@thane16 Bravo, Puro! Your explanation was a joy to read. Any thread citing my favorite composer, Aaron Copland, is a winner in my book.

And that clip from Close Encounters. Such marvelous musical interplay, one of John Williams’ best moments. But the thing that makes the scene so utterly engaging is the look of wonder on everyone’s faces. As @ich…[Read more]

Puro — Ah, thanks for that clip from Close Encounters — I can’t watch that end sequence (and its rich, playful score) without tears these days — it seems like some message from the past of a different planet, one still full of curiosity, good will, and the confidence *not* to meet a ET visitor with guns blazing.  That’s not us any more (if it eve…

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@ichabod true the Deep South is a very different place to anything I can really imagine and not at all like Melbourne in the 30s. I think the treatment of anyone who protested is hinted at in the episode by the way the Doctor and Graeme are spoken to. Anyone who objected would have been cowed if not beaten into submission. (I think some people…[Read more]

@ichabod and @miapatrick My research has indicated that there are always a minority of people who see what is happening, care about it and protest. They are usually ignored, dismissed as cranks etc then when popular opinion swings there way they are entirely forgotten. In the 1930s there was a very vocal anti war and fascism organisation in…[Read more]

@ichabod: quite. ‘The road to the holocaust was paved, not with good intentions but indifference’ (I’m not sure who the quote is from but I have a feeling Sasaha Baron Cohen wrote his dissertation on it, or maybe coined it himself).

In fact the episode showed fairly few white people close up, and only four, I think, with speaking roles. So we…[Read more]

@ichabod

Sounds as if you had a lovely day.

Trust me, being 79 isn’t half as weird as being 80. *winks*

Missy

So how does a female authority figure assert herself without wearing a version of male “authoritative” attire?

@ichabod

I think that sums up many reactions to the Doctor’s new wardrobe. Clothes speak to our expectations…

If I’m in Texas, a knowledgeable cowboy better not be wearing Peter Capaldi’s (rather awesome) outfit. I would not ride wit…[Read more]

@ichabod

Happy birthday.

Reminders of the passage of the years aren’t necessarily welcome, but it’s still a good excuse for a celebration 😀

@ichabod

I just checked “Heaven Sent”,

Start with the right episode. Heaven Sent was the middle of a three-parter.

“You say your line, I’ll say mine”.

I didn’t see that somewhat clunky timing until re-watching Heaven Sent,

I was commenting on this episode, the topic of this thread, the clue being:

Anyway, back to what actually happened in…

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@shinymcshine<span class=”Apple-converted-space”>    </span>It appears that the franchise considers Dr. Who to be for prepubescents now.  Well, as someone well on in my fifties, I still enjoyed these first two episodes. We’ll see where they lead. In the end though, I’m still willing to fork out for an iTunes subscription, which is not true for any…[Read more]

@ichabod

Okay, I do not remember 12 being able to “leave at any time”.

In that case you did not pay sufficient attention, which is far enough. Moffat’s writing is unforgiving of those who don’t. But it was spelled out clearly, in text.

But anyway, it was Time Lord tech not a fanwank British institution (which for realism would be a 48 hour wat…[Read more]

@shinymcshine

Maybe the audience was intended for younger viewers ?    SJA ended up having a lot of cross over

older viewers.   That’s sort of how this new Who is so far for me.

@ichabod

I can manage my expectations about this new series 🙂  I just wanted to feel more attached to it.

(I think there was possibly a  Shakespeare…[Read more]

@ichabod You’re right of course. I do like Thirteen for who she is and if she isn’t my Doctor she can be that for others, as you say. 🙂

@pedant  @ichabod

As I said, it was a rebuke for someone who had made a dick move on someone who was beaten and being expelled – then crowed about it, in his wholly inadequate way. It was a tiny analogue of Tom Shaw’s abject an cowardly inadequacy.

Indeed. @shinymcshine it is history or characteristic for the Doctor to state: “you had no righ…[Read more]

@pedant

It’s the “in reality” that makes it Art.

@ichabod

But high pitches are..used to indicate “I am non-threatening, don’t fear me” and “I wuv you, you little cutey pie, come to mama” …. And a low, slow voice in humans, both male and female, is sometimes associated with seductive excitement.

Yes, lower pitches are calming to some species.*…[Read more]

@ichabod  I understand what you mean by not being as fascinated by Whittaker!Doctor’s world so far.  Like you I’m sticking with it despite some doubts about Chibnall’s approach, but Thirteen so far doesn’t have the broody, rough-edges magnetism and melancholy that attracted me to Twelve and got me back into DW after I lost the thread in T…[Read more]

@ichabod

A dark, gloomy….custard cream dispenser.

@ichabod

As was repeatedly stated, he could have left at any time. So maybe add “stubborn” to “patient”.

 In a show like this, where anything goes

So it would be fine to make the Doctor half-human….

@ichabod ah but if we divorce it from the real world and plant it squarely in the Who world, we’re back to the fact she has two hearts, and people know about aliens and many people know about The Doctor. We’d also have the problem of a BBC program showing such a negative version of the mental health system which would be incredibly irresponsible.…[Read more]

@ichabod I was concerned to read that on the lead up to the Doctor, just for the fact of officially having less focus on the Doctor at the moment the Doctor turns female, and also surprised since a hefty chunk of the complaint about Who recently have been on the focus on the companion. I then thought these people might not complain so much about…[Read more]