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Thanks for the tip.  So far, I haven’t been able to settle for “Doctor Lite”.  In all its forms, and they are many now, it’s the ubiquity of superficiality, cliche, and one-dimensional stereotyping that drives me away, maybe because books were my first medium, not screens.  Print on pages is slower; all that breathing space with time to think and consider and imagine what the words are building encourages, IMO, originality and depth.  Images on screens, not so much (with, of course, exceptions on both sides).  Just running templates to appeal to mass common denominators almost always leverages quality downward, from what I’ve seen.

I’ll take a look at this, because who knows for sure without trying, but honestly, I doubt it will work for me. Nobody’s fault, just tastes limiting me, the way those things can do.

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@missrori  That’s a good story — thanks for bringing it here!  And I’ve always wondered why the Tardis was snarky with Clara sometimes.  It never occurred to me that she foresaw where her connection with the Doctor was going.  So you posited the Doctor having this secret hybrid identity as a potentiality that would make him very close to being a god himself, and the extreme opposite of the other TLs and their non-interference stance; a TL “interfering” with Time’s flow in such a massive way that — he would end by blowing the whole universe to hell and gone (while “losing” her anyway, by taking away her memories)?

The hybrid as you approach it sounds like a sort of inverse of Missy’s offer to give him an invincible Army to use to defeat evil: all the power of a god, but it must be used to destroy worlds and peoples instead of defend them but with a specifically focused purpose — making amends to Clara at the cost of everybody else.  Your friend would be right, I think: better a good man walking away from someone he loves than a bad man murdering the universe for her . . .  so, because he’s the Doctor, he declines the hybrid potential (permanently?  If it’s been in him all along, do you write him as expelling or obliterating it from himself?).

It would work for me — provided Clara does get to make her stand against having her life “managed” for her by the Doctor, although she wouldn’t need to know the entirety of what he initially proposes (the restoration of her old life, not just forgetting the new one with him).  I see that as a crucial correction to the “Flowers for Algernon” resolution imposed on Donna against her will.

Did you assume that he’s a human-TL hybrid, then?  Or a TL-hybrid with something else?

The character issue with 12 — well, if the response you saw is more typical of the fandom than reluctance to see Capaldi go, then I’d say that between them, Moffat and Capaldi indeed did what Moffat said at one point — they matured the Doctor out of the range of its younger, more super-hero teenromance-hero oriented fandom.  That would be both a hell of an achievement, given the limitations built into the show, and a reach too far, given the limitations of too many of the fans.

Which is very sad for those of us who’ve been waiting for the deeper character development that had been avoided til now.  But the story’s not over yet (S10 awaits), and I think the passage of time will change some perspectives on Capaldi’s run in future.  Still, I am completely baffled by claims that the scripts were inadequate and 12 didn’t develop a character that we could “know”.  As a grown-up, I think I “know” CapDoc better than any other Doctor, and appreciate what the scripts have shown us of him.  Too subtle and complex?  Yes, for much of the fandom, or at least some more vocal sectors of it.  I agree with you on that.  It would be entirely fitting, IMO, for Capaldi, having given us his adult Doctor complete with complex depths and emotions, to use S10 to return to the fandom his version of the Doctor he himself knew and loved as a child — flatter, funnier, more predictable (because more simple), more accessible to kids of all ages — the Doctor that, perhaps, he himself loved but has long since outgrown.  If it’s true that the majority of fans demand a simpler Doctor, I can see that Capaldi himself might not  find delivering that, over and over for a few more years, enough of a challenge to stick around for.

 

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@missy  No, no, Billie Baggins, or maybe Wilamette.   Think, Granny Weatherwax in her youth, about to set off and gain wisdom and experience.  Saurona, the Devilish Dame?  But what’s wrong with “Spider Woman?”

People can’t leave things alone because things, and people, and times change, and so do expectations.  TV is marketed to people, so people with more flexible views on gender roles etc. lean in new directions, and it’s marketing’s job to assent, at least in part, or lose its clout, its success, and its programme.   Helen Mirren played Prospera in a recent film of “The Tempest”; some people hated it.  Some people loved it and found it revelatory.  I just read a review of an all-female production of the same play set in a women’s prison — approbation, for ambition as well as accomplishment.  And what famous stage character is more masculine, as customarily perceived, than Prospero, with his (momentarily eclipsed) high political status, his magic wand and Book of Spells, his innocent daughter, his absent wife, his untermensch slave Caliban?  And yet . . . why *not* Helen Mirren?

If you were a serf in medieval France, you’d have nothing much to complain about (apart from near constant warfare and the odd plague or two).  You would do what your father or mother did, and the Church told you what to think and when to think it, and if you didn’t then best keep your mouth shut.  Those were (relatively) slow-moving times.  These are a whirlwind of rapid change.  We’ll leave things alone when we’re dead, I suppose.

 

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@missy  @mudlark  I think my interior, emotional age is maybe 30 — but then, I don’t really remember more than just fragments of having been a child; maybe I got a late start of some kind.  Raising my younger sister (my mother worked full time, plus half-time free lance work) might have something to do with it; but that aside, I think my situation might be pretty much common, more or less, to most bookish kids with introverted natures.

Okay, back to our moutons: some fans were disappointed from early on with Doc 12 because they saw him as having a “parental” relationship with Clara [instead of the (IMO) oddly adolescent (early) sort of thing with Clara and 11], which certainly made sense given the Doctor’s apparent age and Clara’s youth.  Missy alluded to something akin to that with “You’re the puppy”, but with the added sting that puppies never grow up to be people, let alone Time Lords.  I saw something else, but I suspect that I’m the extreme demon of over-thinking re DW, in terms of psychology anyway, so that’s just me.

BG seemed (as I remember it) to be mostly about friends traveling together, one much more experienced and authoritative and the other bringing a warmer, fresher p.o.v. to matters.  So I’m wondering, is that where BBC means to go with S11, do you think?  Or even to some degree with S10, really, rebounding from what I regard as the “high” of depth, eccentricity, and maturity of S9 to more of a default, rackety adventure setting?  Somehow I am *not* seeing that as Chibnall’s forte, not after Broadchurch, that festival of the dour, the predictable, and the dull.

At sea, here, regarding the near future and the farther one.

 

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@mudlark  It never occurred to me to feel bothered that the protagonists in TLoTR were predominantly male

Me, neither — until I began to notice such things, sometime in the late sixties, and the common under-representation of women in modern lit. fiction (as well as the US Congress, SF awards, etc.) became one of those things that once you see, you can’t un-see.  I don’t want to blame mid-last-century authors who didn’t foresee this awareness (I didn’t have it, myself, back then) and for the most part I don’t, but it does sometimes put me off a work that I find otherwise appealing.  A good deal of the problem with “heroic” (that is, larger than life and full of derring do) fantasy fiction of the last century is that it tends toward stories about war, usually with swords-and-armor flavor that does not favor leading women characters (“The Deed of Paksenarion”, by a woman whose name I cannot remember, is an example of dealing with that and doing it well).  And, as I understand it, Tolkien was drawing on his own battlefield experience in LOTR, at a time when nobody thought seriously of military women except as behind-the-lines support personnel.

As for the ability of many women readers (myself included) to easily inhabit male protagonists and foreground characters, most older women, like me, did that as young readers without so much as a hitch in our gait, since the range of exciting YA fiction written with female leads was kind of narrow (once you’d read the 19th c classics and “National Velvet”, all of Nancy Drew etc.).  Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Rafael Sabatini, Jack London, Melville — boys and men all over the place.  Girls and women, when they appeared, tended to be walk-on characters used purely as plot-mules (like, IMO, DW’s Clara up til S8) — kind of insulting, really.

As a science fiction fan from early on, I was in even direr straits than most — this was the Golden Age of SF, which meant almost all the authors were men or used gender-ambiguous names (Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, C.L. Moore) to get published.  And again, a lot of SF was war stories (in space), or Exploration/Colony stories where “girls” were prizes and men were, well, men (and aliens pretty much were too).  Hideous but wonderful example: “Tiger, Tiger”, by Alfie Bester, in which our hero rapes a woman (as I recall, a blind woman of color who’s a — psychiatrist?), and she, um, well, she falls in love with him.  Naturally.  And not right away.  Mind you Bester was coming off his second divorce, I think, so . . .   It was a rare pleasure to come across something like Naiomi Mitchison’s “Memoirs of a Spacewoman” and Judy Merrill’s work (that was sometimes actually about women’s lives and experience on Earth).

But I started out with lots of adventure fiction about boys and men, and learned without even being aware of it to see through the eyes of (fictional) males.  Girls and women still learn to do this, while boys and men still (I hear ,from librarians and people who stock those vanishing shelves of books in airport shops), shy away from books about female characters (except some of the first-rate female thriller and crime-novelists of our times).  The androgynous reading mind that you speak of is, I think, very much part of a great many women’s young reader experience; not so much in the case of boys and men.  (These are generalizations, and to be taken as such, please!).

It’s kind like — clothes.  Many women wear women’s clothing but also clothing adapted from men’s clothes or actual “men’s clothes” (these are — in the US — usually cheaper, better made, and have pockets, for gods’ sake, like this cotton flannel over-shirt I’m wearing right now), but most men don’t wear clothes designed and sold for women.  Kinda like that . . . with fiction.  I’ve seen studies showing that adult males in in the US rarely read fiction because it’s “a waste of time”, unless they’re Bond fans, or Clive Cussler fans, or fans of the stable of invisible, non-credited writers writing under the name James Paterson.  It’s different in SF/F these days, thanks to the invasion of the women writers that began in the sixties and hasn’t let up since (see: Connie Willis, Kate Wilhelm, Nnedi Okorafor, Octavia Butler, Nicola Griffith, Tiptree, Karen J. Fowler, Margaret Atwood, etc. etc.).

But most male readers seem to still avoid mentally inhabiting female protagonists, where women readers can do the opposite without even noticing that we’re doing it; which is a great advantage, IMO.

My own case is — whatever it is; not unique, certainly, to women of my generation, but not common either.  I’m the eldest of three sisters, raised by my mother and her family, and firmly convinced from very early on that I would somehow disguise myself as a boy and run away to sea, because I saw what my mother went through as a smart, talented, commercial artist desperately searching for a decent man to help support us because of the inadequate salary she was paid as a studio boss for Burlington, and because she was a woman herself raised by her mom, a Viennese (who talked romance, woman behind the throne, ironfist/velvet glove, blah blah, while supporting *her* kids as a successful milliner and corsette maker in Manhattan).  As luck would have it, I managed not to run away to sea, mainly because there were no clippers left . . . no Tall Ship regattas in those days.  But I wasn’t ever, really, what people thought of back then as a regular girl: too tall, too sharp, too interested in things that weren’t boys.  Or girls, much, either, so I’m no sample to judge by.

I rather doubt that anyone on this list is, either.  I mean, this is about Doctor Who, not Leave it to Beaver.

 

 

 

 

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@missy  You know, I never could watch The Musketeers, even though PC was a major character in it.  Something about those costumes just makes me uncomfortable — all that fabric and leather and great big boots.  I get distracted thinking about what it must feel like lugging all that around.  (trailing rags of memory from a past life, mebbe . . . ?)  If If I can find it out there somewhere, I’ll give it another try one of these days.

 

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@missy   Dang.  Guess I’m just a loser, then!

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@missy  Yes, when we see it!  Seen a lot of Doctors and favored some, but this guy just blew me away from the get-go. Something to do with the profile, maybe?  I used to draw an imaginary face very much like that when I was in art school — long, expressively topographical, with that thick, vigorous hair.  Friend of mine says, “Oh, you’re just an intellectual snob — you see that look and you think it means intelligence!”  Well, maybe she’s right — I’ve always been keen on actors whose faces convince me that there’s a quick mind sparking away inside there.  Or maybe I just like a really vehement nose.

Can’t imagine where that comes from — not from anybody in my family, that’s for sure!

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@mudlark   I do believe that is the only book (the second volume, I think) that I actually stole from the library.  After I’d read it, I felt so guilty that I took it back, under my coat, and furtively replaced it on the shelf . . . It was just too wonderful to keep to myself.   I must report, though, that I began to read the trilogy again, found myself skipping through it, and finally had to stop.  That stately pace and (almost) all-male cast that had entranced me back in my late teens just isn’t for me any more, although I have the boxed set on my shelf yet.

@missy  made me wonder if any other actor could have done that scene better than PC – don’t think so.

Not, I think; that intensity is his meat.  I found a truly startling quote from him a few months ago, out of some interview with him.  Someone asked him what he was afraid of.  He said, “I’m afraid of my acting.  I’m afraid of my hair.”

Yeah, well, you should be stuck with *mine*, pal, see how you feel then . . . I’m 77 years old, and it’s about 125.

But breakfast — and hugs! — always help.

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@craig  According to Wikipedia “the story received a mixed reception from viewers. Some enjoyed the story, describing it as “intriguing” and “compelling”. More critical viewers thought the series was becoming “stale” and “boring” and that it was “too horrific” and “too far-fetched”. A small minority considered it to be “the usual predictable rubbish”, some saying that they only watched the show because their children enjoyed it.”
Nothing ever changes! 🙂

Yow, that is a HOOT!  “Stale”!  “Boring”!  “Predictable rubbish”!  Though maybe some things do change, a bit — I doubt anyone in those days complained that there wasn’t enough “real death” in DW, the way some do now.  I hesitate to think about what that change means . . .

Anyway, congrats for being descended from DW royalty.  And thanks — I’m going off to run errands with a big grin on my face.

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@thane15 *But I digress. My new teacher is amazing. I got this* phrase from her 🙂

Oh, I digress all the time — it’s one of my favorite things to do.  And yes, I find myself saying that a lot lately — “I’m glad I’m old”.   Not “glad”, really, but — relieved.  I’m relieved that I don’t have a whole lifetime ahead of me that seems to demand not just as much but *more* effort than this one has to shove that damn boulder another inch uphill and away from the slime of crime-as-usual down below.  You never get as far as you need to, and there are always throwbacks (like Trump) trying to knock you over and kick the whole thing downhill again, because they thrive on slime and can’t stand anyone else pointing the way up out of it.

I do think, though, that the next 10 yrs or so will bring some bright leading lights and hard punches from Nature that will shove a lot more people up to help with the job, so no doubt my impatience is making the future look darker than it will turn out to be; also the fact that my life started in the Presidency of FDR, with a wave of reform and re-thinking, and to see it all being literally rolled back now is very disheartening.

As for “judging” — I agree; you can’t make intelligent choices without judging the best among options, so fine discrimination is necessary to make the most of that flexibility of ours.  It’s the crude stuff (defaulting to bigotry and stupid, unexamined attitudes) that gets us into trouble.

I’m happy to hear that your new teacher is amazing!  I had some teachers like that, and then I got to teach, myself, with some more.  I’ve never forgotten them and never will.

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@missy  Oh, they play those moments, those glimpses into deep feeling, brilliantly, don’t they?  Have we ever seen another TL show those kinds of feelings?  If we have, I don’t remember it; and in S8-S9 we do see the Doctor yanked back from what seems to be a default TL setting of no positive emotional involvement (“She cares so I don’t have to”) by Clara.  So, do all TLs have that capacity but learn to stifle it?  Or is it something the Doctor has learned (since the caveman incident) from his human companions?

@missrori  I remember that movie well — thanks for reminding me!  That’s an excellent summary, brings it all back — that shot, late in the film, of his previous home on a dried out world, deserted and dead —   It’s stayed in my memory all these years.  Humanity as — a corruptive force, to others as well as ourselves?  Or only to others already sufficiently like us (“We’d have done the same — “)?

We’re saved, essentially, from ever seeing the Doctor fall into drug addiction, alcoholism (or some variant of it), some sexual morass or other vice, because the show is mandated to appeal to young kids, so that stuff is *out* for DW.  However long he lives, he (or she) isn’t going to be shown onscreen shooting smack or passed out in a bar.  Even as the Valeyard, should that come round again, he’s not going to be corrupted in *those* ways, is he.  In DW, the great corruptor is power over others, power to bully, destroy, abandon, imprison, exploit, and enslave.  He is tempted by that, sometimes, the way that good people are tempted to accept the corruptor and use it to wipe out corruption — a doomed enterprise.  The early episodes were full of villains exclaiming “Once I get the control the McGuffin, I shall have ABSOLUTE POWAAAAHHHH!  Yar har har har haaaa!”  That’s something kids know a lot  about.  In our early years most of us are more or less in the power of our elders and older sibs, our teachers, kids bigger than we are at school, etc.

In fact, it’s a sort of absolute power that the Doctor exercises in Hell Bent, isn’t it?  The power of his personality; the power of his intelligence to outwit the TLs; and the power of his guilt over Clara’s death and his obsession with rescuing her — to then delete himself from her memory and stash her in a safe place, like putting away a favorite toy in the closet.  What he wouldn’t accept from Missy (she’s actually pathetic in her completely off-the-mark offer of an army of zombies because the offer shows how completely she misunderstands him for all her “best friend/enemy” status) he does accept, in a more limited, focused form, with regard to Clara: the power, the casual power (“I’ve done it before; it won’t hurt much this time” — I mean, *really*!) to permanently alter her consciousness for his own ends, *not hers*.  It’s only Clara’s outraged refusal to be reduced to a piece of memorabilia on the mantlepiece that wakes him up from the spell of power and prompts him to “make amends” for being such a dork in the first place.

Not being able to maneuver the Doctor into some Lost Weekend of alcoholic stupor etc. because of the age of the target audience, has meant that the writers have had to be truly ingenious in finding ways to tempt him onto a left-hand path, to *grow* him — not Superman, or The Ghost, or the Master, but the Doctor.  Maybe we are his addiction, because we make him recover the sympathy, the empathy, the need to care, that TL culture suppresses?  Not because we’re so “wonderful”, but because the best of us manage to straggle along *without* super-powers or cold detachment, and to both give in to and survive the temptations of plain old emotional and political power over others?

(This is the kind of thing that happens when I forget to have breakfast, so . . . )

 

 

 

 

 

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@thane15  I like the way you think!  I hope the best for the show too, as I’m sure Capaldi and Moffat do also, with whatever kind of new Doctor they settle on.  If it’s back to another young white guy, if it’s not first rate comedy as well, I doubt I’ll be interested enough to stick with it long.  I think I’m getting — ah — age-ist?  In reverse.

Nope.  Not as long as @thane15 is around!

I’ll certainly give S11 a chance in any case.  But my heart goes with CapDoc, the sweet but spiky grown-up in the room (except when he’s got his child-ness on, but hey, nobody’s perfect — thank goodness).

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@missrori  Perhaps Davros was right — compassion is a weakness.

I think compassion is a strength, and the heroic backbone of “goodness” itself — to do what you know and feel is right *in spite of* also knowing that your action won’t fix things forever and might even have terrible spin-offs in  future (Ashildr, as noted above); and with no expectation of or desire for gratitude.

“Who was that masked man?”  It’s the tradition of the hero who does good deeds and vanishes from the scene before anyone can say “Thank you!” (“Do good and disappear” — from “The Nun’s Story”, as I recall, have never forgotten it).  I think it’s a new-ish idea, if we start with the Ancient World’s concept of grabbing as much glory (and gratitude) as you can so that people will keep you alive in memory; it was gods and angels who did good and disappeared in those days (if you were lucky).

Now we’ve got the Doctor and his tendency toward busting up the problem and then zipping away in the Tardis, which has been charmingly played as just not having the patience to hang around he help clean up the mess, as well as unease with strong human emotions.  And he’s easily bored and inclined to melancholy and neuroticism when he has too much time to reflect.  Maybe there’s a lesson in that, too: a balance of outward and inward focus is healthier than an over-abundance of either.

@thane15   I think he gets terribly sad but he isn’t human. He can’t and doesn’t feel things the way we necessarily do. 

Hmm; that’s a question to mull over, isn’t it?   Yes, he’s alien; but TLs and humans are supposedly related, and the TLs certainly seem to have very similar emotions to humans (negative ones, at any rate), as when we see them conferring over the Doctor’s actions, excoriating him for this or that, commiserating (well, Ohila does that, and she’s not, strictly speaking, a TL — ?), mocking (Missy!).  And that speech of Missy’s about the long TL lifespan making it impossible for TLs to really relate to humans as humans relate to each other (“you’re the puppy”) or as TLs relate to each other — I found that very intriguing to think about.

But judging by the way the Doctor reacts to negative events and actions — violence, arrogance, hatred etc. — his anger and his condemnation seem very similar to those reactions in humans.  That, though, could also be a result of his recurring close contact with humans — recalling that attempt of his to bash in the head of an inconvenient cave man, way back in the series, is pretty telling re the emotional range the Doctor started out with, compared to that of humans.

So does he have a capacity for human emotion that all TLs have, and his initial rebellion was in protest against the TLs choosing *not* to act on those emotions (not to interfere with evil for fear of messing up Time)?  Or did he run from Gallifrey out of fear of being/becoming the destructive “hybrid” that the Sliders told him about in the cloister? Has he learned human emotion from us and values it so highly that he keeps hanging around us to keep refreshing his own understanding of it?  Does his very long life span limit his capacity for merely short-term human feelings, as Missy says?  His intense (TL-intense but non-sexual, as per Missy’s comments?) connection with Clara did, in fact, turn him briefly into a destructively selfish person (for Clara’s sake, of course, but still — ).

What saved him?  Clara’s assertion of her autonomy, her refusal to be reduced to the “object” of his obsession, a thing he could just memory-wipe and then tuck safely away so he wouldn’t have to worry about her.  What is he left with?  He will never forget that he once remembered her, because, as he says, he never forgets those he’s lost.  Is that a human feeling; or a TL feeling (all those long lives); both?  The lack of a satisfactory hard-and-fast answer keeps the question open and interesting.

SPOILER

I just came across another example of a sort of love not normally associated with human emotion.  In the movie “Arrival”, a linguistic specialist decodes the language of aliens who perceive time in its entirety, and this changes her own perception so that she begins to “remember” events that haven’t happened yet in her own life (the short story the film is made from is called “The Story of Your Life”).  She remembers the lifetime of a child she is going to have, and that forward-memory brings her joy and sorrow — but she chooses to bring those events into being anyway, because (IMO) she’ll gladly take the joy she foresees even at the cost of the inevitable loss and sorrow that will end it.  In the movie, she’s aware of all this through alien concepts of time.  Is the love she feels for the doomed child that she chooses to have even knowing that it’s doomed a human emotion, or an alien emotion she’s absorbed from an alien perception of time?  Both?

Could an alien being seek out the company of humans in order to expand or deepen its own emotional spectrum because it’s worth it, despite the inevitable losses that come with that expansion?  Could a long-lived alien being get  caught up in and addicted to the compressed depth and sharpness of human emotions that it experiences with and around us?  I’ve often thought that our fiction about these issues is absurdly species-centric (o look how wonderful we are, some aliens would find us fascinating and adorable {and delicious with butter sauce, but never mind that bit}). Now I’m thinking that we could be onto something here, as a sort of corollary to the idea that humans could find a very long-lived, powerful alien both fascinating and lovable.

Sorry to wander on for so long, but damn, it’s a long time til mid-April . . .

 

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@juniperfish   Heart-breaking news, certainly.  I was hoping for four years at least . . . But there you are.

@pedant  Probably watched Broadchurch 2 and thought “Noooooo!”

I sure did.  Awful stuff.  Capaldi is probably well out of it, especially of BBC goes back to Teen Romance tropes for the Doctor.  Besides, nobody grows younger, and the physical demands (not just of making the show, but of doing all the publicity touring etc.) are pretty huge for the lead cast members, with modern DW.  Hartnell et al never had to cope with all that.

And maybe something luscious has shown up for Capaldi to take on after DW, something intriguing enough to clinch the decision for him.  Hope so!

 

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Oh, HELL.

Getting drunk, right now.

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@mudlark   Thanks for the Roman rundown; and of course no exact parallels are expected.  But we certainly have the “bread and circuses”, and the foreign military adventuring (although we’re massively worse at that than Rome was, seems to me) . . . with other major powers active around the globe (China, India, and now Russia), the basic situation looks very different to me.  I do keep thinking, though, that the US has in fact nurtured its own barbarians right here within our borders, and I’m not talking about immigrants but well-armed, racist primitives who are Bannon’s natural troops.  It makes a weird sort of sense that we could go from a representative Republic to a shrinking empire dominated by megalomaniacs and exploded by internal warfare in a mere 250 yrs or so, while Rome took its time about its own dissolution . . .

But that’s what happens with a science fiction brain: we live and breathe wild-eyed speculation.  And then reality comes and overwhelms our puny efforts . . . All of us here are scared too; very, very scared.  Which reminds me — if you can find it on TV, “The Young Pope” is an interesting exercise in (I think) Reactionary savagery triumphant, + nuance in a religious setting.

@lisa   The possibility of shifting away from Washington and toward states’ powers to resist central power has been part of the flexibility of the US, though I think that that shift now is more likely to bring us to the brink of — and maybe over — open civil war than unite us in resisting the Lords of Misrule.  But in any case, it’s pretty obvious that *something* has got to give.  The first real battle will be against whatever Reactionary martinet Trump nominates t the Supreme Court — is there such a thing as a permanent filibuster?  It’s being discussed, I hear; for what that’s worth.

@pedant  No, it’s not early days; we got yanked right into the deep end of the pool, and filthy, stinking pool it is proving to be.

@thane15  Puricle, godsakes baby that ankle a bit, will you?  I used to sprain mine regularly, toughened them up by lots of walking as exercise, but the right one has developed its very own localized arthritis anyway.

@ringleader  I like it.  And maybe “the Wartime Doctor” would be better than “The War Doctor”?

 

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@missy  Oh, I don’t think so; Hitler meant to build an empire spanning Europe and Asia, the Third Reich.  He was prevented.  Trump will fumble it so badly that I don’t think there will be a US empire, at least not in the near future.  The Pax Americana will be a joke in his hands, and what else does the US have to offer anyone swearing fealty to us?  Intentionally or not, Trump will crash our economy, so wealth will not be an answer any more.  The world economy will move on with the US staggering along falling increasingly behind like a college drunk wandering around on his hands  and knees.

I hope to be gone by then.  On the other hand, I also hope to be proven wrong.

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@alexwho  Maybe you’re not the only one . . . at any rate, I hope you’re not.  If things get too crazy around here, we could be looking at a military coup, just to keep the demented man-baby from nuking somebody across the world (or on the West coast, who knows).

A colleague who writes historical novels says the Imperial US is roughly paralleling the Roman Empire, the way empires tend to do.  I asked her which emperor Trump is.  She said, Tiberius, but I don’t agree.  He apparently had some sensible ideas and implemented them too, and he didn’t really turn into a blood-thirsty tyrant until late in his reign, didn’t he?  Of course, this *is* Trump late in his *life*, so . . .

I think maybe Nero: flamboyant performer beloved by the people, detached from reality, blood-thirsty streak (but which of them *didn’t* have that?  Asking seriously; I couldn’t say).

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@thane15   And, in this case, his excellent mum — moment by moment is good.  I think a solid dose of zen-style current awareness, on the one hand, plus a vast time horizon looking both past and future around these awful events, is a workable approach to enduring the storm.  I don’t think anybody needs to feel badly for being depressed and even hopeless — how could I?  Like any sane, relatively balanced person facing a tsunami (and maybe more than one, or two, or three) of passionately irrational craziness and unrestrained Id at work, have my moments of despair.  I hate to see my country yanked down to its lowest common denominator in literally every respect.  The frauds and the felons ride high in times like these.

But.  Time doesn’t stop for anyone on the physical plane, not even for a gold-plated, knuckle-dragging, tantrum- prone imbecile whose ravening inferiority complex is the most authentic aspect of him.  Events continue to unfold, and the Law of Unintended Consequences never keeps things lively.

Or maybe that’s just “Dutch Courage” talking, derived from red wine, not hard spirits.

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@blenkinsopthebrave   Tea’s good, too, isn’t it?  (I’m on wine, myself, at the rather late moment).  I do hope you and @juniperfish and there IS a fourth installment.  That would be so god damn cool — and sly, and really, really, clever.

And bonkers!  Yes, and hurrah!

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@janetteb   With regard to political trolling, the Right has substantial monetary power and uses some of it to hire moral imbeciles to do Right Wing trolling on line, as loudly and ubiquitously and frequently as possible, in order to amplify their “message” and make support seem much greater and more widespread than it is.  I don’t think anybody on the Left does anything like that, at least in the US — US liberals are funneling their spare cash to people like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU and women’s rights organizations, to finance legal challenges to bad judges, juries, and laws.  We don’t have as much to spend, so we have to try to make our contributions go where they can really count.

As for the DW Haters, that’s some kind of weird psychological tangle that I’m not qualified to sort out; but I know vitriolic hysteria (and — testesteria?) when I see it.   The real arrogance is theirs, of course.  Typical aggressive projection.

And thanks — I try not to rant, but I do get carried away — well, that’s how rants happen, isn’t it?!

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@pedant  Wish I could claim to remember ACD’s stories as clearly as you do, so that I could watch for that faithfulness — I really must go back and read them again, on a “Sherlock” re-watch.  Particularly since I dreamed this a.m. of clearing out a room of mine (with a couple of — Russians?) and quickly stopping one of them from taking a volume labeled “Collected Sherlock Holmes Stories” off the shelf to be sent to Goodwill Charities.

“Lazy” and “soap opera” as used by fans in this way signal to me that the person using these “criticisms” are just sheep trotting obediently after the leaders of the “look at how I am so much more intelligent than these writers that I can see right through their little tricks” cliques.  I don’t think there’s any understanding at all involved, except of the idea of somehow looking clever themselves by parroting such dismissive nonsense without troubling themselves to come up with a single notion (critical or otherwise) of their own.

Now life intervenes.  I must go sort laundry.

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Just came across this — another fascinating commentary by Rachel Talalay, this time on the making of “Hell Bent”:

http://www.radiofreeskaro.com/2016/06/19/radio-free-skaro-534-to-the-end-of-the-universe/

The interview with Ms. Talalay begins at about minute 35 in from the beginning.  Seeing the episode from her p.o.v. and her approach is refreshing and enlightening, I think, and a firm rebuttal to all the damn fools who whine and moan about how the writers and show runner for some inexplicable reason spend all their time conspiring together to “ruin” the show.  The devotion she describes on the parts of all the participants rings completely true, to me.

This is how you make something you love, with people you respect and admire, *not* how you (Steven Moffat in particular) can show off how ridiculously clever and superior you think you are.

God, fans can be so stupidly unimaginative sometimes!  An indicator of their problem is that they’re too stuck on themselves and their own “superior” opinions to ever go find this kind of material for themselves — or pass it on if they do.  It makes me so angry I could spit — willful, block-headed stupidity that people use to *limit themselves* and their own understanding and appreciation of the world outside of themselves.

Never mind; just me ranting, late and tired.  Enjoy!

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@blenkinsopthebrave  That is a really brilliant insight…to both shows.

Agreed.  The Doctor alone drives himself crazy.  Sherlock, alone, shoots holes in Mrs. Hudson’s walls (for shame, sir!  You are a *renter* here).

Thinking about it, what I like best is the ending — the reference to Rathbone! and the cheerful cocking of a lot of snooks, IMO.  Look, they’re saying — Gatiss and Moffat and all — look what we just did!  We took some ideas and ran with them in whatever zany directions they branched off into, and now — the icons are still there.  Somebody else can pick them up and do what *they* please with them, and none of it will injure or mutilate this partnership in any way, because they’re invulnerable.  They stand for what they always stood for — the perfect balance of cold brilliance with warm steadfastness.  Nothing that anybody does or writes about them will change that in any permanent way, because ACD created them as close to perfect as anything gets in this world.

Gatiss and Moffat could have wound up by marrying Watson to Mrs. Hudson and Holmes to the ghost of Redbeard the Dog, and it would have made no difference.  Holmes and Watson do not fall; they stand, for all to take and play with and transform.

What a message — gotta love it, whether you’re all board with it or not.

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Strange developments are beginning to unfold here.  Trump supporters have begun to realize that “the ACA”, the medical programme that is maintaining their families’ health and lives, is in fact the exact same thing as the hated “Obamacare”, so when Trump & co said they’d dump Obamacare, it meant “We’re taking YOUR benefits and supports, you idiots, and giving them to the rich as tax breaks, because you’re too damn stupid to live and also f**k you.”  Easily hoodwinked people (who allowed themselves to be led this way by Fox and other Thug lie-spinners)  are not pleased they aren’t just *told* what fools they’ve been, but realize that the pirates they’ve elected will stop those checks coming to them in the in the mail, those automatic pay-outs of medical bills gone.

I have a feeling this is going to be a *way* more bumpy ride for the Trumpets than they imagine — there are already stories of Republican legislators making public appearances and then running away because of the rage of the crowds who show up — crowds made up largely of their own enraged supporters.

“Look over your shoulder, look us right in the eyes — and tell us why everyone lies — ” to (mis)quote a wonderful song by, I believe, an American band called Calexico).  Yes.  Tell us.

“This is far from over . . . ”  Damn right it is.  I see — let’s say, bracing times ahead here in the US, and the rest of the world looking to its own quarrels, because no one is exempt.  This upheaval is massive and all embracing, and the changes required — if we are to survive — are epic in scale, and probably mostly slow (but not all).  And only some foreseeable.  And mostly not fair.  I don’t expect to see an identifiable resolution in this lifetime.  Tough.

Meantime, I’m getting old.  I don’t need so much food, and I remember how to do all right with less.   But, that said, I’m just as scared, angry, and outraged as the rest of us.  But it does please me to know that the Stupid Vulgarian in Chief is trying to bribe people to come to his Inauguration on Friday, and nobody sane wants to perform for his festivities.  In my State, New Mexico, the Republican Party is so embarrassed and horrified by this sub-simian clown-dog and his gang of jackals that they are not having the usual Inaugural party in Santa Fe.

@missrori  I feel for the misery of your situation, and wish I could help.  I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Are you anywhere near here?  Might it be helpful to talk on the phone?

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@bluesqueakpip   Well, that’ll teach me — the old memory is just not what it used to be, not even just last week . . . Thanks!

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@thane15   Hmmm.  You have a point there . . . I had newts, once, when I was a kid.  They got free and ended up as dried up little mummies behind the radiators.  Dogs and cats did much better.

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@janetteb  A Zygon horse?!  How did I miss that?  Yes, on getting back in time to feed the pets, though actually I think the Tardis could be trusted to make sure they got food, water, and exercise even over and extended absence (like when the Tardis got stuck in London and then grabbed by Clara so the Doctor looked for it for a long time before she returned it to him).

I was an enthusiastic traveler for many years; now, not so much, as I have not trusted companion whose company I could stand for long in that situation.  I’d like to travel with my sister, but she’s got health issues worse than my own minor ones, so . . . I dunno.  A time may yet come when I want to do that again.

Meantime, the Doctor travels for me.  He goes to very interesting places, so that’s fine.

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Liked it — but skipped away from time to time without remorse (prolonged torture stuff, physical or otherwise, pushes me out of a story unless it’s done with a *very* deft hand).  I liked the spirited response to complaints from the “fans” that Sherlock wasn’t just solving mysteries, earlier on — here was a full hand of them, one after the other, chop-chop or somebody dies.  I didn’t understand the connection between Moriarty and the East Wind, time-wise, and I’d have preferred the story without him.  Good surprises, though.

*Loved* the ending — a bold-faced tribute to the creator of these characters, and to all the actors who’ve played them. And Mary as the real Mary, the warm and wise one that John Watson would marry, not that jangling plot-puppet they turned her into, IMO, earlier on in this series.

Anyone spot what movie Mycroft was watching, in the beginning?  A forties romantic comedy?

@pedant  What?!  Okay, did I miss another sibling, somehow?

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@missy   Oh yeah, anyone who’s seen it knows that desperate, wall-eyed stare by heart.  I was thinking about how the only “animal companion” the Doctor has ever had, that I can remember anyway, is — K-9.  Of course he can’t lug a dog around with him in the Tardis — a cat would be okay if the Tardis would consent to have mice for it to hunt and eat.  Nobody takes their pug up Everest with them . . . one of the costs of adventuring, like not having close ties with parents (or parents at all, sometimes) if you’re the protagonist of a YA fantasy adventure tale . . . But having no animal company?  Unless we human companions occupy that space (“See those people?  You’re the puppy”).  Still sometimes an open question, to me.

I used to see a young man, a German national by his accent, who’d be sitting in a local mid-level restaurant that I frequented, usually chatting with another guy seated next to him about hiking in Nepal, or the shortest way to hitch hike between this and that African town.  Then I began to see him there by himself, reading a magazine, looking around . . . I haven’t seen him lately.  He’s not so young any more, if he’s still around.  I’ve run into the type before: very impatient, very energetic, willing to give up everything to be away, chasing — that adrenaline rush?  The xxx that nobody else has ever seen before?  It’s a foreign mindset to me.

With the Doctor, there’s a whole different thing going on, if we take him at his word — not to put himself in danger and test himself against great odds for the thrill of victory (or just survival), but going where his restless and intense curiosity (and the compliant Tardis) take him.  For the beauty of it, sometimes.  I don’t think that German guy would spend more than a half an hour in Derillium, myself, singing towers or no singing towers.  As for the Doctor — well, he had very good company for his 24 year night.

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@missy   I’ve had both, often at the same time (you know that thing where your dog stands there looking up at you imploringly because the new kitten is clinging enthusiastically, with all its miniature and needle sharp, teeth and claws, to one of her back feet?).  Love ’em both.

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@missy  — My pleasure, as always.  Puss cats agree (which is rare among that species, to be honest); tomorrow is another — WOW!  What was *that*, that just zipped by?  I expect to become more cat-like over the next 4 yrs; one of my personal forms of resistance.  I have good teachers.

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@soundworld  You’re entirely welcome, and here’s a thing, if I may, that I learned from a good friend and colleague (someone with some chronic conditions stemming from childhood illness).  You’ve been brave; you know you’ve been brave, although you probably don’t like to talk about it.  You know (I think) that’s it’s a choice.  Give Yourself A Medal.  Really: a small reward in recognition of every redoubt you take, because you’ve earned it: a book you’ve had you’re eye on, a better watch instead of your old Timex, a meal with a couple of friends in a really good restaurant, or take out at home), a subscription to a special magazine.  I think we decent people tend to shy away from this sort of thing out of modesty, or overly-idealistic standards they set for themselves.  Give yourself a token to mark such an occasion.  The world sure isn’t fair, and the awards it offers are too few, often miss-matched to the accomplishment being recognized, or compromised in some ways.

We need to give ourselves awards; to be fair, at least, to ourselves.  I say this as someone who always has to be reminded about this.  My friend reminds me.  Maybe you already know this, and do it, in which case — a friend is reminding you, that’s all.

@missy  Oh, a refund, yes!  By all means!  Only over the PTB office door (or the desk of what my sister refers to as “the Lousy Being”) is a sign, “No returns, to refunds, no do-overs, no more” (at least as I see it in my mind).  So I’ll head for to the “Menu Choices for Your Next Life — no Guarantees, but Decent Chances” office, where various mobs of discarnate old pals spin nets of the planned futures they propose . . .

Or — something Completely Different!  Bring it on, but not yet — I’m not going *anywhere* until after S10, and S11 if CapDoc is still flying the Tardis (or being flown around by her).  Giddy-up, for all our sakes — the world hurts.  We need our Doctor!

Also, silly puss cats help, if that can be managed.

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@pedant  — Wow.  Now, if only Trump would *listen* (ha!).  But they never do, the greedy, spiteful, baby piggies of the world.

Oops; politics okay, on the sofa?  Just a bit?

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@missy  Thanks for your good wishes — I’m finishing up these health things, and have a physical therapist giving me exercises for the recalcitrant leg, so I expect to be planted more solidly again by the time the next wave of whatever hits.

@winston   Mmm, yes; I like to add a glass of nice red to that particular medicine.  It’s amazing that this character can be inspiring and encouraging for kids, as he’s always been — and thanks to being “grown up” some by Moffat, has been able to something very similar (and just as important in such times) for adults.  I trust Moffat & crew to come up with the right balance for 2017 (well, to have come up with — they’re well into the shooting schedule for the season, or beyond it by now, aren’t they?).  *Everybody* is going to need all the comfort and inspiration we can find, I think, for staggering mash-ups of alarming reasons.

Our local Circus of Evil Clowns grows more chaotic and unstable by the moment, and judging by the international news it’s hardly unique — just louder, and dumber, and covered in gold plating . . . Nero?  Caligula?  Too soon to tell, but I’m betting Nero.  Meanwhile, I’m reading about near-death experiences (which this feels a bit like, frankly).

Gonna need me some Doctor long before April!  Thank goodness for DVDs, during the wait.  Where the Hell are my Golden Years?  I want my money back!!

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@thane15  Then let’s let it rest there, shall we?  If it’s Davis, I’m off the court — I am pretty much deaf to most jazz; my loss.

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@thane15   “Kind of Blue”  is a Cohen record, isn’t it?  And if anybody knew the mythology of the “wounded healer”, Cohen did.  So as far as I’m concerned, you’re right on topic still.  And I’ll have to find that record and listen to it myself (tell your mum thanks for the tip about that).  I’ve probably heard some of the songs from it, but not the whole thing, as I think I’d remember.

Well.  Maybe not . . . I barely recognize the world these days.  Huge changes are just beginning to surface, and I’m a stranger here already.  Wish I could hop into my TARDIS and take off for other planets!  Oh well, the Doctor will do that for us, in April, I hear.  Sounds good to me!

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@craig  how interestingly one aspect of this week’s Sherlock was made.

Thanks, that’s very, very smart stuff; I’ll have to check out more of Nerdwriter, on the strength of this.

@alexwho  With you 100% on this version of Mary Watson.  I think the idea was to offer us a female version of the Holmes brothers — very bright, easily bored, with that “reptilian” aspect Mrs. Hudson names outright in TLD, and it’s a interesting idea.  There was a pretty good thriller based on this idea a few years ago — nice househomey wife experiences traumatic attack and suddenly remembers that she was once a super-spy action hero, and behaves according.  And I have a fondness for stories of outwardly ordinary people who, under unusual circumstances, must reveal and re-inhabit the former, darker, lethal selves they thought they’d safely buried for good.

But in this case — John Watson.  Unless he turns out to be a secret super spy too (which would be a major betrayal of the character as presented so far), would this John Watson — Homes’s all too warm and human foil and stalwart companion in adventure — fall in love with a Jane Bond?  You know, in real life, such a man might.  But in terms of these stories, either ACD’s originals or this new version — no.  He’s warm, but he’s not insensitive, and he’s had Sherlock right in front of him all this time as an example of (sort of) the real thing.  Or let me it more fairly: I couldn’t make her being revealed as Jane Bond work.  Nor the amazingly simple resolution of Watson’s “haunting”, because when someone you love — like, the mother of you new daughter — dies, I don’t think you just wind that all up in a couple of weeks and put it away with a tidy bow tied round it.  Nice, neat story-telling, but minus a heart — John Watson’s heart, to be precise.

Too easily mended, IMO.  Too neat altogether to be satisfying: John forgives Sherlock for “causing” Mary’s death, and and John forgives Mary for throwing herself in front of a bullet meant for Sherlock, leaving him, John, a widower with an infant daughter to raise?  Huh?  And why does that work, exactly?  Wish I could remember.  You know, I could believe Mary (still a pretty new mother) taking a bullet to save her child’s father; but to save *Sherlock*?  Her greatest rival for John’s attention and affection?

Sure, it’s fiction; in fiction, you can do whatever you want (that’s why it’s so difficult — all those *decisions* that rest with you as author, and you’re to blame for the bad ones, too).  But if I remain unconvinced, then for me, you have failed.  Which annoys me, because I *want* you (Moffat and Gatiss, in this case) to succeed.  Don’t give up the audacious idea — just do it *better*, and convince me.

@janetteb   Writing is inherently not lazy. It can’t be lazy. It might be derivative or unimaginative or logically flawed but it cannot be lazy.

Apparently it takes a writer to know this.  I’ve got a couple of duds in the drawer myself, stories I can’t make work, but not for want to trying.  The only “lazy writing” I know is going out for coffee or to a movie *instead* of writing.  And sometimes even that is more a way of trying to preserve your own sanity and self-respect than anything else.

 

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@thane15  He doesn’t correct their direction or personal plague but allows their direction to unfold thus healing themselves.

I think I understand it (“the wounded healer”) a bit differently.  On one level, this is another angle on “Doctor, heal thyself”– the fact it’s possible to be deeply and inconsolably injured oneself, but a genius at healing anybody *but* the self.  Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House is a good example of this idea.  He’s a Sherlock Holmes of medicine –picking up clues no one else does — but he has an incurable flaw.  House’s is his very bad bad leg and the drug habit it forces him into; the Doctor’s is that while a nominative “Time Lord”, he’s also Time’s victim, his temporary victories backgrounded by loss after loss after loss.  Sherlock’s is the propensity for boredom that leads him to using coke.

But I think the “wounded healer” is also the healer who knows, from personal experience, that sometimes the best cure is obtained by getting out of the way and permitting the patient’s body (or mind) to heal itself the best way it knows how, which is what you said in your post above.  I like your phrasing, that “through the wounds comes the healing.”  Do you know the songs of Leonard Cohen,sometimes called the Canadian Bob Dylan?  A quote from one of his songs: “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”

 

 

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@soundworld  Sounds as if some heaviness is lightening up for you — for me, too, anent health issues; the new year looks better in that respect (if few others), so, cheers!  And yes, the darkness in the stories is crucial to the lightness.  Part of what’s shown there is that coming up from the depths for clean, bright air isn’t always just a matter of changed circumstances; it can also be a matter of courage.

The Doctor is always about courage, I think because so rarely carries weapons (I think this is why viewers get uneasy when the sonic screwdriver is used too heavy-handedly in DW stories).  He can’t resort to big guns, or super-powers to overcome bad guys or bad events because he doesn’t have any super-powers (or guns), apart from his intelligence and a limited form of immortality granted to him by the TLs (not inherent in the Doctor himself, have I got that right?).

In the most important way, he’s not alien at all, but just like us: losses and failures afflict him, and he suffers (really — no shouting “NOOOOOO!!!” at the sky, glaring at the floor for a minute, and then zooming back to *real* stuff like blowing things up — you’re right, some things that hurt, hurt hard, very hard.).  He grieves, he mourns, but he pulls himself out of it and goes on about his Doctor-job of saving people where he can.  When you’re sunk in darkness, it takes courage to keep believing in light, letting it in so you can move, act, respond to necessities outside of your own miserable feelings.   Well; these recent seasons have resonated round here, too.

@thane15  Streep was grand; donald continues to be vile.  She was talking about that light, wasn’t she?  In darkening times.  He doesn’t talk about it; he and his cronies *are* the darkness.  He denies, by the way, that he mocked that journalist.  Doesn’t matter that it’s out there on film; it never happened, because he says so.

Yuck, enough of that; hugs to your mum and to you, because we can all use hugs.

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I have to admit, I was put off by the crazy-house kaleidoscope of “6 Thatchers”, and Mary as done til “Lying Detective” didn’t make a lick of sense to me — but here, IMO, she finally comes across as a woman John Watson might fall in love with, and marry, and miss.  Of course, she can be a much-softened Mary as John, and John alone, sees her . . . that would work, too.

@pedant  Craft is such an underrated talent in writers.

Sometimes I think this is just because people, particularly self-identified clever people, like to think of themselves as brilliant *potential* writers, who have just never had the time — you know, 1o minutes robbed from the morning shave — to sit down and scribble out a story.  The way good writers do.

To which I reply, when *I* have the time: No, children: that’s *Mozart* you’re thinking of, and probably rarely even him.

Most people never have a clue how much work effective writing is, and they avoid finding out to preserve what they think of as their natural right to hold writers in contempt.  That, at any rate, is an attitude I’ve commonly found in the US, for anything other than “hysterical realism” (Tom Wolfe et al), which is, of course, part of “mainstream fiction”.  They don’t even realize that “mainstream” is meaningless, just as “Best Seller Blockbuster Breakout Success etc.” is itself a sub-genre.  Like Westerns or Science Fiction, but better paid.  Well-written TV scripts make them even crazier with envy, because that pays well and gets a lot of attention, and look at all that blank space on the pages!  It’s not even lots of words!

 

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@mudlark  since when has ‘clever’ become a derogatory term?

Since the haters were too addled to realize that it clearly means, “cleverer and I am, and I hate, hate, hate him/them/it for it!”

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Just finished the first season of “The OA” on Netflix today — loved it.  But I can’t figure out how they can move on to a second series without effing up the first one.  I hope they will surprise me, in a very good way . . .

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@pedant   I did start “Ascension” but all the goofy politics became a bit annoying, so I sort of forgot about it.  I’ll take another look.  Thanks!

Ichi

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@pedant  Longmire isn’t reachable for you through Netflix?  That’s where I’m watching it.  Love it; and the NA material is probably more than usually accurate, given that an NA friend of the author is an official advisor on the show in that department.

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@missrori  Goodness, yes!  Maybe parents are more critical of that sort of thing here because here in the US we had that mad “comic books will pervert your children’s brains!!” scare from Dr. Frederick Wertham back in the fifties, and then the “bad music will rot your children’s morals!!” scare, and then the “Play these records backwards and they’re hymns to Satan!!” scare, and then the “Children’s books about struggling with drugs and alcohol and sex will reveal to your kids that these things exist!!” and gods know what I’ve missed since.  Well, maybe every western culture gets these waves of fanatical censorship, always articulated in terms of “But what about the children!”

I know grown-ups who had a tough time with that part of “Heaven Sent”; I’m not one of them, but I don’t think I’d put that poster on my wall . . . maybe it’s kids who might want to or need to, but the nightly news will do it for me.

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@pedant   Indeed we do — really good stuff, and there’s an occasional edge of supernaturalism in it that I think is very well done (I haven’t come across any reactions to it from tribal people here) (maybe I should go look for some).  It provides more depth, or perhaps creates an illusion of depth . . . ?

[ichabod @replies]

@thane15   Oh, you’ll have a blast with Netflix — pedant has listed the pick of the crop.  I’m into about #3 of the Canadian show “Travelers” and liking it, nothing like “Fringe”.  I also keep up with “Longmire”, a modern western supposedly taking place in Wyoming, but shot up around Santa Fe; I liked the books (guy called Johnson who’s actually been a Sheriff in Wyoming), so I looked in, liked this a lot.  Excellent observation of the current friction between Anglos and Indians (well, up north it’s more Cowboys and Indians, I guess).

“Jessica Jones” has gotten raves from a lot of people; I’m less impressed, but it’s worth a look, I think.  Also my favorite UK detective series, set in and around Newcastle Upon Tyne, “Vera”.  We went on a dig in South Shields (other side of the river from Newcastle), a Roman Fort, one summer.  I couldn’t believe how beautifully “Vera” is shot, especially the first series — really captures the place.

Lots else, but you’ll find them — there’s an Australian show, maybe you know it?  “Glitch”, it’s called, and Netflix has the first season up.  It’s an Australian take on “The Returned”, I think — peculiar, but locally flavorful (I think).  US made a version too, dead awful.

Glad you liked “House” — loved it!

 

[ichabod @replies]

@thane15  I’m glad to here your mum is feeling better, sorry to hear that you’ve been sick — don’t be a bag of bones!  Eat stuff!  Feel much much much better, both of you, and a happy new year!

Ichi

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