Everybody — I’ll take the @BarbarLefty quote as definitive on the science — thank you!

To reply to @purofilion‘s earlier post (but in the right place this time, as promised over on the TV thread), what I think about the Dotor’s “out of character” behavior (in seemingly abandoning Clara, although the instant the decision is made, he’s right on…[Read more]

@purofilion  Ah — I did say I would put any further comments on the KtM forum, didn’t I?  Post #40459, above, for reference.  Sorry if I seemed to be lecturing — old teachers’ habits die hard, I’m afraid.

ichi

@DenValdron

But you know what? It’s a big world, and there’s certainly room for all the people who like KtM. But that also means there’s plenty of room for me. It’s a good thing.

An excellent thing, indeed.

Hmmm. You didn’t write ‘A Billion Days of Earth’ by any chance.

Naw.  Didn’t have time . . . : )

I’ll go answer a couple of other thing…[Read more]

@purofilion   Goodness no, I like Whedon’s work very much!  It was unexpected because I usually find modern-dress Shakespeare a bit clunky and stiff (because, I suppose, they’re trying to offset the lack of fancy costumes etc.?) or else they all twitter like birds trying to bring the poor old boy “up to date” or something.  This was *much* be…[Read more]

@DenValdron    Also Judy Merrill — I was just thinking of a novel she wrote with Cyril Judd, pub. 1952, that remains (in memory, at least) a piece of SF that I loved to bits. She wrote short fiction on her own, but I can’t think of another novel-length piece by her (with or without someone else). And yes, women were being kept in the kitchen a…[Read more]

@DenValdron   Oh, no argument there — I was one of those lots of girls who read SF/F/H as a little, and then a bigger, kid; but nobody was thinking of us “invisibles” in their writing or editing, except for a handful of people.  The field itself was indeed oriented toward young males, and the SF editors by and large clung to that idea long a…[Read more]

I found “The Crow Road” online and am watching — first reaction: my god, how these characters *drink*!  Every time somebody says, “I’m off, long drive ahead, etc.” somebody else says, “How about a drink before you go?” meaning a good stiff one, whisky not wine or beer.  Wow.

@IAmNotAFish   “The Golden Age” quote seems to me only to apply to pulp SF of the forties and fifties — the “little boy” stories of war, rebellion against (any) authority (since it was all bad, as I recall), and girls strictly cardboard cut-outs.  It’s exactly what the Old Guard meant when they stormed about snarling about all these damn n…[Read more]

@DenValdron   Good commentary, thank you.  Star Trek was very influential in what must have seemed later a surprising way.  When I started going to SF conventions in the mid-seventies, I was part of a substantial wave of women invading convention-space in vocal numbers (the fan boys *hated* this, but mostly seem to have gotten used to it now).  E…[Read more]

@JimTheFish  — about people not falling love with Firefly until giving it a second look: in discussions elsewhere, I’ve seen quite a number of people say exactly the same thing about DW S8 — that they only start to really see its virtues on re-watch.  I guess that’s what happens when you take an established format and do unexpected things with i…[Read more]

@janetteB   Thanks!  I hope they’ll do re-runs the week after, because I’ll be attending a grandchild’s graduation that weekend and probably won’t get too see the debut.  Looking forward, though!

I don’t think Strange Norrel has started here in the US, has it?  Anybody know where or when it starts?  I’ve seen some ads, but they seem to have gone away now; or maybe it’s just that I haven’t been watching much tv lately . . . I did try the book, could not get past the slow open, so I’m very happy that we have a visual version now to e…[Read more]

@lisa  Thanks for the link, above; I looked a bit deeper, and found that this man did in fact go and study Buddhism in situ pretty extensively, so I wouldn’t lump him in with the California-style New Age dabblers and cherry-pickers who emerged from the hippie movement in the US to become “spiritual leaders” by peddling pared down and cobbled up v…[Read more]

@Arbutus   Yes, Buddhism has been subject to all sorts of abuse from the dippier members of the “New Age”, partly because a bunch of teachers came through in the last half of the 20th (and before, I think) while the New Age/Hippie Potpourri was in full swing, particularly in California, and got all mixed up together as people wandered from one…[Read more]

@purofilion  So sorry about Crohns.  I’m glad to hear that you have good treatment available — feel better soon!

ichi

@purofilion  Reincarnation not only isn’t much accepted in the West, it’s also not a uniform belief system where it *is* accepted.  There are a number of different versions of how it might work, e.g. the Dalai Lama probably believes that it’s a straight progression from “lower” to “higher” spiritual awareness, with detours to live a bug’s life w…[Read more]

@JanetteB  I agree, each new Doctor isn’t exactly “a new man”; he seems to be an amalgam of his previous selves, but subsumed under a fresh mix of the elements that make up his present personality.   There are memories of his previous personalities, but they’re mixed in now as memories, not as the discreet, living moments of awareness that they o…[Read more]

@purofilion  — The Doctor’s memory . . . He’s said, from time to time, that he remembers everything, every detail, presumably as a way of honoring the reality and events of each segment of his lives and each of his companions with their mayfly lifespans, or at any rate of assuring them that long as he lives, each matters to him and he will never…[Read more]

@IAmNotAFish — Oh, I loved “Dead Like Me” — bought the set after the series closed out.  Lovely, funny, sad, and plenty of angst to go round as well.  It was appointment TV in our house, back in the day.

I can’t find  link to it, but there’s an interview with Moffat in New York that ended with his comment (answering a question I can’t remember) elucidating, I think, previous remarks about how the companion is more the protagonist than the Doctor is in DW.  He said that the Doctor himself is always the same man — he doesn’t really change inside, o…[Read more]