@Arbutus   Oh yes, by all means, Anansi!  All the tricksters occasionally bring gifts, as I recall — great, powerful gifts, sometimes, in folklore.  I wonder if there’s some sort of dragon-character in Chinese mythology who might serve, too?  I wonder, though — are there any Trickster goddesses, or is it always guys?  I think there’s a dist…[Read more]

@Mudlark — I like the “projections from the unconscious mind” theory, which the Doctor certainly expounds on in “Last Christmas”, doesn’t he?  The banging on the hull, not so much, maybe — after all, he did get “attacked” or at least physically affected by something out there, and had to be brought back, unconscious, into the capsule.  Could h…[Read more]

@lisa   I like it when she bops his head to stop him scaring young Rupert with a too-grown-up-for-him take on scary stuff, so he shuts up and lets her take over.  But he leans in himself, listening to what she has to say and how she says it.  One thing I like so much about this Doctor — his uncertainty, his wobbly sense of self, makes him more of…[Read more]

@Jonathan I’m baffled by the idea that Jewish creatives (whether culturally, ethnically, observantly, agnostically, orthodoxically, ultra, or other) coming up with a time-and-space traveling outlaw-cum-busybody/meddler/fixer (or, for that matter, any other fictional protagonist) must somehow be operating on the level of Christian allegory. Why?…[Read more]

Ha, found it — wasn’t looking but here it is, and I hope the link works.  This is what was under the blanket in “Listen” (I did ask about that someplace here, didn’t I?):

https://imgur.com/a/K6K79

@janetteB  Oh, got it — not sure about Arthur, myself, long time since I read anything in that realm of story.  Maybe — for me, maybe it’s more like Merlin, as he appears in “The Sword in the Stone” — magical (sonic screwdriver! Tardis!), ancient, alien and a bit of an innocent, with a whole different grip on time (in the book, Merlin lives t…[Read more]

@JanetteB   Robin Hood, maybe, but he can’t be King Arthur: he either does horribly with heavy-duty authority (“The Doctor Victorious”) or he does nothing with it (President of the World) and renounces or refuses it as quickly as he can (DiH).  His authority, when he has it and is using it properly (as in, temporarily), is strictly provisional, n…[Read more]

@JanetteB  I like the ida of a “chaotic good” — yes, that’s the Doctor, to me; an agent of chaotic good, out of whose actions results both good and terrible can emerge, depending.  More like one of the “old” gods, really, the ones who never made much sense but if was a bad idea to get on the wrong side of them even if you didn’t know how you g…[Read more]

@Mudlark — Yikes, I wouldn’t want that blanket-thing anywhere near me!  Understand, my sister — younger than me by SIX YEARS  — coaxed me into going to see “House of Wax” with her, and once I dove under the seat, more or less, she kept poking me and laughing and insisting that it was *only make-up* that was making Vincent Price’s face look as i…[Read more]

@PinchofVortex   Gosh, I couldn’t wait for Clara to grow up, which she did in Series 8, at last!  Now I want to see how she develops as a person and a companion of Twelve in the next series; she wants things for herself (last season, to keep her teaching job *and* her boyfriend *and* her volatile and often baffling (and baffled) space person, a…[Read more]

Here’s a bit of fun — below the announcement of a DW convention upcoming in Baltimore is a 20 minute radio segment about the show by an announcer who’s never watched it (refused to indulge in something that seemed so silly, when he caught his dad watching it back in the day).  Now he sets about asking fans what DW is about.  Some of the answers a…[Read more]

My family was of the cocktail generation; cocktails and whisky.  My stepdad was a functioning alcoholic, which maybe helps account for my aversion to hard liquor and my unrefined appreciation of wine, once I got past the specific and disgustingly sweet “wine”, if that’s what it is, that some of my mother’s family had at religious meals, like at Pa…[Read more]

I’m thinking, the Doctor as a character out of (and participating in the ongoing formation of) the Folklore of — TV?  Fiction media?  — of “our time”, however defined.  He is a “work” of imagination — the imagination that produces folklore, an imagination that currently operates on a multi-media worldwide, macro, as well as on a national, re…[Read more]

@janetteB  Red wine — well, I’ve had two spectacular reds, one a merlot out of a winery in California, cheap little bottle, in the mid-eighties, which was so unbelievable that I went rushing back for more — but it was all gone.  Some 8 yrs later, with family that lives out there I stopped at that very winery (Carneros Creek, it was) and m…[Read more]

@purofilion  Well, that glass of Scotch for Half-face sure looked at home in CapDoc’s hand; but he said he’d poured it for Half Face, and he didn’t so much as have a sniff at it for himself, did he?  Coffee, yes!  Well, he’s a smart guy; of course, coffee!

The only beer I have ever enjoyed I had at a beer garden alongside the Danube somewhere in…[Read more]

@DroneX1  — Glad to help clarify, but “pre-emptive strike”, “slap in the face”, “accusatory”?  Not according to what I saw, but I’m glad to have your input, particularly on the issue of signals of friendliness being mistaken for flirty come-ons; we do live in a hyper-sexualized society (US, anyway), which makes it difficult to actually reach u…[Read more]

@purofilion   Oh crap, sorry to hear about Crohns — miserable stuff, worse than CFS from what I hear.  What if you put the memory work in your drink — does that make it a Tequila Moon-egg Olive with a side of Northern Lights (the green part)?  Or is it Mescal that has the worm, memory or otherwise?  Maybe you can tell — my drink is red tab…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip   Yep, he was fooling himself, playing at romance as 11, trying to get away from himself that way.  Yes, he’s way old and knows it — look at that slightly bent-kneed stance and gait, it says “older guy with slightly sprung knees” and also brings Capaldi down closer to Jenna’s height, of course.

I don’t know that it would occur t…[Read more]

@DroneX1  @purofilion  @Barbara lefty   My view:  “I’m not your boyfriend” needs not to be taken out of context. What does CapDoc’s presentation of himself say, up on the stairs?  “Look at me up here, master of all I survey (the inside of the Tardis, that is).  I’m no one’s fresh-faced ‘raggedy man’ in a beat-up tall hat, and I mean you to know…[Read more]

@Barbara Lefty  — not just arrogance, either: simple self-confidence will do.  You can hear the rejection of all this in the fan whining about how they hate Clara because she’s “such a bitch” in Series 8.  Such a determined and forceful human being, they mean — how dare she?

You want bitchy?  MixMaster’s your woman for that, and note that her…[Read more]