@craig  I’m glad you put that photo up.  It’s good for us to look at good faces, and think about our own good folks gone.  Reminds me of the last lines of “The Lovely Bones”, which are also the best lines of the book.  It goes, more or less, like this: “My name is Susie Salmon, ‘salmon’ like the fish.  I was here for a while.  Now I’m gone.  I wi…[Read more]

@missy  @thane15  Ichi and i were talking about PC and the chance that we might have kept him a bit longer.

Yup; and I’m still talking about it, under my breath, to myself, grumbling and growling and snapping at the air . . . good thing it’s bed time, after a nice soothing glass of wine . . . But DRAT! and damnation!

But I also think Thane’s r…[Read more]

@thane15   The minus protects the past from us/or John and Sherlock so we can’t go back but only forward. This protects the cause and effect of the show.

Hmm.  So — do similar terms work for “real life”, too?  Something prevents me from actually going back in time, even in my memories (which are distorted by the passage of time and my frame of m…[Read more]

@missy   No, I didn’t know he’d done such a documentary, although I saw some comments on the subject that he made in a couple of his later interviews, talking about the disease.

@missy  Yep, that’s pretty much the feeling.  I had persuaded myself that I was all right with this — three season, okay, pretty standard — but reading about *this*, I’m snarling.  Wish Chibnall had kept his mouth shut about it, frankly.

@mudlark   Thank you!  Not bad at all!  I had only remembered the psychiatrist, and the rich white woman (?) whose ship Voya was, as I recall.  Definitely conflated the shrink with the blind lady.  This certainly sounds a whole lot better than the story as I remembered it!  Which makes me happy.  Goodness knows it made a hell of an impres…[Read more]

@missy  I just read an article in this or that place, interview with — Chibnall?  Said Peter Capaldi was hovering for a long time over the decision to stay or go, and Chibnall almost had him persuaded —

God Damn It!  I am gnashing my teeth and tearing my hair.  Well, metaphorically.  But really — DAMN it!

@missy   Ah, the Luggage!  One of the great inventions of a great and inventive mind.  Fond memories . . .

@mudlark  Thanks for the enlightenment!  But — but — Morris dancers?  Why, lord, why?

I’m one of those who was very intrigued by Eccleston’s Doctor.  I was very disappointed that he didn’t continue.  I found him a bracing dose of the Doctor as a man with his heart on his sleeve.  Well, one of them, anyway.  Hearts, not sleeves . . .

@missy  Oh, that’s great news!  Nice for Cumberbatch and well-earned, but important in a different way for Capaldi.  So much for the naggers and haters who’ve been saying things like, “Capaldi is killing the show — because all those international fans of the Doctor love it for Tennant or Smith, not Capaldi”  because “He’s too old!” or “His Doc…[Read more]

@thane15  Yes, just checking — we’re more or less on the same page about Time’s Arrow.  I’ve just started a book called “Why Time Flies” by a man named Burdick, very new, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, so I might have some good Time tidbits to bring to the table.

Meditation is good for relieving stress, provided that it’s a t…[Read more]

@missy  Me, too.  The weird thing is, CapDoc already makes me miss two years of my life that I would otherwise gladly just gloss over and forget (health problems, mainly, piling up after years of neglect); because there’s this wonderful excitement and mystery associated with it — “Who is this Doctor?  What’s he like?  He said what?!  (‘She care…[Read more]

@thane15  It got better, I think, because its creators got more ambitious, seeing the potentialities in growing it up a bit (well, by the time AG rolled around, there were all these grown-ups out there in the viewership who’d started watching as kids and were now — some of them — looking for — what?  More bones under the meat?  More de…[Read more]

@thane15   others also exist in their personal ‘nows.’ If this is the case, everyone’s ‘now’ is actually the future. If that’s the case, the future must exist. It always exists.

Clarify?  If you mean that everyone’s “now” includes thoughts and intentions about the future, I wouldn’t say that that means that the future exists but rather that a…[Read more]

@thane15   Sometimes you just can’t help applauding machines.  Does Cox believe, do you know, that “we” (sapient, choice-making beings) are inevitable, at some point and in some form, everywhere?  I mean space aliens, of course.  I think they’re out there because we’re in here, and life even as we know it on our own planet seems to be just abo…[Read more]

@lisa   Yes, dystopia is us right now — or we fear we’re becoming that, and are checking out how bad it can get so we can reassure ourselves that at least we’re not *there* yet (full-on 1984, or Fahrenheit 451, or Handmaid’s Tale et al).

As for Raptures and Turnings etc., I think we’re at a place of critical choices.  The reactionary backlash r…[Read more]

@misrori   The last “literary” novel I read was one by Ishiguro about people wandering in some sort of nebulously fantasy version of England — had a picture of a grail-like object on its very drab cover.  I didn’t like it much, didn’t see the point, but the writer is excellent, and I was dragged along to the (unsatisfactory) finish willy nilly.  …[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@thane15   A bit deep, yeah — but a great take on the subject!  Perfect forms — for me, Tom Baker’s Doctor, and CapDoc.  Madness in one, desperation in the other, if a darker undercurrent suits you (as it does me).  I like a bit of constitutional extremity in a hero, a grounding sense of limitation.  And some pretty young man with soulful eyes…[Read more]