the Angel Islington a short while back). I find Gaiman’s writing style rather plain, which is interesting as his scenarios are truly fantastic (they are fantasy after all). But quite absorbing. If he wasn’t so busy with other projects, I think he would have made an excellent showrunner for Dr Who.
11 November 2023 at 10:34 #74513@nerys The DVD of Layer Cake hasn’t arrived in the mail yet. Um, it certainly should have done, thanks for the reminder, I must chase it up. I’ll probably comment on it when it finally arrives (whenever that is).
8 November 2023 at 06:03 #74502@devilishrobby Oh yes, the ‘Recent forum posts’ are all this bloody Finnegan pest. @craig, I think your attention is required, if you would be so kind? Along with banning this ‘Monica Williams’
If it helps I’ll volunteer to look at every forum on this site and list all those polluted by this ‘Finnegan’ for your convenience, let me know. He seems to be spamming links to online stores for football jerseys. If only I was a hacker I’d bring their sites down.
7 November 2023 at 10:46 #74483I got eight messages from Monica Williams. Eight!
Did you get a message from her too?
I’m devastated, I thought it must be my magnetic personality. (sob)
2 November 2023 at 06:30 #74466@janetteb And oh yes, the minor characters are all well written. There could almost be a spinoff, there. The dramas of an alien ‘refugee’ society in modern London. (I had a sudden flashback to Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’). Not sure quite how well I’d like it though. I tend to prefer series that have just a couple of main characters, ensemble casts tend to dilute the drama for me.
Me has become quite ruthless by now. I would have expected to see more lines on her face, but presumably the Mire medicine kit also functions as an anti-ageing treatment.
2 November 2023 at 06:18 #74465Hi @janetteb, thanks for your kind comment.
Apparently Anah was not killed, she was being kept in stasis. I wasn’t sure if she was injured, but, checking the transcript from Chrissie’s site, it appears not.
How much of the Street was a party to Me’s deception I don’t know, but I would think very few. It seems from witnesses that Rigsy was caught standing over Anah’s ‘unconscious’ body, so presumably she was part of the scheme – probably under threat from Me. Her daughter Anahson certainly believed she was dead. It would have taken a strong threat to make Anah allow her daughter to think that. But anyway the Doctor released her from stasis unharmed.
So I’d guess just Me, Anah and probably Rump were involved. Rump did seem to be frank enough in explaining the Shade and the chronolock to Clara, no reason why he should have mentioned that the chronolock was only transferable once. In fact nobody intended Clara to be in danger, she brought that on herself by being a bit too clever. But admirably courageous.
Sarah Dollard (according to Tardis.fandom.com) also wrote Thin Ice, which was the second(?) one with Bill Potts as companion.
And yes, I think I detect the Moff’s prints all over Face the Raven – I may be doing Sarah Dollard an injustice there, but some of the lines are what I’d call ‘pure Moff’.
2 November 2023 at 00:41 #74463Hi @jmrs-23 I’m not sure what you mean by ‘screen accurate’ – do you mean ‘exactly as shown on screen’?
I take it you’re looking for a screenshot that shows the cigarette case in close-up.
You may be able to access the episode on some streaming service, I don’t know but some the others here can probably give a better pointer to that.
Or you could try tardis.fandom.com which has a page for each episode. According to these pages, the cigarette case features when the Doc offers some professor a jelly baby:
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Mummy_on_the_Orient_Express_(TV_story)
and https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Jelly_babyI found the scene at 12:50 into the episode on the DVD. I took some screengrabs with VLC, I stuck them here:
They’re not very detailed, I tried enlarging one that showed the exterior of the case. There appears to be some sort of ornate design on it.
I don’t know if any publicity photos exist that show the case any better.
Good luck with the present!
HTH
26 October 2023 at 09:52 #74448@nerys I always tend to mix up those titles, because surely ‘Hell Bent’ should apply to the Doctor in his own personalised hell – the confession dial? And surely the chance to rescue Clara could be termed ‘heaven sent’? But that’s an aside.
I just find Heaven Sent a little too dark. It starts off well – “My day can’t get any worse. Let’s see what we can do about yours.” But there aren’t many opportunities for the Doctor to show his abilities, or any sign of his adversaries. I used to say I like dark. But that was mostly in reaction to such as Roger Moore James Bond, or Man from Uncle, or later Avengers, that got a bit too lightweight.
I actually liked that Hell Bent was lighter in tone – I was quite emotional enough at losing Clara, so the bittersweet tone of the diner scenes were just fine with me. Emotional death scenes of favourite characters just don’t appeal to me, they tend to get mawkish. Clara’s death in Face the Raven was well done, just long enough to do it justice without overdoing it, and the abandoned Tardis with murals by Rigsy was beautiful and sad.
As you say, it’s subjective, and a matter of personal taste.
I must try Layer Cake, its Wikipedia entry makes it sound a bit like Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels (oh, it had the same director, what a surprise). Talking of British crime dramas, did you ever see Trance, the 2013 movie with Rosario Dawson and James McAvoy, directed by Danny Boyle? Had some interesting twists in it.
Anyway, I’ve just picked up a 2nd-hand DVD of Layer Cake, so I’ll see how it goes.
Mrs D, thanks for asking, is apparently perfectly okay. Except she’s a little bit afraid to drive her car here now, also she’s lost her car keys (I wonder if that’s subconsciously deliberate). Wherever she’s lost ’em, I’ve searched the house and I can’t find them. I never realised how many drawers and cupboards we have! No matter, I have a spare set and I’ll cajole her into driving.
21 October 2023 at 12:16 #74446Well, I just watched Face the Raven, Heaven Sent and Hell Bent. Face the Raven, I just stuck some comments in that forum.
Heaven Sent, I don’t really enjoy watching. It’s a tour de force, but it isn’t really fun.
Hell Bent, on the other hand, is sheer delight from start to end. The dialogue is just so right, so perfectly judged, economical but full of meaning – sometimes several layers of meaning. And visually glorious, particularly the desert scenes on Gallifrey. I see I wrote several long descriptions previously in the Hell Bent forum, so I won’t repeat them. But I think this episode is (in my opinion) the best in all of NuWho.
20 October 2023 at 12:20 #74445Me again (no, not Ashildr/Me, Dentarthurdent ‘me’) having just watched Face the Raven again. A very impressive episode. Herewith random notes –
The intro scene in the Tardis just perfectly shows the easy relationship that has developed between Clara and the Doc. Nicely acted.
Clara seems to be quite expert at using the Tardis technology. After her powerful performance subverting Bonnie in The Zygon Inversion, she is a force to be reckoned with. And she seems to be enjoying danger altogether too much, dangling out of the Tardis. (As Rigsy noticed). This is a sure sign she’s in for trouble ahead.
Is this the first mention in Who of ‘Retcon’?
I do like the extrapolation of the Somebody Else’s Problem field into hiding the trap street.
And I love the surrealism of the meeting of Clara and Ashildr/Me, who can’t remember Clara but re-reads her diary entries of their first meeting. “I enjoyed our conversations. I’ve read them many times.” The Moff likes little quirks like this, and they’re always entertaining. Nobody does it better. Actually, the episode is written by Sarah Dollard. She’s picked up on some of the Moff’s tricks extremely well, I have to say.
There is an awful lot of set-up in this episode, from trap streets to Lurkworms that generate the telepathic visual field (which I call Somebody-Else’s-Problem after Doug Adams who was, I think, the first to describe it), to the Raven.
Me can be quite ruthless in maintaining the stability of her street.
There’s a lot I would have said was typical Moff, Sarah Dollard echoes him extremely well – CLARA: I’m good cop, you’re bad cop. DOCTOR: Can I not be the good cop? CLARA: Doctor, we’ve discussed this. Your face.
Clara has this ingenious idea of taking the curse off Rigsy, since she has Mayor Me’s personal guarantee of safety. Is this being a bit too clever of Clara?
So, who did kill Anah?
Anahson is yet another complication, being a psychic girl disguised as a non-psychic boy. I’d almost say, too many complications, but I can’t really see how the episode would work without them.
And Anahson ‘sees’ that the whole affair with Rigsy was mystery bait to bring the Doctor.
And it seems Anah is only in stasis, and doesn’t the control panel on the stasis pod look remarkably TimeLordish? And it promptly clamps a teleport device on the Doctor.
And now the final twist, and the ultimate irony, that the Chronolock is only transferable once and becomes non-cancellable on transfer – which is to say, Me could cancel the hit on Rigsy but not on Clara.
This is almost as complicated as Blink.
The Doctor has never been more frightening than when he threatens eternal vengeance on Me if she can’t save Clara. And Clara is magnificent in that scene where she orders the Doctor not to take revenge.
So to sum up, the whole scenario was set up by Me, under blackmail from some unknown entities, to attract and entrap the Doctor. Clara was just entirely accidental collateral damage.
The final glimpse of Rigsy decorating the abandoned Tardis was very moving.While the plotline was linear and easy to follow, there were so many special details – it could have collapsed into a confusing mess, especially with the mystery element. Full credit to the writer that it remained convincing and gripping from start to finish.
20 October 2023 at 09:48 #74444Well, I just re-watched it in sequence, and – contra what I said 3 years ago – I liked it much better this time. Still not one of my favourites, but it’s not the clunker of the series any more. Which means Season 9 now contains no clunkers, and is now officially The Best Season (in my estimation). I found it easier to follow, and the conclusion – the Doctor failed and Morpheus is still a menace – is not the downer I thought it was. The Doctor can’t win ’em all (as became very evident next episode…)
I’ve just watched all of Sherlock, written by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, and Gatiss has jumped in my estimation. (I also liked him as Mycroft). Which may be part of the reason I now find Sleep No More more interesting than previously – I can be subject to prejudice 🙂 I share the appreciation of Gatiss with some of the commenters just above. What a pity he couldn’t have taken over as showrunner.
17 October 2023 at 11:19 #74441@janetteb Small islands, like many remote communities, develop their own informal and even ‘quaint’ ways. Pubs in New Zealand country districts used to be known for having a ‘back door’ to the bar for use after official closing time, for example. (And I’m sure the same applied in most countries). Rising sea levels would not be good for Raro, though not as totally disastrous as for many e.g. low atolls.
On another, closer to Doctor Who tack, I finished watching ‘Sherlock’ in Raro. I noted a certain similarity between Sherlock and Capaldi’s Doctor, in that they both were slightly distant from normal human instincts and had to be prompted for the correct response to situations. (I believe autistic people are sometimes like that). e.g. Clara’s ‘cards’ that she made up for the Doctor – “I’m sorry for the loss of your friend/significant other/pet”. Moffat writes this sort of thing extremely well, I think.
Back here, I just watched ‘Sleep No More’ and I found I liked it better this time round. Maybe I could follow the events slightly better on repeat – the ‘found footage’ format can sometimes be a bit confusing. Written by Mark Gatiss, I see, and he’s risen a bit in my estimation after watching the Sherlock series (which he wrote roughly 50/50 with Moffat). Though ‘trapped in a base’ aren’t my favourite variant of the genre (Under The Lake, Cold War, Oxygen, etc, etc) but Sleep No More holds up under repeat viewing and maybe even improves slightly. I think it maybe suffers slightly by comparison with its brilliant neighbouring episodes.
16 October 2023 at 05:24 #74438@janetteb @blenkinsopthebrave That explains things. I was a bit puzzled how to respond for a while.
Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done that. I’ve done it, and much worse. 🙂
I promise I’m not blenkinsopthebrave 🙂
13 October 2023 at 11:28 #74430@janetteb Thanks. We did enjoy our holiday. That wasn’t Mrs D’s biggest drama – three days after the start of our holiday she drove her little hire car into a power pole, breaking it into three pieces. Mrs D got away with a slight graze on her neck (seat belt) and a night in the hospital under observation. The poor little car ended up on its side and got written off. The rental company were remarkably tolerant, they promptly found us a replacement car but they did suggest that Mrs D not drive it, at least until the police had completed their inquiries. So instead of wandering on my bike I spent much of it chauffeuring Mrs D around to visit rellies. I did decide this wasn’t going to spoil our holiday, and it didn’t. All Mrs D remembers is, she pulled off the road to turn round and next thing, she was on her side. This would be consistent with having bumped her head, and lost a few seconds of memory. As to why she hit the pole, we don’t know – best suggestion I’ve heard is that she hit the accelerator by mistake – this can be very disconcerting. Later on the police came to take a statement, they were pleasant enough, and one of them was Mrs D’s nephew. (Not unusual in a small island with big inter-related families). Since I paid for the power pole and the rental company claimed their insurance, they didn’t think things would go any farther.
@winston Raro has a pretty good climate – just inside the tropics I think. Never gets very cold, and being a small island, never gets shatteringly I’m-going-to-die hot. Lovely place for a holiday, bit small to live there (though it suits some). I did live there for two years in the 80’s, and when I got back to New Zealand the first thing I wanted to do was drive more than 22 miles before ending up back where I started from. Many things were – different. You have to learn to relax, trying to keep to a timetable will drive you crazy. (“Plenty time” – Mrs D). Things rust (salt air) that wouldn’t rust in a normal mainland house. Beer would disappear but your camera was perfectly safe. Among the islanders it’s quite normal, if calling on a friend/relative, to let yourself in, help yourself to a beer and wait for them to turn up. Once, on Aitutaki (another island), I dropped my chequebook on the road. Three days later it was returned to me in Raro – somebody had found it and handed it to the pilot of the daily plane. In pre-electronic days, the local pub kept a blank chequebook behind the bar, and you could borrow it, write a cheque and they’d cash it for you. Once, a bike pulled up outside my office with a couple of the barmaids from the pub, they handed me a cheque “Is this yours?” “Looks like it” “You forgot to sign it”. Only in Raro…
But I expect many small islands end up with a similar culture.
9 October 2023 at 06:48 #74427Hi all. Is this thing on? I’m sitting on the porch of our unit (only place I can get a Wifi signal) on a rainy day in Rarotonga, looking at the waves on the reef. But it’s not cold.
This really is a different world. When we arrived (at 3a.m.) our pre-booked car was waiting for us in the airport car park, with our name on it and the key under the mat as usual.
Most food is about double the New Zealand price but my favourite Jelly Tip icecreams – and only them – are for no discernible reason, half the NZ price. Not complaining.Had an experience with phones that I’m sure the late great Douglas Adams, with his appreciation of technological Catch-22’s, would have appreciated. I bought a Vodafone (Cook Islands) SIM and stuck it in Mrs D’s Vodafone NZ phone – locked. Got on Vodafone NZ’s page and went to unlock it, there’s a $30 fee before they’ll email me the unlock code, OK, try to pay by Visa, it takes me to my bank’s page which says ‘We have texted a code to your phone, please enter it on this page to proceed with payment.’ And of course my phone’s NZ SIM doesn’t work here so I’ll never get the text so I can’t pay Vodafone to unlock Mrs D’s phone… Luckily my own phone is older so unlocking is free so I stuck the SIM in that instead.
Never mind. Mrs D is currently in bed recovering – we called on her cousins two days ago in the afternoon and a party developed, as they do. (One lives here, one in Sydney, one in London, so it may be years before she sees them again). Eating drinking and talking until 3a.m. Anyway yesterday all the food and red wine took their revenge and she was in a very sad state, as happens when oldies party like a teenager. So I persuaded her to let me take her up to the hospital where they did some tests, diagnosed alcohol/food poisoning and nothing more serious (such as medication reactions), gave her some pills for nausea and diarrhoea, and sent us home. I made a point of asking if there was anything to pay but because she was over 60, or could be considered a local resident, or something like that there was no charge. As a visitor she should have paid $5 for the tests, $10 for consultation, $5 for the prescription. Triple if alcohol was involved (which it certainly was in her case but they overlooked that).
4 October 2023 at 10:20 #74426Hi @winston I initially thought you were saying you’d watch just this one and the last one – in which case I was going to say, don’t bother with this, there are better eps. But that’s not actually what you said.
Just contemplating JW’s eps (and finding myself in the unusual position of actually recommending some of them!) I’d suggest It Takes You Away, Resolution, Spyfall (2 eps), Fugitive of the Judoon, not sure about any of the Flux storyline but if I had to choose one I’d do Village of the Angels, Eve of the Daleks which was actually good, and The Power of the Doctor. And there are at least an equal number that don’t actually make me cringe 🙂
I must re-watch some of them, which I will do when I get up to them, at the moment I’m stalled just before Sleep No More (after the dynamite Zygon two-parter) then of course the triple that ended Clara’s story. Then Bill.
However Who is in stasis for me right now as I’m in the middle of 3 weeks holiday in Rarotonga with a dodgy Internet connection. I did bring with me all of ‘Sherlock’ and I’m appreciating Gatiss and Moffat’s way with words. Mycroft: “Sorry, I’ve never been very good with them.” Sherlock: “Babies?” Mycroft: “Humans.”
Normal transmission will be resumed in about a week’s time 🙂
15 September 2023 at 14:47 #74408@winston @janetteb Yes, I’m more tolerant of anomalies if I like the characters or the story. I’m much more likely to notice errors if I’m not just a little emotionally invested in the fate of the characters. (And at worst I find myself nit-picking the plot as a sort of revenge on the bad writing/acting). Kill the Moon was an exception to that where I liked the Doctor, liked Clara, didn’t hate anyone, I have no objection to them having a fight if it was well-motivated (people do), except that the Doc buggering off and leaving Clara and classroom pest to their fate was totally out of character – BUT there was so much impossibility in it from the very start it was impossible to ignore. Enough of that.
Just watched the fifth episode of Sherlock – ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’ – and I suspect I could drive a truck through the holes in the plot (probably could through Doyle’s original too) – but I don’t care. The story is so diverting and gripping. Also, really very scary in places.
Janetteb, I’m a little bit less worried by breaking of the canon (retconning Gallifrey for example) but the Flux season was a confusing jumbled mess. Although I *still* haven’t really accepted JW as the Doctor. But the after-Flux specials (of which there are 3) – Eve of the Daleks was actually quite good and worth your watch – by far the best of the Chibbers’ episodes. Legend of the Sea Devils was middling, about as good as Curse of the Black Spot (let no-one say I don’t know how to damn with faint praise 🙂 , The Power of the Doctor was quite passable. Though I can’t for the life of me remember what it was about.
My ringtone is ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ – the unforgettable rendition by the legendary Portsmouth Sinfonia. I think it was their best work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpJ6anurfuw
13 September 2023 at 07:16 #74399@janetteb I think you sum it up quite well. I notice Terry Pratchett is at some pains (on occasion, in his Discworld novels) to establish and comply with the peculiar laws of physics in a ‘strong magical field.’
The giant stompy robot bothers me a bit too. As does the dinosaur in the Thames, you can only carry the ‘somebody else’s problem’ concept so far. And what about the starship Titanic crashing on London? – I suppose that was an alternate reality.
But yes, fiddling with established history does worry me quite a bit too. I think ‘Vincent’ fitted in quite well, no cover-ups needed. Not too worried about Robin Hood because he was largely legendary (i.e. mythical), ditto various interpretations of King Arthur and Merlin. I do prefer it, though, when TV writers make the effort to fit in to history, or at least ‘hide their traces’ (or as Captain Jack would put it, the ‘self-cleaning con.’) One I liked was when ‘Hercules’ (the TV series that was made here) had just defeated Julius Caesar’s (unrecorded) invasion of Ireland, and Caesar’s faithful and presumably incorruptible scribe remarked that it was Caesar’s only defeat – ‘Caesar does not have defeats’ as the scribe disappeared overboard with a splash. So that’s why history doesn’t mention it – neat.
I’m trying to recall if there are any similar instances in Doctor Who of covering up. There was the Christmas Invasion which presumably was hushed up by the authorities. As was the attempted Dalek invasion in Victory of the Daleks (easier to do in wartime). Or, recent case in point, the Zygons – did UNIT just persuade all eyewitnesses it was ‘crisis actors’ or ‘performance art’ or Halloween? Then there were the Monks, but Moffat explicitly dealt with that – “we thought they were just like filming something here or something?” Really, Moff is very good at tidying up. The Silents of course are the embodiment of self-cleaning monsters. Oh, and of course that priceless exchange from Day of the Doctor on Osgood’s first appearance – “What’s our cover story for this?” “Er, Derren Brown.” “Again?” “Oh, we’ve sent him flowers.”
Which leads me to wonder if there are any real events in real history that no-one ever got to hear about. There probably are but of course by definition we’ll never know.
12 September 2023 at 13:06 #74397@winston Well the parachuting from a jet didn’t bother me too much, it’s only a moderate improbability. I can also gloss over the fact that Bonnie sees the Doctor’s plane on radar over Belgium and gets to the coast on her little bike in time to shoot it down. (By contrast everything – and I mean every detail of the plot – in KTM was way over the max on impossibility. You’re a much more tolerant viewer than I am 🙂
I’m trying to work out what things I will readily accept and which ones will make my subconscious reflexively go “No, wait!” and bring my ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ to a crashing halt. After all there has to be some coherent rules or causality in order to follow the story. I think you gave a clue in “the Doctor can do anything, even fly.” Well he can with the help of Time Lord tech. And that’s probably it – in my conceptual Who universe, ordinary terrestrial matter behaves according to the laws of physics. Space Shuttles can’t land with no air, I can’t telephone back to last week or use my phone to teleport me. (Unless it’s been magicked by the sonic screwdriver). However alien or future human tech can do ‘supernatural’ things and it doesn’t worry me.
12 September 2023 at 10:57 #74396@janetteb @winston I also like the stories where ‘everyone lives’. As long as it’s not too predictable. For all the good characters, at least, I don’t much care about the villains. (Except Missy. Extraordinary writing by Moff and charisma by Michelle Gomez that could make everyone love a ruthless megalomaniac).
Of course this always raises a problem of how to get rid of time-expired Companions in suitably dramatic but non-terminal ways. Which has been managed with – varying degrees of success 😉
As to Osgood, is she really dead if a clone (if it is the clone) survives with her personality? One could argue that the dead Osgood would know, but of course the thing about being dead (unless one believes in life-after-death) is that one doesn’t know. This is getting distinctly metaphysical.
10 September 2023 at 13:07 #74392Well I finally got round to the Zygon Invasion/Inversion. Second half of the double ep benefited noticeably from the Moff’s contribution, I think. He’s really good when he starts getting psychologically complicated, like having realClara linked to Bonnie’s mind. The Doctor’s antiwar speech in the Black Archive is powerful (again). I liked the reveal that he’s had to mindwipe Kate 15 times over the Osgood boxes – busy fellow, isn’t he?
I thought Bonnie’s transformation into Osgood was a bit of a stretch, but the writing helped to make it credible so far as it could – “The same thing that happened to you. I let Clara Oswald get inside my head. Trust me. She doesn’t leave.”
Is the Doctor’s first name really Basil? Never, remember Rule 1.
Parachuting out of a jet airliner is one of those things you cannot physically do. It was possible for airliners equipped with ventral airstairs like the BAC 1-11 or the Boeing 727 (as in D B Cooper’s famous attempt) but almost certainly not from a more recent airliner with only side doors. But I don’t mind glossing over that for the sake of the story. Possibly the President’s plane comes equipped with jettisonable doors and parachutes.
(Incidentally, I also just watched A Scandal in Belgravia, to my mind the best of the Sherlock episodes. More of Moff’s brilliance.)
10 September 2023 at 12:31 #74391@rule1 Yes, I agree, Osgood x 2 is a symbol of the peace. Bonnie taking the dead Osgood’s place is actually at the end of The Zygon Inversion.
My thoughts of ~18 months ago are still pretty much unchanged after a repeat viewing. Clara was captured in the little boy’s flat (as was made explicit at the end of ‘Zygon Inversion’).
I thought the second ep of the two-parter was noticeably better, it had more of the Moff’s sparkle to it.
25 August 2023 at 15:02 #74383@winston @janetteb I’m afraid the problem is us, all of us. Just too many damn humans. We breed like lemmings, the only difference is, we ought to know better. And lemmings can only devastate a small area, humans being much bigger and more powerful and cleverer can devastate the whole planet.
The answer would be simple, if every couple just had one child the earth’s population would halve in thirty years or so. Just like that. Everything would become much more sustainable. The biggest problem would be persuading everyone to co-operate (and not seek a selfish advantage by outbreeding their neighbours). The next biggest problem would be that national economies only seem to work when they’re expanding, as soon as they cease doing that they have the dreaded ‘depression.’ (I tend to laugh when anyone claims Economics is a ‘science’, if it is they’re not very good at it. Like a doctor who can tell you in exhaustive detail what’s wrong with you but can’t offer any cure. Possibly because humans are involved. Compared with that, nuclear physics and rocket science must be simple.)
Enough gloom. Winston, I do hope the fires stay away from your daughter’s location too.
Janetteb, it’s remarkable how much wood there is in even a small tree. I cut down a couple of very small long-dead trees in the hedge along our fence-line, these were just 4″ trunks, but got a good trailer load of fire wood and kindling. A while back I had a big wattle cut down, it shaded our lawn, but unfortunately if it had ever blown over it would have flattened a neighbours’ house or significantly damaged ours. About a two-foot thick trunk at ground level. The tree cutters just left the branches on our lawn as requested and I spent a couple of days cutting them up with my electric chainsaw and sold half a dozen trailer loads of wood. I’m sad about the tree but it’s a relief to no longer get worried when strong winds are forecast.
21 August 2023 at 14:54 #74377So, I just watched the Girl Who Died / Woman Who Lived duo, and stuck my impressions in their respective forums (fora?) that haven’t seen any activity in, like, six years. Actually, quite a good pair of episodes. The excellent Zygon two-parter next.
In fact, with the Magicians Apprentice pair, Under the Lake pair, Ashildr pair, Zygon pair, and winding up with the awesome** Raven / Heaven Sent / Hell Bent three-parter, this has to be the best season ever. Only one weak episode, Sleep No More. And the DVD box set comes with the preceding Christmas special Last Christmas and the following one, Husbands of River Song.
(**When I say ‘awesome’ I really mean it, dammit. Not ‘ossum’ in the devalued sense of ‘quite nice’.)
21 August 2023 at 14:34 #74376This starts with a rather hilarious hold-up that goes off the rails because the Doctor bumbles into it. This is a Clara-lite episode so the human interaction is between the Doctor and Ashildr, now known as Me.
The encounter in the hold-up was so typical of the Doctor, I was sure this episode was written by Jamie Mathieson and Stephen Moffat, like the previous one, but no it was Catherine Tregenna (whoever she is). And the melancholy note struck at the end of the previous episode continues as Me explains that she can barely remember most of her life, and begs the Doctor to take her with him.
I liked the bit of detail that Ashildr boasts that, at Agincourt, she got so close to the enemy, she penetrated armour with her arrows. A historical fact confirmed for me by Tod Cutler’s experiments with arrows and armour on his Youtube channel.
Interesting that, since Ashildr has a bit of alien in her and has travelled through time ‘the long way’, we (or at least I) unconsciously assume she knows much more than ordinary people of the era, as much as we do, in fact. The error of this is highlighted when the Doc says “Sonic technology. It should be able to deactivate any alarms.” Ashildr: “What’s an alarm?” Of course. They haven’t been invented yet!
The burglary is simultaneously comic opera yet quite tense. It’s quite on the cards that the householder may shoot Me, or equally bad, that Me may shoot him. (Why equally bad? – because the householder is innocent, and Me is not supposed to be a villain. Missy might get away with shooting him, but nobody else.) It’s not shown how they get down off the roof, but I guess we don’t really need to know.
The butler saying “Would you care for a cocktail, milady?” is surely an anachronism in 1651 though. First used (google says) in the 1800’s. Oops!
The old trope about the villain (Leo the lion) explaining his plot in detail to the hero is quite skilfully handled here, even the slightly convoluted rules of the amulet. It seems Me is quite prepared to sacrifice her faithful retainer Clayton but draws the line at Leo killing the Doctor. Sort of a mixed message there.
Sam Swift is very good indeed with his gallows humour. The idea that the amulet would actually kill (rather than just exploiting a death) seemed to be a leap of logic on Me’s part. But using the Mire pill to restore him to life was a very neat touch (I wonder, was that foreseen by the writers when the Doctor gave Ashildr a spare in the previous episode?) The whole portal opening/closing effect seemed to be quite out of proportion to its energetically insignificant cause (Sam’s life energy) but I’ll let that slide.
So we end with Me reconciled to living life in the slow lane, with a new purpose, to help people. Seems a bit much of a change of heart, but maybe the discovery that Leo the lion was going to betray and kill her had a powerful effect.
So, quite an entertaining, fun episode, but with a serious and melancholy streak running through it.
20 August 2023 at 14:27 #74375Correction – I said there was no ‘Next time’ preview – there was. At the end of the credits. Rarely have I proved myself wrong so promptly. I hate it when that happens.
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