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31 December 2016 at 05:00 #54963
@missy This special stands alone, and most definitely for kids. I don’t think you (you generally) can compare it with the others.
I’d agree with that; it’s definitely family viewing, and reassurance for all those who got really rattled and upset about their beloved kid show from when they were kids, suddenly (and quite deliberately) grown up for the older end of the audience spectrum. With little flashes, of course, of adult nostalgia and satire, and the Doctor’s lingering melancholy over losing River (and, by implication, Clara) for the grown ups.
One little scene really stands out for me, though, and that’s the one with adolescent Grant sitting on a bench in the school hallway refusing to look the other kids as they pass because he can’t control his X-ray vision. The Doctor spots young Lucy as the person Grant likes the most, and Grant says, “How do you know?” And he has risen, still in his seated position, up the wall (via his “super-powers”, and as a far from subtle metaphor for helpless arousal, particularly since the kid has both hands clamped over his crotch in a miserable attempt at concealment). So the Doctor, all quiet sympathy, calmly draws him back down onto the bench by one knee, and we’re off somewhere, gone from my memory.
That is a remarkable little scene: gently comic, warm, and kind, addressing directly the onset of problems of puberty, and aimed at boys without snark. An impressive little moment of quiet cross-species, cross-age-cohort sympathy and support, and IMO above and beyond the call of duty for an episode tailored primarily for youngish kids . . .
@thane15 The lurgy? I don’t know what this is but it sounds very bad!
That is, I believe, the dreaded lurgy, right out of Monty Python, and is a comedy version of the scrapie, a real (?) disease that can afflict Scottish sheep. Or maybe just sheep in Scotland.
Everybody wants Mr. Huffle, though if your dog got hold of him, you might have send them both into exile for the sake of your sanity. Assuming, that is, that Mr. Huffle actually can emit that range of sounds, rather than being just a prop for the sound man to attach some squeals to as needed.
All in all, I enjoyed the show very much and thought it pretty much perfect for Christmas. I do have one question, though: Young Grant tells the upside-down swinging Doctor outside the window that *he is expected*, but if there was ever an explanation of why Grant’s mom is indeed expecting the Doctor and has Grant invite him in, I missed it. Anybody tell me what that was about?
25 December 2016 at 17:31 #54910@missy Thanks for your good wishes; I’ll just stay clear of any discussion (or discussion page) of the Christmas Special until after I’ve seen it Tuesday, so please, feel free to rave away!
The year is almost over . . . all best to everyone for a (magically?) better 2017!
25 December 2016 at 06:59 #54901@missrori No “Mysterio” for me til next Tuesday — I’ll be seeing it in a cinema plex thing Tues. night, since my current TV services aren’t delivering it at home. Bah. I’ll have to go across the blasted river for it! Ah, well. We’ll see.
No Christmas lights show downtown this year, no tours. Everybody’s still shellshocked around here from the election. One of my cousins came by with his wife, and my sister drove in from her place, and we had a good time just sitting and talking (since the humidity has been 90+ and I’m having knee trouble and couldn’t go take a walk anywhere), had a couple of good meals, and off they’ve gone. That’ll do just fine. Tomorrow, I visit the Dementia unit. It’ll be a zoo, no doubt, but the kids send a present. Frankly, I’d rather just lie down and sleep for a month. Maybe more . . .
Happy thingamajig, everyone!
22 December 2016 at 20:35 #54895Some of what Peter Capaldi says in this radio interview could be regarded as spoiler-y (that man is *always* in trouble about this kind of thing! Love him for it — it’s just enthusiasm spilling all over the place).
19 December 2016 at 21:18 #54892@whisht Sorry for your losses — some chez moi as well, what with oldness advancing in my age cohort and all. So sympathies, of course. You too, janetteb.
@pedant HoRS stays as wonderful as it was the first time round; I have hopes for “Mysterio”, but after this long in the desert, I’m not feeling all that picky.
Couldn’t log on for a while, glad to get through again in time for upcoming comments on “Mysterio”. Nobody will ever get my password (even if they could spell it correctly), so I wish they’d stop trying so hard. Not gonna happen, persistent efforts are just a damn nuisance. (“Nuisance” is a very odd-looking word; must look it up, after I finish some chores and a million or two other things).
14 December 2016 at 07:21 #54871@missy are any of you finding it hard to wait for the Christmas Special? Or is it just me?
It’s not just you. I am gnashing my teeth to gnubbins! Come ON, already — !
9 December 2016 at 07:18 #54856@pedant Thanks so much for the update. One worries . . . or rather, we all do, I think.
25 November 2016 at 08:08 #54802@mssy One more — S10 — is assured, since they’ve finished filming it. After that — nobody knows for certain. He has, or has not (depending on the source) been asked to stay for Chibnal’s first series, S11.
24 November 2016 at 01:04 #54799@missy This multiple-channel mind process hit me first when I was watching rehearsals for a stage play. The actors would do a scene, everybody uptight and emotional, and then one would stop, completely dropping the “act”, and ask the Director if maybe *this* would be more effective, and then bam, he’s back in that charged dramatic moment again but moving differently, changing voice pitch — and then it all stops and they have a conversation about blocking because of what another actor has noticed about the waste basket being in the way — that’s when I realized that there’s a whole level of professionalism going on under the presentation of the text. Acting isn’t only an art; it’s a profession, with rules, tricks, shortcuts, and techniques, and your actors have to learn all that and be able to run it in their heads as a sort of ongoing systems check *while* emoting or menacing or whatever on stage and remembering their lines. I’m assuming this goes for filming as well, but more so — more “takes” to get it right, bits filmed out of order, more technical stuff to keep track of.
I’ve read that Ian McKellen broke down on set during the filming of LOTR, miserable because he’d been stuck in front of a green screen all day, acting in a virtual vacuum, to be filled in later with CGI creatures and such. That was not, he protested, what his job was supposed to be. I suppose part of the reason that screen acting, not stage, pays the big bucks.
@missrori Thank you! Capaldi does have that voice to work with, too. Not everyone is so fortunate. Was it John Gilbert, a matinee idol of early Hollywood films, who lost his career when sound came in because his voice, hitherto unheard, was thin and squeaky? He wasn’t the only one that happened to, either, as I recall.
23 November 2016 at 18:12 #54796@pedant — Ah. Thank you! If I think of it as every set of probabilities (as percentiles) must add up together to 100%, am I getting it right? It’s the bare-naked “one” that threw me.
23 November 2016 at 06:07 #54793@mudlark @missy Too much for me; I can’t get past needing the sum of the interactions to add up to one. Why? Is there an explanation graspable through lay English? The imaginary object, though, is wonderful — it might be timey-wimey, but how can we tell whether it’s also wibbly-wobbly or not?
Nice, though; intriguingly simple-looking, especially given what sure seems to me to be the complexity of matter of the article that follows. Richard Feynman would undoubtedly be hugely amused to be thought of as the inventor of a Rube Goldberg contraption, though — he was a man of sparkly good humor, from what I’ve seen of him on film.
23 November 2016 at 05:51 #54792@missrory Perhaps the Twelfth Doctor’s story is indeed not a grand one, but one where he comes to recognize the goodness in himself at last, to fully accept that he is lovable…just some thoughts.
“Am I a good man?” Measuring himself against Robin Hood, Santa, and now — GMan, at Xmas? The tension between the larger-than-life legendary hero and the Doctor, who doubts himself although *we* know that he is a good man by intention at least, is part of the draw of #12 for me.
@thane15 A lot of it is surface and that’s why I like this Doctor: what you see is what you get but people need to look below.
Yes — you *can* look deeper if you want to, if “what you see” suggests that there’s more beneath the surface that you can “get”. Those who don’t want to go looking, or don’t know how to do that yet, can be happy with the action and comedy on the surface. I’m thinking of nine and ten year olds (or younger), in it for the laughs and the action, or so it seems to me, looking back (it’s a long time since I’ve been nine or ten, so correct me if you recall it differently from closer to). The kids can zip along for the thrills. Thing is, to work on different levels like that, you need an actor who knows how to use quiet and stillness and gesture (and gets opportunities for them in script and direction) to spur us into thinking that *he* is thinking, is reflecting, is capable of entertaining himself inside his own mind, and above all is intelligent enough to conduct ruminations of significance.
You know when CapDoc pauses before a serious ethical choice, say, he gives off all the signals of a man in a maelstrom of rapid, multi-deimensional thought, considering many options and their likely consequences.
But Capaldi doesn’t need to do that; he already knows what choice he’s going to make, and why. So what’s most likely *really* going on in his mind is lightning-fast flickers of something like this: “That’s my next mark, the turn here will look better if I sling the coat-skirts out more, inhale here for that shouted line coming up, Actor B has dried, fill in and cover quick — ” He’s thinking an actor’s thoughts, and *acting* the character thinking, while a shadow-play is also going on inside his head of the ghosts of the feelings that the character has during this moment, and from that level spontaneous actions and reactions can spike, sharpening the effect of the scene. (Mind you, my own acting experience is tiny; alternatives, corrections, additions, etc. appreciated).
He eats soup; what does it mean? You can ask that question because Capaldi projects a person eating soup with concentrated purpose that goes beyond just eating soup (at the barn), and eats soup in a slightly less focused way in the Dial because he’s also musing about the time loop he’s stuck in and still trying to get the measure of. The guy can *act*.
21 November 2016 at 19:55 #54786@missy — Yep; the meaning, I guess, of this one or that one is my type — or *not* my type.
18 November 2016 at 08:04 #54755If they go pretty boy again, I will probably jump ship. It’s not that I’m “against” youth, but from where I sit these days, overactive snarky kiddish heroes aren’t offensive — they’re just overfamiliar, dull, and I haven’t got time to wait for them to grow up. Been; done. “Merchandise” is just cheap clutter; when it becomes the core concern, the real story is done. I think it might just be time, by next summer anyway, to get back to doing my own work.
But you never know . . . There’s always left field.
13 November 2016 at 10:14 #54710@missrori Thanks for the fanfic; it does illustrate your opinion, and in an imaginative and moving way. As commentary, let me pull back a bit to a different perspective, a writer’s perspective, a story-teller’s (and eager reader’s and viewer’s) perspective. The impulse to make it up to the Doctor for all he’s gone through and all he’s lost by the end of S9 makes sense to me: we need ways to do this.
Because life doesn’t, or maybe rarely permits it to happen. We invent gods and Gods to try to explain injustice away, and stories to right the wrongs of goodness and heroism denied, unnoticed, or dismissed and forgotten. That’s what heroic poetry is about, isn’t it — “This happened, these great deeds were done at great cost! Remember it, celebrate it, honor the best of us by reciting their stories over and over forever!”
Or — for a while, maybe a long while, but “forever” isn’t for us mayflies and our blink-of-an-eye species. [The dinosaurs dominated the Earth for, what, 4 million years? At the rate we’re going, we’ll be lucky to make it to four thousand.] This is part of what persuades me that in this cold universe of mathematical rules, inescapable causes and effects, unbendable trajectories millennia long, we — sentient, sapient, emotional beings in any physical form — are the soul of this place, of this plane of existence (assuming, as I do, that there are other, non-physical planes). We are “God” in the making; our function is to witness, endure, and lament the suffering, acknowledge the rage (as in your story), and expand our compassion to its utmost, which I think is acceptance.
I don’t mean that we learn to stand back and just let suffering happen even though we could intervene, but that we do what we can to ameliorate it without railing against it, because it’s part of the bedrock nature of physicality (so are contentment, laughter, joy, and love). The greatest of our sages (I’m thinking of Buddhists now) react as any compassionate soul would, while being fully aware that suffering as a condition of physical life can’t be “cured” or abolished because it’s built into physicality per se (read about predators and parasites in Nature — I don’t much, any more, because I can only take so much ongoing, irremediable horror).
Souls are invulnerable and immortal (I think) by definition; bodies feel pain and fear. Where else can souls learn compassion except in vulnerable bodies? I think that is our project, our education, and eventually the enlightenment that frees us from physicality permanently.
The Doctor is still struggling with this; he is not (thank goodness) presented to us as having resolved the predicament of being both triumphant soul and doomed body, even though he’s so old and experienced. Part of his perennial youthfulness is his furious protest against suffering, loss, injustice, and oppression. This is, I think, the reality of maturing souls, which is why he speaks so strongly to us: we feel that way too. He’s the hero in us that we could express if we were braver, more foolish, more angry (and sometimes we do express it, because we are those things for a while at least). And that’s why the Doctor erroneously, as it happens, says he will take and hold all that pain and rage so others won’t have to — no. Sooner or later, we all have to. The ways in which we try to shield ourselves must, in the end, be discarded. Then we’re ready to get the hell out of here for good.
I remember saying to a spiritual-type friend of mine, “Nobody gets out of here unscathed.” She answered, “No; we *come* here to be scathed.” I wanted to punch her out, but damn it, I think she’s right. Scathed, and exhilarated as only the sentient body can be exhilarated (scent, taste, luscious color, momentarily perfect gesture, ravishing sounds, etc.). Our anger is justified. Our compassion is *earned*, and it takes (I believe) a long damned time.
Agh. Enough! It’s 3:15 a.m. and I am somewhat drunk (Trump has made drunks of so many of us . . . !). Apologies for the ramble; thanks for the story; companions are a convention. We are the Doctor, and the Doctor is us.
13 November 2016 at 07:32 #54707@thane15 Yes, it’s going to get worse, IMO. And it will be a long time before it gets better. The fact HRC has won the *popular* vote by a margin of nearly 2 million votes makes it impossible for progressives to just meekly bow and accept the evil farce of a Trump presidency. To add fuel to the fire, it’s the idiots who spent the past 8 yrs attacking, slandering, and limiting President Obama who are now piously “reminding” us that now that Trump has “won”, everyone must respect him and “give him a chance”. It’s so outrageous that it’s keeping Democratic rage on the boil, and even intensifying it.
Now, Democratic rage tends to be a pretty tame affair and to take a very long time to result in change (see: Vietnam War protests). But this time is, perhaps, different. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, hugs to you for kicking out friends who cheer Trump’s fake “victory” (and you’re probably right about their motives, too; the world is stuffed to bursting with pathetic numpties who can’t think for themselves or choose not to). And don’t worry about swearing; I’ve been cursing a blue streak since this travesty of an election, and so have all the Democrats I know. It’s justified.
13 November 2016 at 07:20 #54706@mudlark Yes on your observations and speculations, but there’s another possibility, and it’s far more frightening than Trump himself. Many knowledgeable commentators have been pointing out that Trump has never done any real work in his life, since he never needed to, and is accustomed to demanding what he wants and getting it; he thinks he’s been elected King of America. When he discovers how the structure of the government and the principles in the Constitution constrain his childish will, he may very well implode in a real way, or just walk away —
leaving the US to be led by Vice President Mike Pence, who is a smart, ruthless, politically experienced Republican intent on canceling women’s rights entirely and imposing a Christian theocracy on the country. And he might well have enough support among Congressional Republicans to actually take steps in those directions.
Frankly, I’d rather have 4 yrs of Drumpf lurching about in frustration than any amount of time ruled by a villain like Pence.
12 November 2016 at 06:50 #54697@missrori the Twelfth Doctor is in need of an overarching story for his tenure.
Good question; I’ve wanted for a long time to see him seriously set about using time travel to return to the scenes of some of his uncorrected “mistakes”, and try to “make amends” for what he can’t fix (which is probably an awful lot, come to think of it).
What might be the greatest mistake, that such a line of development might end with?
12 November 2016 at 06:45 #54696@thane15 Thing is, when you talk to some of the younger people I know they forget SO fast who has died and what they meant. They were sad over Alan Rickman but then they forgot!
Life runs very fast and wide these days; you have to *want* to hang back a bit and examine the depths. Maybe youngsters, in particular, forget so fast because there’s so much flooding in all the time, and they haven’t had time yet to build filters to help them concentrate and remember.
12 November 2016 at 06:41 #54695There was just an interview with Cohen in the New Yorker Magazine — in it he said that he saw not conflict between his many years of Zen study and his recent return to Judaism, because Zen isn’t a religion: it’s a practice. So neatly put, and so true IMO (apart from people who insist on worshiping the Buddha as if he were a god, which I think would be anathema to the man himself). And also that he was still working on several projects, but ready to die if his number came up.
I love some of his songs, and his growly bass, and his soulful melancholy. Sorry he’s gone.
12 November 2016 at 06:30 #54694@mudlark et al — Well explained, and yep, I *was* asleep, and soon shall be again. A couple of notes —
The Electoral College was set up by the Founders of the Constitution because they were distrustful of popular democracy and wanted to avoid a popular vote, possibly driven by factional, ill informed and irrational impulses, resulting in the election of someone unfitted for the office.
It was also a result of the concern (particularly from Jefferson) that without the Electoral College, states with larger aggregations of voters (ie, cities) would have too much power v. the bigger but more sparsely populated states. It was also part of a compromise around the issues of slavery, although I don’t recall the exact terms. It wasn’t just mob rule the Framers were worried about; it was an over-riding power edge accruing to more urbanized states, to the detriment of farmers and plantation owners etc. in rural states. People are talking about trying to do away with the Electoral College now, but that won’t happen: it works to favor the Republicans now — more rural areas, and they hold power. Besides, it would take a nation wide series of votes to amend the Constitution, and nobody sane wants to open *that* can of worms (what other changes might be forced by reactionary, misogynist racists, given the opportunity?).
As for the loathsome Trump, my sister reminds me that he’s been a lifelong supporter of Democrats and contributor to Democrat-supported causes, but said some years ago that if he were to enter politics, he would enter as a Republican because Republican voters are so stupid that they can be led anywhere. Those are very close to his exact words. She thinks he might revert to his earlier self after some experience of the actual job of President.
I think not (given the crowd of evil vultures he seems bent on naming to his cabinet), and in some ways it scarcely matters. I’ve already heard from a friend about someone who committed suicide last night, out of fear that Trump and the Republican Congress would repeal Obama care, which would mean the loss of access for her to the medicines and care that have been maintaining her life against chronic illness.
I expect to hear of more such miseries. This shit is not a joke, especially to POC and immigrants. It’s a crime. The man himself is a criminal, and he inspires criminal behavior in others. Again, a report by a man going out for pizza and having men in a passing vehicle yell “Faggot!” at him and fling a rock that struck him in the face. My sister came in for lunch yesterday and told me she’d seen workmen scrubbing giant graffiti off an overpass on the interstate — a swastika.
Of course.
11 November 2016 at 04:29 #54675@mudlark grateful universe stepping in to guide a new companion to his door. Missy did that with Clara, largely to the benefit of the Doctor, although her motives were not entirely altruistic, but I think he would rather take his time and find companions for himself
As I think about it, I’m seeing it differently. A grateful universe (or Fate, or, for all we know, the Tardis herself) is standing back and giving him the most important thing he needs after losing Clara: time on his own to get back to what it feels like to be on his own and how to do that and be that, after his being part of the CapDoc/Clara hybrid for untold stretches of time banging around the universe together. He has to remember, not Clara, but how to be the Doctor, not Guardian Angel to Clara with a sideline in adventure. And time to recover emotionally, even if he can’t remember why his emotions are still ragged (enough to drive him around the world looking for someone he knows almost nothing about). I think he needs healing time, not the distraction of getting to know some stranger who needs to be familiarized with the Tardis and with him.
And that leaves the way open for a colorful, striking, and enjoyable intro of a new companion in S10, separated from the S9 loss so he, and we, can be fully present for that new person and new beginning. That certainly works for me as a fan; but I’m one of those people who’s content in their own company, so of course I imagine “my” Doctor to be that way too, even if he does go a bit neurotic if his solitude goes on too long.
10 November 2016 at 09:17 #54660@thane15 We say “going off the grid” here; it means pioneering your own little homestead somewhere, raising your own food, building your own stuff and so on, a bit like the Amish — all old fashioned, but disconnected as much as possible from modern “civilization”. The “grid” is the electric power grid of wires and stations; solar cells and/or small generators are preferred, I believe.
I think of it as the modern version of the back-to-nature hippies of the sixties, only with better tools and so on. We’ve got people here in New Mexico doing that, mostly in communes, but also outside the edges of town. I run into some of them at the big Trader Joe’s grocery here or the co-op sometimes, so . . . ?
10 November 2016 at 09:08 #54658@missy “Parades End” was pretty good; I just watched the BBC version of “A Dance to the Music of Time”, and right now another series (on Acorntv) from a novel I’d never heard of, “The Camomile Lawn”, all about a sweet and pleasant England blown to smithereens by war.
I put a critical comment about “Strange” on the movies discussion — I enjoyed the beginning, but as it never got any deeper below the “action” surface (with its light but glossy polish of Asian martial arts spiritualism), I got bored, so it felt too long. I liked the cloak, of course. Who wouldn’t like the cloak?! Cumberbatch — not yet, for me. He needs another decade and a half, at least. I prefer them marked a bit by Time and experience (well, why not? I am, and so are most of my friends!).
10 November 2016 at 08:57 #54657@thane15 The people calling up “help lines” for consoling conversation are my people, the 57% that worked and voted for Clinton, only to see all that effort and eager anticipation blown sky-high by the reactionary dumb-heads of the Republican party and its toxic fringes. We’re in shock; they’re celebrating what they think is a win in appropriately (to the crudeness of their candidate) loud, overblown, and colorful fashion.
There were demonstrations, mostly by young people who voted for Clinton, in the streets of New York, Chicago, Oakland (California — largely a black city), and Portland, Oregon; maybe you saw that on TV news. People walking in the rain, with escorts of police (probably to protect them from over-exuberant yahoos on the Right), with home-made signs. Then they all went home (I think). Sad, and useless, really. They would all have voted for Jed Bartlett too, I’ll bet.
Sorry about your own political collywobbles and venomous political vermin — everybody does seem to have them now, but that’s only to be expected: the entire world is facing an oncoming storm of environmental threats and losses, and until Washington DC actually has to be picked up and moved 50 miles inland (it’s built on a swamp) because of rising sea levels, denial and reaction seem to be the standard response here in my “exceptional” country, but not only here.
If I had some whiskey, I’d make a whiskey sour (if I had some limes, and if I had some rum), but no; so it’s red wine tonight, and yes, lots of swearing. LOTS. The cats are looking at me funny.
More wine; and apologies to you, Puricle. The mess your generation is facing in your futures is a truly crappy legacy from recent generations; some of us did try, ‘cuz we love and respect yours, but the dunderheads, driven by greed and fear (among much else of a similar stench), have been too much for us.
I hope you and yours will see much better times. Best to your mum, always.
10 November 2016 at 08:37 #54654I went to see “Dr. Strange” on Monday, wondering what Cumberbatch would bring to this Marvel Comic story. My verdict: the movie is very pretty to look at, especially through 3D “glasses” — very detailed and impressive CGI. The acting is — appropriate. But it’s really no more than just what it purports to be — a filmed comic book. Where “superheroes” are concerned, that generally means shallow characters, predictable plot, nearly non-stop hyped up violence that has no particular effect apart from knocking over unimportant game pieces, and written in dialog balloons (not much room for words, but that’s okay — not much to say, either). The music is completely forgettable, like most of the story (and it’s a *very* basic story).
One very odd thing, though, really jumped out at me: Strange has a brief confrontation with the Big Bad in which he gets killed, magically comes back and is killed again, over and over maybe 5-6 times, and then [solution by talking, though in this case zipped past so fast you could almost miss it] happens. Very “Heaven Sent”, only soooo *not* . . .
I saw a quote from Cumberbatch, in answer to why he took the job (which probably entails a three-film contract at least), something like: “They backed up a truck full of money to my house; I’m not made of stone!”
Pity. I’ve been hoping he would age up into an interesting actor; maybe he will, but looks like it will be the long way round now. Well, good luck to him; nobody says you *have* to see this generic “origin” story or the inevitable sequels trailing off into infinity.
10 November 2016 at 08:11 #54652I’m out of shock sufficiently to post now — a friend and I called off a lunch date today because we both felt so gut-punched by the victory of the Deplorables. And it is pretty much a total victory — White House, both houses of Congress, and pretty soon, the Supreme Court, when that miserable excuse for a man makes his appointments from among his loathsome gang of reactionary cronies.
And, as has been pointed out in the news, Clinton won the popular vote — not by much, but she did in fact win the election. To our sorrow and our rage, the Electoral College will nonetheless give the Presidency to Trump. We are SO screwed. “We” here is the 57% of the popular vote that HRC got, now nullified by the very system that’s supposed to help guard the country against demagogues like Trump.
Good discussion here of very, very bad times; and thanks, all, for your thoughtful comments, condolences, and outrage on behalf of the disenfranchised 57%.
I’m sorry that the Doctor is fictional, and sorry that our hopes have been dashed to pieces with no recourse in sight. I’m also sorry for my grandkids, but glad that I’m old. Wish I could feel differently; it’s extremely weird, actually. Back when W Bush was thrown his election by the Supremes, I felt much the same, and someone recommended that instead of sitting around glooming, I might try some embarking on some large, long term project, like painting a mural depicting the course of mammalian evolution.
Of course this wasn’t any sort of real-world option, but just thinking about doing it helped restore my long-sight perspective, and that really did help. Trying to get to that place again now, but I think it’s just too soon. And it’s got to be a *lot* harder to achieve, given the enormity of this new defeat, and its implications. My sister has been having anxiety attacks, and so have many people — there are items in the on-line news about various crisis help-lines being inundated with people desperate for something to defuse their shock, fear, and despair.
10 November 2016 at 07:28 #54651@mudlark Oh, that’s a good summary of the Doctor/Clara dilemma and its resolution! Concise, too, which I have to admire.
for a split second the man’s face becomes that of Clara as he would have seen her just before he lost consciousness in the stolen tardis.
I saw that, and assumed it was a momentary flash of what had just happened to him before the man in the pickup truck bent over him: Clara, having got him settled on the ground before leaving him there, looking down at him with, as I recall, fondness (but I may be just adding that in memory) — and then a fade to the immediate instant, where it’s the pickup driver bending over him to wake him. I didn’t think of it as CapDoc’s last look at her in the Tardis because her expression here didn’t fit that moment — it was more wistful than grieving. But nope, you did not imagine it.
@missrori I think a flaw of the very fine Series 9 was that because it focused on multi-part stories, it didn’t allow for a lot of sunny outcomes or joy.
True — that was, I think, part of the slow build toward the ending, to heighten the feeling that both the Doctor and Clara seemed to have that doom was impending for one or both of them (as indeed it proved). Very effective, too, not to interrupt that darkening trajectory with much in the way of sunshine. But tragedy brings its own rewards and gratifications, so that didn’t bother me — I expect lots more ebullient fun in S10, now that those painfully (and wonderfully) turbulent two seasons are resolved.
Gallifrey was not worth saving and returning to after all.
I think it was — but he was too driven and distracted by his compulsion to rescue Clara from her death to notice, or take any joy in it. Isn’t that a recurring theme, though? You can’t go home again, but if you do arrive there, it’s not the home you recall any more (or it’s too much the home you recall but complete with the cruelty and injustice that you tend to forget when you’re away). Doesn’t the Doctor always get into trouble at “home”? Yes — because without trouble, there’s no story! For the record, though — I think your 2 cents will get you some fine delights in S10. And I agree that the world is far too full of people who ration what compassion they have, and only allot bits of it to people like themselves, not “those Others”.
@thane15 It’s not about the Doctor -or just Clara. Is his life more important than kids on Gallifrey? Is peppy pretty Clara more important than a withered tired lady on Gallifrey?
And that, IMO, is exactly why he realizes that he must part company with Clara: because his obsession with her is distracting him from all those others whom he needs, to be the “good man” he wants to be, to help if he can — not just Clara first, last, and always.
@winston A friend of mine says that those flashes, or even moments, of joy teach us just as much as moments and hours and years of misery and suffering do, but that it takes time for people to realize this and get beyond thinking that we — and everybody else — only really learn by pain (“that’ll teach you!”).
Also the Doctor does have his moments of joy — the joy of victory, victory on *his* terms, without doing violence; the joy of discovery; and the joy of sharing the beauty and excitement of the universe with an admiring, wonder-struck companion. Not too bad a selection of delights, IMO, for a very old alien space-wanderer.
10 November 2016 at 06:38 #54650@missy Got it — Terrence Stamp! In “The Limey”, and that thing with Matt Damon, I think, running about chased by a bunch of future bureaucrats through lots of doorway from one street to halfway across the park or something . . . He’s got this weird, sort of dried up beautiful old gangster look to him now. Stamp, not Damon.
Timothy Dalton — did you see him in the series “Penny Dreadful”? Nice beard, looked really good on him.
There was a discussion someplace — ?? — about Cumberbatch being the Doctor at some point — I’d just seen “Dr. Strange”, as had most of the discussants — some enthusiastically pro, most not. Not, I would say. He’s got the build, and the long-ish face, but it’s like plastic — maybe he just needs to age out a bit, as he’s still quite a young man.
4 November 2016 at 04:37 #54554@mudlark @janetteb Good, good stuff — history is a marvel, but in the US it isn’t honored at all, but regularly replaced by myths and propaganda, which we know because every now and then a trove of documents of some kind throws the spotlight of reality on some famous incident, there’s a flare-up, and it’s all forgotten as the self-aggrandizing and often vicious myth settles back into place as if nothing had happened.
This happened fairly recently, when a historian burrowing around in some archives in Madrid found an account of the “Battle of the Alamo” written by a Mexican officer who fought in that battle and participated in its aftermath. The usual heroic story was exposed as nonsense at best, flat-out lies for the most part (I can’t recall details — this discovery was publicized maybe a decade ago), but of course Texas went crazy in a foamy-mouthed defense of their precious myth of the exceptional, wonderful, courage and endurance of Us and the contemptible inferiority of the Mexicans fighters. So how did all that work out? As far as I know, the Spanish account discovery has been completely forgotten and suppressed since. If anybody knows of some acknowledgement of its existence, even, in a history text book, please tell me — I would be very heartened.
@thane15 If original documents were routinely used as the basis of teaching history, I think the world would be a rather different (for the better) place. Unfortunately, here, where many teachers used to have degrees in their fields rather than in “education courses” that drill you in writing lesson plans, these days the majority of secondary school teachers are very poorly prepared in their subject(s) and wouldn’t know *how* to teach from, say, a sample of the Federalist Papers or other such documents produced by the people of the time, because the teachers themselves don’t have enough of a solid context for those items.
For a fascinating study of the vagaries of “the historical record” itself, I recommend a slim novel by Josephine Tey, a British mystery writer of the middle of the last century, called “The Daughter of Time”. The Daughter of Time is Truth — or at least a more accurate understanding of what happened, and only if someone bothers to go back and *look* at (and think about) the evidence.
3 November 2016 at 20:34 #54548@pedant OH. Thanks, that’s useful to know. Atkins’ series definitely stressed the way even servants with very old-fashioned loyalties that they couldn’t leave behind still began to find ways outward and upward during and after the Great War. Fellowes’ series was just *weird* about the servants and how unrealistically kindly their bosses were — at least in as much of it as I could stand. And he got that pissy Lady Mary thing right down, I think, at least as observed from the outside — a spoiled brat of a certain money-bred type that’s just as familiar in certain circles in the US. And everywhere else, I expect . . .
3 November 2016 at 19:08 #54546@janetteb Thanks for moving the thread. That icky servant stuff bothered me too, although I think it was actually a pretty accurate reflection of attitudes inherited from old feudal patterns plus scarcity of employment apart from heavy duty farm and factory work at the time. The initial “Upstairs, Downstairs” series was created by a woman (Atkins?) whose mother was in fact a domestic servant, and very similar attitudes showed up there. Considering that a servant could be kicked out at any point for pretty much anything, and expelled from any prospects of further work of that kind of they left without a letter of recommendation to show to a prospective new employer, your best option would be to truly throw in your lot with your employer and make yourself as much “part of the family”, including taking on its political attitudes, as you could, I would think.
It was, as far as I recall, in the factories that unionism took hold, and that gave servants something else to define themselves *against* so as to solidify their identification with their masters and their masters’ interests. It makes economic sense — but it is tough to watch, even knowing that with WWI comes the shattering of that paradigm in no uncertain terms, so a horrifying storm of fresh air is waiting in the wings. That’s what makes the Edwardian period, especially, so nostalgia-inducing, I think: that structure worked (for those who could fit themselves into it with reasonable comfort and security for the time), until it damn well didn’t any more.
I believe that novelist Catherine Cookson also came from the servant class of that time, and wrote realistically and often rather bitterly about what the experience was really like — the more brutal aspects of it.
3 November 2016 at 18:48 #54545@missy Oh, you’re very welcome! I recall him mentioning somewhere in an interview that he had a bad time at school himself, socially at least — fat kid being bullied (his own kid, the one who did that interview with him, is very round); fat, *clever* kid, all the worse. So maybe there’s a bit of getting his own back and (however subtly and indirectly) crowing about what he’s made of himself, and well-earned, I’d say.
3 November 2016 at 18:30 #54543@missy the really good looking actors seem to coarsen with age
Yes, but then the standard of male “really good looks” in the US is always been (I think) a sort of square-jawed face, like Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable, Brando, Matt Dillon, et al, and that tends to soften and squash out laterally with age, as musculature succumbs to gravity and additional fat (although nowadays, sometimes the men get serious about exercise — and plastic surgery? — and ditch the fat, at least for a while; Mark Ruffalo did this recently, but is starting to flatten down again now). Tony Curtis was a good example — and you can see it taking hold now with our prime recent (IMO) example of “really good looking”, George Clooney.
I never, even in my teens, cared much for those guys (I square-ish face, myself, from my mom’s Austrian/Jewish forebears, now in its own squashy phase; maybe for me opposites do attract?). I’m drawn to more eccentric looks, most on the long, bony model — Guy Rolfe, Conrad Veidt, Gary Cooper, Jimmie Stewart, John Turturo (now that he’s lost that buck-toothed goofy boy look), the guy who starred in “Psycho” (his name just flew out of my head), the Brit starring in “The Limey” (another blanked name) who was boringly beautiful but has become very striking with age, and of course Peter Capaldi. Definitely Peter Capaldi . . .
I’ve always liked an older face, in both men and women — “lived in”, as they say, with lines of character to show for it, rather than a blank but pretty slate. Your list of goodies is a bit to young still for my taste, but most of them will age out very nicely.
3 November 2016 at 03:50 #54535@thane Might as well study anthropology (and sociology, and psychology); you’ll be living in it all your life anyway, unless you go off by yourself to study scorpions in the desert or something (maybe those weird little cats that hang out in the territory of snow leopards and look like bristly little chunks of granite when still — good show on cats on PBS here just now, “Nature”). Or — the physics of soccer?
3 November 2016 at 03:43 #54534@arbutus As for “being the Doctor”, I don’t think that’s something that he can choose. We saw Eleven try it after losing Amy and Rory, and it didn’t work out terribly well for him then.
Mmm, yes; it’s that identity that he occasionally drops, so that we can see him pick it up again, like a sword and shield, and move into purposeful action again. Purposeful inaction — to avoid more pain — just doesn’t seem like a long-term solution for him, pretty much ever. But it is a choice, clearly; and every once in a while we see the Doctor make that choice, reminding us to face up to our own choices, and don’t just stand there dithering or weeping.
Come to think of it, what *is* that choice, in Hell Bent? What else do you think he might have briefly considered, standing there in the lighted doorway of the Tardis with his guitar? Staying on the road as a wandering minstrel with no $ in his pockets? Walking out into the desert and letting the sun and thirst kill him? Going back to Gallifrey to organize picking up the pieces as a proper, political sort of TL?
There’s a sort of answer to the “why bother” question in Zen Buddhism, which requires a weird sort of double focus: you are advised to detach yourself from desiring things (less pain, more life, more joy, etc.), but also “chop wood, carry water” and run away screaming if a tiger is chasing you, because while you’re embodied bodily things are appropriate (even though embodiment is ultimately illusory like everything else).
“Laugh, because it’s always funny.” Well, you could put it that way . . .
3 November 2016 at 03:12 #54533@missrori Nobody’s there for him in his dark time in the confession dial. Ergo, nobody truly loves him.
At that moment, nobody’s there to show him love, but remember those 24 yrs on Derillium (or however the heck you spell it) with River? There are moments of love and gratitude all through the Doctor’s saga, and maybe more importantly, moments of true delight for him to experience for himself, like being able to tell (damn, name gone — ) the young dad and mum (and us) that their daughter is “brilliant”. You don’t get to kutzi with other people’s infant children much when you are a Bad Guy, because you’re too busy killing them. And there are the pleasures of taking on new passengers, showing them the universe, bringing out the hero in them (usually), and basking in their admiration and sometimes love. Plus, you break free and are in Gallifrey, where the country folk *and* the official military look up to you as a legendary hero — hardly an unpleasant experience for the Doctor.
And so on — there are *lots* of rewards for him in ranging round the universe being a hero/and a fool: lots of recognition and admiration, lots of fun, and triumph, and being tested and not (usually) found wanting. Plus the inevitable failures and betrayals, of course, but when you come down to it, none of i is “lasting”.
But this is DW: one subtext of the show is that *nothing* is lasting, not even the universe itself. Sisyphean? Yes, exactly — that is part of the existential dilemma: why move at all? Why speak? Why listen? Entropy always wins; we always loose, each and every one of us, the Doctor included but on a larger scale and with a much longer “tail” of sorrow and regret trailing after because he lives so long. The real reason that the Doctor is a hero is that he acts, and often acts without inhibition, in spite of the fact that nothing that anyone does, himself included, matters in the long run. As we all do, which is why the animal body is so important to us: the spirit may give up, sink into terminal depression, want to run away at any cost, but the animal body is hardwired to never give up, not til it’s forced to. So for the most part, we live until we have to die despite the fact that the game is rigged against us (and everything else). This, IMO, is what religions are for: to sugar-coat the truth. And what heroic action in the face of inevitable failure is there for too — to inspire us (all of us in the same predicament though on a shorter time scale, if we care to recognize the face) to keep going anyway.
The Doctor, we know, has no religion (because he hasn’t found any that test out as more than trickery or error); so he tends to fall into depression and wild and manic thoughts when he’s alone too long. Part of what his activities — however ultimately perishable their results — do for him is provide diversion and entertainment during his long, long TL life, so he doesn’t go just plain crazy and stay there, laughing and screaming to nobody, in the dark. How do we know this? Because, trapped in the Dial, instead of lying down and waiting to die, he gave himself a task, and a task-master (Clara-in-the-Tardis) to drive him into action.
Well, those are some thoughts, anyway. You did ask . . . <grin><skull-style>
2 November 2016 at 04:42 #54509This happened for me somewhere relatively early in “Downton Abbey”. I was bored, hardly really watching, and said to myself, “Why do I care what these rich twits and their servants are doing? Oh. I don’t.” Turned it off and never went back. I should have quit for good after the original “Upstairs, Downstairs” series, which I loved, because the revival was a let-down, and the Galsworthy series remake was awful, so what was I expecting?
On the other hand, I’ve been looking at a four part production of “A Dance to the Music of Time”, a series of books that my husband loved — but I just couldn’t get into it. Judging by the TV series, it’s just what I suspected — people constantly running into each other at various parties and gossiping about each other, and they’re almost all upper middle class at least. Yet somehow it’s really interesting to me, and I’m sorry I’m about to watch episode four and be at the end.
Ah well, never mind; I’ll watch all this Victoriana (or some of it, anyway) because of who’s in it and while it’s still fresh (as fresh as Victoriana can be, at this late date), and hope for the best . . .
1 November 2016 at 16:22 #54500@missy I know the feeling; although I’m one of the mob that was charmed and delighted by Tom Baker. The rest I could take or leave, until Peter Capaldi came on the scene. Holy moly, I was a gone goose in no time — though I’d checked out TToI (once we knew he was the oncoming Doctor), so I was pleasantly anticipating interesting work from him because of that (to tell the truth, I’d completely forgotten his performance in “Local Hero” — it had made no lasting impression).
Then, “Deep Breath”, and *wallop*! Done for.
I was talking with a friend about this lately, and realized that I’ve always been struck — in a positive way — by a certain sort of aquiline male face. She suggested that this is because I’ve somehow fixed on that template as an indicator of unusual intelligence (Sherlock Holmes, for instance, as originally described and as played most memorably by Basil Rathbone). Freeman Dyson is perhaps a real-world example of the type, boiled down to a 92 year old little man with a gnomish, twinkling look as well as a truly formidable nose (and, sure enough, intellect).
Huh. Life is — odd.
1 November 2016 at 16:03 #54499Goodness, here’s something new to me — Matt Smith’s new venture:
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20161031-ten-tv-shows-to-watch-in-november
He does clean up nice, doesn’t he? My, my. And look at that posture and bearing — Bye bye Gyrating Giraffe Boy! I will certainly look in on this — Netflix is proving an ongoing spring of sweet water that is tiding me over this Doctorless Desert of a year . . .
1 November 2016 at 05:11 #54491@missy It’s sometimes pretty hard to catch up around here — but always worth the effort!
29 October 2016 at 06:07 #54448@pedant Thank you! Now if I ever *do* remember that moment, I’ll know what the cookie was.
As for the assault on cleverness, that’s a good part of what’s driving the candidacy of Drumpf. Brexit for him and his followers is probably the proposed walling off of Mexico (and no doubt Canada too, the Creature from the Orange Lagoon gets in). However, those of us with decent brains are hopeful of a better outcome.
28 October 2016 at 17:59 #54439@janetteb Ha! I wish we had that kind of thing here (DW music in the supermarket — not so sure about something called “Jammy Dodgers” — sounds like some street hooligan to me).
Poor Moffat — part of his problem is that he so obviously *enjoys* his own cleverness (which many of his detractors simply cannot forgive). When you watch him live, you can see that he’s entertaining himself first and foremost. I suspect that he loves Sherlock Holmes so much because he himself is no stranger to being bored half out of his mind by much of what we think of as “normal life”, as Sherlock is (shooting up the house because he’s got no case to busy his mind; and it’s not even his house). As a kid, he was likely maddeningly obnoxious, early and often.
26 October 2016 at 07:44 #54398@arbutus Thanks for Weird Al, good giggles!
@puroandson re Trumpenstein — it’s all very stressful and strange. One unforeseen effect is that people are voting early in impressive numbers, Democrats probably more than Republicans, in part to avoid becoming embroiled in, well, thuggish embroilments at crowded polling places on Nov. 8. I doubt that Drumpf imagined any such thing when he encouraged his more aggressive worshipers to go “watch the polls” for that non-existent massive voter fraud that the Right always yells about around election time. Turns out, of course, that “poll watcher” is an official position with its own rules and qualifications which discourage thuggery; and that local election boards are not happy to be disrespected by Drumpf as if they have no proper function; and that many more people than usual also seem to be voting using absentee ballots, which also sidesteps the obvious “poll watcher” threat that Drumpf tried to put into play.
Which doesn’t cancel the effect of a news item a week or so ago about a local Democratic campaign HQ someplace in the South, as I recall, at which two guys with rifles took up positions outside the entrance, and when asked why, answered, “We just want them to see that we have guns”, or words to that effect. The cops were called, but apparently under local law had no authority (and perhaps no will either) to move the gun-toters along. Compare and contrast the GOP HQ that was apparently firebombed (perpetrators unknown), and which the local Democrats raised $13,000 to help restore. Pretty clearly illustrative, IMO.
My own way of coping is this: I only check the news on the computer, not the TV, when I feel like it, and I have my own absentee ballot which I will fill out and send in this weekend. The latter tack allows me to wander over to my nearest polling place on Nov. 8 and see how the turnout is going, and whether any Drumpf “poll watchers” do actually show up or not. Just curious.
Sane people here are still worried that the Republicans could pull some more nonsense out of their **ses in an “October Surprise”, but I don’t think there’s much they can do to overshadow the spectacle of Herr Drumpf’s own extraordinarily repellent performance in recent weeks. Looks as if he will end up having to go to court after all, and deal with various suits against him that election as President might have shielded him from (I’m not sure about that). And HRC will be the target of a relentless barrage of sewage spewed by the Right wing hate machine, probably for the rest of her life. She’s a tough, brave woman, flaws and all, and I’m proud of her and proud to be one of her supporters. Looking forward to her Presidency keeps me sane during this count-down to getting this done. I’m to the Left of her and I won’t approve of everything she says or does, but it will be astonishing to have lived long enough to see a Democratic woman in the Oval Office, right after a man of color who is also a Democrat.
I wish things would slow down and calm down enough for us to just sit back and enjoy the wonderment of that for a while, but nope, no such luck. Drumpf has galvanized the Party of Backlash, ie, The Reactionaries, and we’ll be dealing with that for a long time, I think.
26 October 2016 at 07:11 #54397Some chat from Moffat, for them as hasn’t seen this but are interested:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/comments/58hazv/production_notes_steven_moffat_qa_for_doctor_who/?
Clever clogs; sometimes you just want to smack him . . .
8 October 2016 at 10:09 #54166@puroandson Solo — yikes, thanks! So when I come across things like the Comicon panel I just linked to, from New York last month, should that go to Spoilers also? Probably yes, so sorry if I miss-stepped there, and can someone who knows how to do this please take that link off the new pub discussion and shove it over to Spoilers instead?
8 October 2016 at 09:20 #54164Just mooching around tonight, came across this — some charming and funny bits, and in general, I come away feeling very cheered about S10.
8 October 2016 at 05:08 #541618 October 2016 at 01:10 #54155@Puroandson And then writing “they have nothing else to do”
Thanks, Puros; that part I really didn’t trust myself to answer without ranting.
8 October 2016 at 01:02 #54154 -
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