Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
3 September 2016 at 09:01 #538373 September 2016 at 08:59 #53835
The music from “Heaven Sent” — what a good idea!
31 August 2016 at 19:41 #5382031 August 2016 at 03:28 #53815@the consulting doctor It’s a serious issue, particularly, I think, among older writers; we actually had one of our SFWA members (that’s, Science Fiction [& Fantasy] Writers of America, our pro organization) start up a older writer’s version of the “starting out” panels that the bigger conventions run, for fans who want to get published and new writers who are still getting a feel for the business end of things. The bookend session was for veterans with careers winding down or tapering/broken off for many different reasons. I remember one colleague of many years asking, with tears in her eyes, “But where has the *fun* gone? It used to be so much *fun*!” I think for women SF/F/H writers, part of the lost “fun” is having been part of this irresistible wave of young women surging into these genres on strong feminist awareness that gave us some serious “sisterhood” to balance the inherent competitiveness of all fiction fields, and finding great mobs of women *readers* who’d been looking for work like ours for years. That time is over; the new “wave” is POC and self-idenfitied queer folks riding in in a similar way (and meeting, and overcoming, the same sort of resistance). Maybe some of the lack of “fun” we complain of now is about accomplishing your revolution — *as much of it as was possible at this stage* — and dealing at the same time with the backlash (and we have one, disruptive again at the World SF Con in Kansas City this month) and with no longer being in the vanguard any more, but in the van, cheering on our successors and replacements. That’s just not as much “fun” to write about, maybe; along with the regular health obstacles of aging, and an ever shorter shelf-life.
Odd; isn’t that what a certain segment of unhappy DW fans say, too? “Doctor Who just isn’t *fun* any more!” Are we all just feeling the loss of youthful playfulness, or a time when you really didn’t have to be rich to enjoy a rewarding life, or the strain of over-population plus a heating planet and the scary future that’s already here for so many? When I as a kid, it was fear of the Russians and of polio — now we’re back to fear of Russians/N. Koreans, and pandemics of Zika or maybe zombies.
Maybe “fun” is a function of youth — energy, lots of fascinating new things in every direction, and (if you were lucky in your childhood) a tendency toward optimism and hope. For most, it can’t be held onto even if you avoid growing up internally (Peter Pan syndrome, and something analog0us in some older women). Not that depression is mandatory — but it sure is common. I hope I get past sleeping all the time as this thyroid system recovery completes itself; maybe then I’ll start writing stories again, and finding it FUN!
30 August 2016 at 20:05 #53811@theconsultingdoctor You’re welcome! Good luck, and have fun — writing fiction, for the most part, pays miserably, so it had better be fun in the doing.
30 August 2016 at 20:02 #53810@pedant — Yeh, why I don’t travel much any more . . . damn werewolves, they’re everywhere!
30 August 2016 at 09:26 #53807@theconsultingdoctor I can offer a thing a friend of mine does when she’s stuck for plot: take one of your strongest characters, by whatever standard you choose, and write yourself a letter from him or her (or it!) to you (as the story’s god) or to another character, about what’s important, what’s hoped for, and what’s feared. Sometimes you get some ideas about the “life” of this character that hold good plot hooks; sometimes it’s just getting the voice of the character going in your head. You may end up throwing most of the results away, but who cares, if this device works as a kick starter for you.
Just a thought. I’ve found this helpful a couple of times. Maybe it can be useful to you.
30 August 2016 at 09:19 #53806@pedant You’re proposing The Slaughtered Lamb as the name of the new pub? Wow! Bloodthirsty! Located on a pirate coast, maybe — Penzance? Or maybe The Regenerated Rabbit . . . ?
29 August 2016 at 05:47 #53799@puroandson Used to be, maybe, dinner chat about the latest installment of a Dickens novel in the newspaper . . . Our PBS survived by soliciting the “support” of corporate “sponsors”, ie advertising, after Republicans in Congress cut their govt support to nearly nothing; but so far, that hasn’t ruined their programming. Though there’s no telling what *doesn’t* make it onto PBS because of corporate opposition . . .
27 August 2016 at 21:03 #53796Just realized — I’d want to go see Vienna in the 1890’s, the world my mother’s family came from (though I’d have to learn German first, though having a time machine might help with that? Apparently I had a relative who traveled the back roads of the Empire collecting stories from villagers as part of his linguistics studies. Interesting, though maybe the bedbugs and food poisoning, not so much; they were a tough breed, the travelers of those days, let alone in days much longer ago than that . . .
27 August 2016 at 20:50 #5379524 August 2016 at 08:20 #53760@missy Love the kids and the coffee, and I have a horrible suspicion that they call me “Susan” because I’ve let my hair grow lately, and it makes look Susan-ish — ? I’ve worn it short for years, but haven’t been able recently to find someone who can give it a decent cut, so piff. Also, I’m curious to see if it changes at all now that the rogue parathyroid gland has been seen off the premises, and the more capable ones are waking up again to do the job properly.
78?! I am hard on your heels, ma vielle, so look out.
Camels? Really? But those *feet* — seriously alien-looking feet, actually, so maybe that’s the attraction?
@puroandson I’m watching very little TV now myself; I’ve finally got Netflix streaming working, so I’m looking at some of their original shows — there’s still a lot of junk, but also good things, for example the original “Wallander”, in Swedish with subtitles and a seriously homely detective. I’ve read some of Mankell’s books, didn’t care much for Brannagh’s versions on tv because he just played it way too over-sensitive. I mean, I thought nobody that raw could actually maintain a *career* as a cop, could they? I’m liking the Swedish version; homey and homely. No room for boxed sets, not til I clear out some of these books . . . one of these days.
24 August 2016 at 07:56 #53759@puroandson Yes, purosolo, it does seem as if whatever you give them and no matter high the quality, they (that disdainful mob) really wanted something *else* — “fun” in its most familiar form, “magic” only if it doesn’t dance with not science, but an idea of science “appropriately” SFnl, but not too far-out, you know. Bah. They’re impossible people, and not in a good way (well, even Clara only came into her own once she stepped off the “impossible” pedestal and became all too possible, properly flawed, and well worth watching, IMO).
Wherever Moffat and crew and Capaldi take their stories in 2017, it will be fascinating. We can’t actually have more of what we’ve just had — that story began with Deep Breath, and now it’s told (and what a story!). Maybe they’ll turn to a full-blown confrontation with and on Gallifrey; or perilous reckonings with old opponents like Missy (we know she has a wonderful idea, right?).
In any case, I’ll stick with it as long as Capaldi is the Doctor — he’s a master of his craft, and how often do we get to see such a person at work, and with such a team? Not often enough, is how often. Besides — like you, puro solo, I rode out a tough time on the joy and power of S8-9, and that’s made a lifetime bond. I was going through Big Stuff so I needed Big Stuff outside of myself to focus on, and DW gave me that. Now they can all do pantomime, explosions, and cartwheels for the next decade, but that gift will still stands like those Singing Towers. It can’t be un-given. The future, as it is said by the wise, is promised to no one . . . Hmm. More wine . . .
24 August 2016 at 03:17 #53742@missrori Oh, ugh, sorry to hear about your disappointment at Comicon. The thing is, I think, that however much comic books have “grown up” in recent decades (see Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, for example, or the point at which the comic book Batman took a characterological dark turn that was supposed to change superhero comics forever), most comics, for most avid readers and collectors, remain pretty juvenile — true to their original style: action, wildly inflated violence, characters and situations kept simple to allow the easy thrills and schoolboy humor to rush along unimpeded. The target audience has always been boys of all ages (much more than girls of any age), so nuance and realistic emotional range have never been salient features of the vast majority of comic book work.
That audience, by and large, isn’t going to be interested in the levels of sophistication and emotional ambition and complexity that Moffat and crew + Capaldi brought to S8 and S9 on TV. Moffat said outright in an interview not long ago that what he’s been doing with those seasons is helping “Doctor Who” to grow up. Comic book fans, probably like a majority of fans of superhero characters in any medium, are looking for exactly the opposite: endless “fun” on (at most) an adolescent level.
Something very similar holds for science fiction literature. One of the best SF conventions, Readercon, takes place near Boston every July, and I’ve gone to most of them. Readercon was founded by a top editor (and fan!) in direct opposition to the increasingly screen-centered, superhero-worshiping nature of many local SF cons around the US, as “a convention for people who love to talk about good books” in the SF/F/H field. Talented, exprimentally minded creatives are drawn to the frontiers of pop genres, where riches can be found by those daring to take chances and make changes. But that work barely touches the hard central core of fans of those genres who like them just the way they were and more of the same, please, and turns of many of them. IMO, we’ve just seen that happen with DW, and to me, the “fault” lies not in the maturity that AG Who developed, but in the inability of many fans — long-time as well as new — to appreciate and enjoy that change (although many, I think, were surprised to find that they grew to like 12/Clara/Moffat et al very much indeed, and that creates a different problem).
Wherever S10 goes, it’s going to take one he Hell of a trick to pull it off successfully for such a mixed bag of viewers. Good luck to ’em. The talent is there, but I think they’re going to need the luck, too.
23 August 2016 at 19:45 #53740@badwolf11 On Vestra’s veil — Moffat and his writers often use something that, to me, goes back to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books: the idea that people generally see what they’re used to seeing and expect to see, and miss the unexpected or misinterpret it as the expected anyway. In a science fantasy show that works really well, of course, helping them to get away with outrageous stuff that in reality would send everybody running and screaming, or otherwise stop the action flat while people fainted and went into shock. It goes along with goofy comedy carrying an underlying, serious reminder of grim reality and its dangers.
We’re meant to think of Vestra as so well adapted to the role she dresses for — the correct Edwardian (?) lady, full of the inbred confidence of her class to which others (the police boss, for instance) defer automatically — that nobody notices that she’s green and scaly behind that facade. It’s all part of a related theme in Deep Breath — our common assumption that “what we see is what we get” when looking at others (the clockwork man is taken for a man, not a robot; Strax is accepted as a human servant, not a walking potato in a suit; etc.), whereas if we paused to *really look* at someone, we might at least glimpse the true nature and character of the soul living (or not) therein.
It ties right into the outwardly transformative nature of TL regeneration that’s so central to this episode: ” . . . just . . . see me.” Vestra herself homes in on this in her scolding of Clara for recoiling from the Doctor because he no longer looks like Matt Smith, during which speech Vestra again removes her veil to underline the superficiality of a mere change of face and form.
23 August 2016 at 19:01 #5373922 August 2016 at 11:11 #53725@missy Hugs and all; it gets a but rocky up here in the mid-plus seventies, but f**k it, I ain’t dead yet! 2 miles on the treadmill at the gym Friday, that much at least tomorrow, trying to get the bones back in shape after lots of calcium loss. Sleeping life away, as calcium is a soporofic, so . . . dopey, sleepy, lotsa coffee (great little shop three minutes away by car, lovely artsy kids all sweet and pretty and tattooed to pieces serving the most yummy espresso, though they *will* call me “Susan”, which is not my name).
Ah, well. What’s in a name, right? We tell each other our dreams, now and then, and they always have a copy of the NY Times that I can sit and read, lovely hum of conversation around me, art on the walls, what a pleasure. I am SO LUCKY I can hardly bloody stand it, sometimes. And will not *dare* complain, when the luck turns, as in time it must. Can’t believe this lifetime is almost run! Seriously — 77 in October, hard to believe. What am I doing hanging out with these sweet, pretty children? Talking about dreams, the news, TV, their kidlets.
Never imagined I would be so — happy, getting old like this, and with a husband slowly sinking into Alzheimers death. It’s the damnedest thing — my dreams tell me a final efflorescence is coming. Yeah, well, maybe . . . if I don’t fall down the damn front stairs first! We shall see. Must admit, I’m a teeny tad drunk tonight . . . the Docs want me to take Fosamax or another drug of that class, to remineralize my arms and spine, but I say it’s spinach and I say the Hell with it — that stuff invites mandibular necrosis, or death of the jawbone, and can also have the exact *opposite* effect of the one intended, making weakened bones even weaker. Screw that. I’m going the Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine route, and see where that takes me.
Is okay regardless — another decade, and I’m done and glad of it. Too old to take on the wretched mess my generation has left to our posterity, poor things. MUST sleep — thanks, missy, for your good wishes and concern, and kisses right back.
21 August 2016 at 09:54 #53717@missy Gawd, sounds awful — a flu-like thing, is it? Ugh. Sympathies, especially for the depression after-gloom. One good thing about having been officially grounded for most of this year (by post-op medical considerations) is not gadding about and coming home with illnesses from hot spots elsewhere in the country. It’s been a healthy year for me, apart from the detached retina and the parathyroid gland the size of a large grape (they showed me a photo of the thing, as it was impressive enough to be recorded).
Feel better soon, me dears!
21 August 2016 at 09:41 #53716@pedant But the puerile comments section was fun! Wow, what a flame war over definitions of class, and over having flame wars about class. I thought Guardian readers were supposed to be *smart* or something . . . Well, apart from venom-crazed DW anti-fans, that is.
@missy I’d want to visit planet Earth as far into the future as it would take to get past the Human Period and see what species takes over after us (if any) and how they manage. Then I’d want to go back far enough to see a bit of the lives of the great prehistoric monument-builders — Stonehenge, that newish discovery in Turkey, Atlantis if there was one. Other planets would be a later choice — I doubt I’d have any frame of reference to understanding much of what there is to see there anyway, since I expect other species to be much more varied and more difficult to recognize and figure out than actors in rubber suits . . . But eventually, oh yeah, the galaxies way out there — with a Tardis, there’d be time to see a whole lot of it, just using the same week over and over in various locations. Probably not all though; there is the problem of “infinite in all directions”.
20 August 2016 at 06:04 #53701@janetteb @blenkinsopthebrave Yes yes yes about our companion animals; a deal is struck when you put down that food and water, and it’s a real deal or it’s nothing much, IMO.
20 August 2016 at 05:58 #53700@puroandson Bronchial Pneumonia, *away with you!!* There. That should help?!! Or, alternatively, good chicken soup, made with bones and veg and lots of garlic and a nice big puffy and garlicky dumpling in the middle.
Now I’m hungry; at 10:30 pm, and whose fault is that, I ask you!
I looked up Existentialism, since it’s a long long time since I’ve studied or even read about philosophy. So here’s a quickie quote from Wikipedia: ” . . . human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.” You start with yourself, not your social role or status etc., and the world seems chaotic and meaningless, so you have to figure out what your authentic self is in that world, rather than letting some authority tell you what you’re supposed to be, and then by expressing that self in your actions shape your life.
So to some extent, yes, I’d say that that part is something I agree with, although it’s not central to the way I think because there’s this other whole wodge of stuff that I’ve mumbled and bumbled together over the years according to which there is a strong, complex, and largely hidden spiritual dimension to the world/universe in which we shape our lives by what we learn from our choices connecting (and often colliding rather than colluding) not just the choices of everybody else, but also the rules of physics that give this universe its basic form. When we’ve learned enough through a succession of human lifetimes, we’re done here an move on to stages nobody knows much about, since we’re all still going through *this* process, the physical.
So yes, I think we’re responsible for our own lives (always subject, however, to accidents and cross purposes to varying degrees); but no, I don’t think the universe is a chaos of meaninglessness, but rather a long education leading eventually back to reintegration into the Dao (the energy source that it all comes from and expresses). It’s the kind of viewpoint that a person can develop from a sense that there’s more to experience than Materialism allows, but also and on the other hand that religious systems, stuffed with rituals, rules, and useless distinctions to fight over, are more of a hindrance than a help in figuring any of it out (I’m a bit of a Jungian, too, I suppose, since I believe that dreams can be revelatory — to the dreamer — about the whole situation). It’s a mish mash, and there is no “ism” that fits it (that I know of).
So, there’s a glimpse of how ichi sees the world; I don’t think it will help with either pneumonia or a wondy internet connection, but for what it’s worth, there you are.
18 August 2016 at 05:27 #53682@puroandson “Coarse language” won’t hurt you. It’s *lies* that do that . . . IMO. Aaarrgh. I want more Leftovers NOW. Grump, growl.
Well, that gets me nowhere, doesn’t it.
18 August 2016 at 02:47 #53681puroandson What mistakes? If there are some, no biggie — everybody makes ’em, fortunately . . .
18 August 2016 at 02:46 #53680@mersey I really like your gobelin — my kind of color scheme, or a major one of them. I used to do needlepoint, and often worked with dark, dark blues and purples, with shimmers of pale in white, pale lemon, etc.
17 August 2016 at 07:36 #53677@puroandson Gods yes, that scene is frightful — what it called up for me is the stabbing scene at the end of an Italian film about the Fascist period in Italy — years ago, and I can’t remember the title now, but it was bloody awful, the brute-physicality of it, unstoppable til it’s over and the awful deed is done. I love the title sequence, too. It’s changed for the second season, but the first one is wonderful — that strange, suggestive, mock-renaissance frescoed ceiling!
I think they creators of the show have said the third season will be it, which is good news. I find that the limited series are much better than the open-ended ones that just keep wambling along (“Lost” is the great example, to my mind, staggering onward with a kind of suppressed franticness to a — to me — oddly flat and abrupt ending at least two seasons past its prime). This one is a real beauty.
17 August 2016 at 00:59 #53674@puroandson — YES! The Leftovers was also a recce from me, though maybe at a different time. I love that show inordinately, can’t wait for the new season. At last, something so barefacedly itself that it’s not predictable, but as wildly erratic as life itself, full of gob-smacking surprises that just have to be met and coped with by characters and viewers alike. Brilliant writing, acting, music, the works — damn, I miss it!
The creators of the show insist that there is an ending they’re proceeding toward. I hope, hope, hope it’s not a) something that doesn’t work for me, and b) soon.
16 August 2016 at 20:14 #53671@missy @thedentistofdavros Still watching, actually, 5th episode today, I think. I’m not expecting any singing and dancing, but the story is, as Dentist says, very good and very well done.
Then, as recommended, I’ll watch some DW, and start smiling again.
16 August 2016 at 07:55 #53665@janetteb Depressing? You want depressing? Anybody here watching a UK show called “River”, with Stellan Skarsgard as a detective in modern London trying to find out who shot his (probably unreliable) partner dead in the street. Ghosts keep showing up, various dead folks (including the dead partner) — and not only do they not tell him secrets, they LIE to him! That is, as projections of his own ideas of them, they tend to give voice to his own basest suspicions and distortions.
Now, that’s depressing, IMO.
15 August 2016 at 09:18 #53664I found some DW comics locally and had a look — they gave me, I think, a clearer idea of what the fans who want DW to get back to being “fun” again mean: all action all the time, a bit of wit, nothing much in the way of character exploration or interaction. Action, action, action, and speed, speed, speed. About what I thought I’d find. Superficial and basically static (despite all the diagonals standing for action, and speed) in terms of making an impact. Still looking for the multi-docs and the cybermen ones, though, which I think were mentioned here as being a bit more ambitious?
I should probably try Big Finish audios instead, for meantime-filler. Suggestions, for a fan of AG DW who prefers character and complexity over non-stop speed/action?
14 August 2016 at 16:46 #5366211 August 2016 at 21:43 #53649Hasn’t the Doctor always been presented and played as a scientist (of SF science, but still, science) rather than a mystic? He might be hopeful of finding ways *around* death (postponement, mostly, as with post-Raven Clara), but even that is so that the “dead” person can go on being in our live universe as a player. What sort of “Heaven” would a mind like the Doctor’s be happy in, happy enough to even stay there? As far as that goes, I think he’s already IN his Heaven — the fictional version of our universe, full of wonders and horrors and crazy surprises, with him having the capacity to travel anywhere, any-when.
Or maybe that’s — Hell? At least to the extent that he keeps losing people . . .
8 August 2016 at 07:24 #53610@puroandson I simply turned off the music portion (I have a programme which allows me to do that -it’s not for purchase unfortunately) and heard the dialogue. In the end we had what’s called a ‘dry score’ or ‘dry run;’ whilst that was very helpful it’s not for everyone, I’m afraid and lowers the megahertz output by dozens of decibels causing a timbre change in the voice as well
I’ve often wished for something like that, but sounds like it’s really best for just accuracy. I’d hate for the voices themselves to be changed. Coming up on 77 in October, and my hearing has slowed down a little, and I do have problems now in noisy restaurants, in conversation. I’ve been to a few concerts on the modern model, with amplification loud enough to pulverize stone — and walked out because of it. I carry a little box of ear-plugs around with me these days, against sudden auditory assaults and noisy settings that I’m stuck in for a while.
I hope our favorite hybrid isn’t gone from these discussions for long — but the world does wag on for all of us, making its demands. Good luck with the variations!
3 August 2016 at 23:14 #53553@missrori Thanks for the comments on the Titan comics. Gotta go look for that, sounds interesting.
@missy The Clara/CapDoc chemistry is what got me, too — I think it was so strong that they could play a great number of variations on it and it *worked* because of being grounded in that natural and solid connection. There are people you feel immediately comfortable with and trusting of; it can be “acted” of course, more or less well (and often is, I imagine — that’s part of what professionalism is for people whose job is to pretend), but I think this was something special.
My only complaint, if you can think of it as such, about the two of them was that sometimes they gave their lines so quickly that I had trouble catching everything. Other than that — great work. Hoping for that level of conviction from this new pairing in S10.
1 August 2016 at 07:29 #53513@puroandson I think Clara’s fast talking shtick was more annoying (at least to me) when she first met Eleven rather than her two series with Capaldi. As for wanting to have it all. Why on earth not?
I do. I want to be the flying sprite and the witty academic. I can’t but I want to. And I should for it’s in the wanting that we learn to know our true selves. 🙂Cheers, Puro Solo! Exactly. I love Clara for her restless and demanding nature, her boldness in trying (however wrong-headedly at times) to make things happen, to make choices (including her own mistakes), and to matter in her own right. I appreciate that she insists on being not just a sidekick and wanting to be *more* than that — as well as insisting, sometimes, that the Doctor be more and better than he (sometimes) is (especially in S8, where he barely knows himself).
Many fans seem to hate her for exactly those qualities. This tells me much more about them (and the lie that feminism is no longer needed) than it does about her. Moffat took her way beyond what seem to be commonly acceptable limits for female adventurers (“spunky”, “feisty”, “kick-ass”, blah blah blah) and into what I read as a convincingly conflicted, ambitious, and self-assertive person not willing to settle for coasting the social wave on the strength of her uncommon prettiness and brightness of mind. Was she annoying? Sometimes. So what? I respected her audacity and admired her ambition, and still do. I think both her failures and her outstanding qualities reflect changes in Steven Moffat’s own awareness of the ongoing wrangle over how women “should” be and behave and think and aspire. That’s a hell of a fight, and it’s *so* not over.
On the orphan question from @mersey — there’s that standing joke about YA fantasy and adventure fiction, “How do you get the parents out of the way so the kids can *have* adventures?” Given the choice between the unattached figure who can accept rides in blue boxes without a backward glance, and the one constantly fretting about getting back to loved ones left back home, I think I’d take the “orphaned” adventurer — who can always discover a hitherto unknown family connection to play with/against in the course of star-faring (see occasional eps of Star Trek, etc.). The “I just wanna go HOME” plaint gets on my nerves after a while (Farscape, Voyager, others).
Of course, it worked for Odysseus, but he was a grown man with a mature attitude toward conflict (avoid if possible, or use tricks), and we had the ongoing story at home to make his dogged longing to get back there ring true.
31 July 2016 at 06:49 #53492@puroandson I hope you’ve been given some codeine or panadeine forte through the tough recovery. If ‘neck jewellery’ isn’t something you like, perhaps scarves?
I am delighted to report that I did come home with pain meds, but never had to use anything stronger than Tylenol, and now it’s just a bit of irritating soreness, nothing worse. Best of all, nobody has called me up to tell me any bad news about the tumor itself (I picture an anemic-looking, rather dwarfed and wrinkled lima bean). Now all I have to do is get my bones fit again. Keeping in mind that that does *not* mean getting back to dead-lifting 132 pounds at the gym (our coach was a competitive power lifter, I realized after a bit). We talk a good bit about time here sometimes, so it shouldn’t take that much focus to remember that the blasted stuff does pass, and only in one direction in physical reality, and leaves real, irreversible changes in its wake — that may be offset a little here, moderated a bit there, etc., but no, it is not the same river, not ever again. I really shouldn’t have to type that out, now, should I?
Okay; wine and cheese now. Also bedtime.
30 July 2016 at 17:40 #5348330 July 2016 at 08:21 #53479@puroandson — Glad you’re back home again.
Ichi
30 July 2016 at 08:20 #53478@janetteb Your scar sounds rather like mine. . . . For a while it did provide an excuse to buy lots of necklaces and fancy scarves
That’s what my mom did about her thyroid scar, too! In my case, it’s hopeless — I mean that I buy pretty gewgaws from time to time, but sooner or later off they come, tossed in a box, forgotten — I just can’t abide having jewelry dangling off me and sliding around. Kind of like the cats, one of whom managed to chew off a red band that came home from the operating theater around my wrist, with “Allergy” printed on it in black letters. She’s well pleased with herself, having groomed me free of the weird appendage as any friend would, and that’s fine with me!
29 July 2016 at 06:48 #53463@trillianwho @stitchintime Well, that music was a signal to open wide (your mind, not so much your mouth) and prepare for something different from everything else — thrillingly unpredictable, sometimes a bit baffling but in a way that didn’t shut you up but made you want to ask more questions, spoken in a strange and exotic English (for US kids, anyway) that was somehow rounder, richer, and more expressive — Hell, I was in my twenties and it felt that way to me!
29 July 2016 at 06:30 #53462@missrori @missy Thanks you both for comments above — I think I share some of your thinking there, about the ways in which #12 is a-neurotypical for human behavior (and possibly TL behavior as well, since the TLs we’ve seen don’t seem any more different on average from stuck-up, over-privileged humans than the Olympian gods seemed in comparison with the humans of their day).
@trillianwho (“there is only one reason I would tell you my name, only one time I could”). What if that “could” is quite literal? What if he physically can’t pronounce his own name and it’s not just a matter of trust or for avoiding something worse?
Welcome indeed; and what an interesting, provocative question to bring to the table!
@puroandson Thanks, Son of Puro, for your good wishes, and yes, I am getting better — a bit wobbly today as the anesthetic wears off from two days ago, but maddeningly itchy (not just ichi!) around the incision, which means the thing is healing. Looks as if I’ve had my throat cut by a neatness freak, just above where the collar bones meet at the base of the neck, and about an inch and a quarter wide. I hope to have at least a souvenir scar to show off. Meantime, a bit Frankenstein-monster-ish, but more from bruising than anything else. The thing was a rogue parathyroid gland, of which there are four situated behind the thyroid itself, and which are supposed to work with the thyroid proper to keep bones strong etc. Parathyroid + ectomy = parathyroid removal, as with an appendix in an appendectomy. Word roots are a pleasure of mine; they’re like the building blocks of chemical formulae, endlessly useful and entertaining; feel free to ignore at will, of course.
I am very sorry to hear that your mum is in the hospital, and I wish her a prime quality birthday gift from the universe in the form of feeling much better and coming home again very soon.
Affectionately,
ichi
28 July 2016 at 19:53 #53455@missrori Oh, I am — I am feeling much better, and enjoying not having to lie down and nap at odd times during the day any more. I’m going to the gym today, but gently. Just the treadmill, thanks, at a sedate speed.
28 July 2016 at 10:15 #53452@pedant The rest of you got lucky
Yah — great line! I liked Danny, and wanted just a bit more dimension to him, a scene or two of him with other people in his life; orphans have friends, and soldiers have old army buddies, but they never gave him any time as himself, on his own and in his own milieu outside of work, which I think would have helped a lot.
@1997whovian I also laughed at when the Doctor said to Clara if she had a wash
And she pops right back with, “Oh; you’re being nice. Why?” Ha — so that’s being nice, is it? Doctor Doofus — what’s he do, dry clean himself clothes and all? Loved it. Banter? Or by-play? Or are they the same thing?
@missrori Of S8: It does have rough spots — a little more script polishing might have worked wonders —
It’s funny, but I *liked* that lurchy, almost dream like shifting of tone and content from episode to episode, and that off-kilter roughness — not that I think it was deliberate, but that I think it went so well with the story situation of the Doctor regenerating instead of dying and coming up all shaky and bewildered and snappish with fearful insecurity about everything and everybody, and Clara in alternately outraged and fascinated by who on earth her beloved Chin Boy had become. It all fell together in a pleasing way for me. Wonder how I’ll feel about it when I re-watch later on.
@puroandson Certainly it was S8 and Clara’s (often time) stability which afforded us a glimpse of this very new and possibly autistic doctor*
Yes, agreed; and thanks, @missrori, for your observations on and from autism — I don’t think I got back to you after asking about that. I was preparing for a parathyroidectomy, which was successfully accomplished the day before yesterday, so I’ve been a bit distracted but am no longer in danger of being terminally mugged by a longtime cumulative overload of unabsorbed calcium in my blood; so, good outcome. And belated thanks for your thoughtful and considered answer. I’ve not come across that perspective, so clearly described, before, and I want to think about it a while before commenting.
@janetteb Danny the Doctor immediately assumes that because he was a soldier he must teach P.E. He couldn’t possibly be intelligent enough to teach Maths. I think they misjudge each other and yes, at the heart of that misunderstanding is good old fashioned jealousy over Clara. The Doctor is being quite possessive too.
Possessive — oh, yes. It’s easy to forget in that episode that the Doctor is still trying to get his balance as a newborn, because he seems at ease and in rather relaxed command of the situation in the school; but Clara is still, as in all the early episodes of S8, his one fixed point of reference for who and what he himself is (when she’s not spinning off into her own conflicts and anger, that is, which is what makes their awkward dance with and against each other so compelling). He could happily see her cosy up to the teacher reminds CapDoc of his previous self, but not charging away from himself with a total stranger who is, what’s more, a soldier, ie Danny. It’s a complicated jealousy, as much alien in flavor as human, IMO.
@jimthefish But I do think s8 is a really good one, if a little different from the breathless, kinetic style of Tennant and Smith’s best series. I also suspect it’s one of those ones whose reputation is going to grow over time.
I agree — and I liked that unpredictability in the pacing and rhythm of the twelve’s first series of stories. It was a rough ride that signaled loud and clear, this isn’t your dashing carousel ride any more, it’s something else, riskier, more shadowed and nuanced.
@puroandson I love William Shatner, Ralph Fiennes, John Hurt, Peter Capaldi, Mat Smith, Candice Bergen, Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, Hugh Laurie the actors in the film The Breakfast Club, James Marsters and Clint Eastwood. Also Matt Damon.
I like your taste in actors, Son of Puro; Richard Schiff is A-list in my book too, as are Hugh Laurie and James Marsters, Helen Mirren, Toni Colette, Eva Green, Idris Elba, and so many others — we’re so lucky to live in a golden age of performance, despite its more ghastly qualities as well.
@mersey And Danny wasn’t jealous. He was worried that Clara will end up dead. And he was right.
To be fair, though, the Doctor came to be just as worried about the same thing — and just as right. Only he was too wound up in his own anxieties and confusions to realize it, in S8. So S9 starts with him realizing it all too clearly. Pity he couldn’t have had a line to spare for Danny’s earlier perception, admitting that the soldier was right about that. Maybe Clara in S8 is in some ways a version of Edward Rochester, or maybe Cathy Whatsit in Wuthering Heights — a person with a flighty, selfish, passionate side that brings her to wisdom, ruin, and victory all together in the end. We’re not used to seeing female characters act like this — another that comes to mind is Scarlett O’Hara, of Gone With the Wind. These are troubling figures. So is the Doctor (as Capaldi has played him), in his own way — which is what makes the two of them the magnetic center of S8, with Danny as a solitary comet drawn by her into orbit around them.
I think you’re right, people who think there could have been more, and more varied and textured, interaction between the Doctor and Danny — but maybe not so interesting to younger viewers; pretty adult stuff, of which there’s already a generous amount in S8 (the “See me” theme, for example, is still startlingly deep material IMO, for a “general” or “youth oriented” or “casual” viewership show).
@stitchintime Of Danny refusing the Tardis: Perhaps he hoped that would discourage Clara from continuing to follow the Doctor into danger.
Oh, yes; his lines definitely positioned him against all this zipping around from peril to post, not a man to join in and make it a folie a trois. I liked seeing a male character take a stand for the rewards of the upright solid citizen making a safe and solid life for those he or she loves rather than the wandering adventurer, living by his wits. Usually it’s the wife or girlfriend who makes that case, trying to stop her errant man from going off to war or the dangerous caper or the dangerous errand of justice. I liked the reversal here; it made Clara’s more Quixotic and wonder-seeking nature more real for me.
25 July 2016 at 07:08 #53425@missy — Funny, I don’t care for McGann either — maybe he’s just to smooth for my taste. I like ’em a bit spiky, myself.
23 July 2016 at 02:39 #53402@missy True enough, and DW has thriven on just that; pity many fans only give lip-service to change, but balk like a spooked horse at the actual jump (from one actor-Doctor to another, that is). Even a show based on theme-and-variations will attract a conservative fringe — though of course, as in most questions of judgment, where to draw the line varies from person to person, and sometimes too *much* change can throw everything out of whack for too many fans, I suppose.
22 July 2016 at 09:40 #53393@pedant Uh — well, yes, the Clockwork/Buffy treatment might help create a breakthrough for some, but most of the objectors . Story arcs can require an unusual commitment to a show and its characters that not everyone is inclined to make.
And arcs can be overdone, too — e.g., “The Mentalist” and the “Red John” theme, which finally drove me away — the way they kept dragging that gloomy thing in to tag every episode with it, many of which were interesting little crime dramas just as they were, without the obligatory link to this rather boring “criminal mastermind” element. But then, I never met a criminal mastermind who didn’t bore the pants off me. Mmm. Well, maybe Reddington, but that’s James Spader for you — an actor who projects hidden (usually for good reasons) depths as few others can.
@missrori one reason I find the Twelfth Doctor so fascinating and compelling is that many of his character traits and quirks aren’t far removed from those of many autistics. If anything, Twelve comes off as a more authentic, sympathetic portrayal of an autistic person, both strengths and weaknesses, than some of the attempts to depict autistic people in fiction that I’ve read are. One autistic, Catholic blogger who is also a fan of the show once joked, while discussing the lack of a saint for autism, quipped “Sadly the Catholic Church has been slow to canonise the Twelfth Doctor”.
Lovely, and thanks for the insight. So, how would you break down CapDoc’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of feeling authentically autistic to you?
As for Sainthood — well, 12 probably wouldn’t like to share some of the company he’d find himself in. He might go whooshing off to Vatican City to be his own Devil’s Advocate, and get himself out of it for a concatination of reasons; the clever boy.
20 July 2016 at 07:44 #53346@stitchintime @puroandson I don’t think he remembers, either, and yep, I’m one of those who put my thinking on it out there way up-thread. I think he takes the chalkboard message as one he might have written himself at some earlier point, or that the Tardis might have generated for him.
@puroandson The picture itself held no awareness for him as the girl herself, Clara, was unrecognisable to him
— as anyone else than, for some inexplicable reason, that young waitress back in the diner, because he still doesn’t have any idea of what Clara looked like. I do like the idea of pinpointing a moment when, in full knowledge of what just happened, he *decides* to let go of his grief and move on, @janetteb, I can’t believe in it (if I read your comment as you meant it to be read). I think the grief is already gone, just a shadowy sense of loss (but who was that person who’s gone, and why is he driven to keep looking for her?), that’s been clinging to him.
Maybe I could be convinced otherwise, if he did something like turning staring back after the vanished diner after spotting the Tardis and its picture — but he seems just bewildered by the thing vanishing with a Tardis-y sound. What distracts and galvanizes him into action isn’t the picture (of that nice waitress, for some odd reason) painted on the Tardis, but the fact that there’s his Tardis, that has finally found *him* — so he can be the Doctor again.
But mostly because to me, it’s a far more effective little scene if we, the viewers, know what’s happened, and Clara has left away knowing what’s happened, but he, the normally ahead-of-everybody-else Doctor, doesn’t know — yet he instinctively understands what’s expected of him, what’s right for him, and does it, with increasing energy and confidence, because that’s who he is. That’s just the take on it that works for me, although I can see the appeal of other views (Moffat, you devil!).
19 July 2016 at 23:12 #53337@puroandson I think it was far more brave (dare I invoke that expression) to have her return and then categorically forget Clara so completely considering this was hinted right from the beginning in “remember me, you clever boy” implying a time in the paradox where he would no longer “remember” something important. Something very significant to him. And in the end he would play a melody and shrug -whilst his Tardis flies in the opposite direction to hers and Ashildr’s. 🙂 I think we were challenged to consider this possibility or even probability from the moment we met “soufflé girl”.
I think I’d use the word “bold”, rather than “brave”, since Moffat already has lots of hate from his haters so in a way he can do anything he likes without incurring wrath he doesn’t already receive; but bah, no quibbles really — I agree that yes, looking back, I can see a pattern of stressing “memory” and its failures, past and future, that’s admirable, if you see it as intended from the start. Memory and its vagaries and effects both in presence and absence turned out to be a powerful theme in S8-S9, perhaps more resonant for older viewers than younger ones, since the former have (usually) so much more of it stacked up — all of which will go, one day. Now, imagine that you’ve lived 900-2,000 yrs . . .
Interesting, too, that you point out the Tardises going in opposite directions. So the Doctor’s Tardis clearly agrees with the Doctor’s and Clara’s decision (that he’s now forgotten) to part decisively from Clara; no arguments or waffling on that score. Can’t get much more definitive than that.
@missrori That smooch on the knuckles was improvised?!? Wow!
I think I got that from one of Rachel Talalay’s breakdowns of how the show was made: they needed something more incisive than a long stare between them, and this actor found it, and delivered it perfectly — not a smoochy face/mouth kiss, which would have seemed very weird (to me, anyway), but not a formal, Old World hand kiss either (in which — I think I have this right, read it recently) the woman is supposed to be wearing gloves, in the first place, signaling her delicate purity and honor which must not be allowed to be smirched, and the gentleman is supposed to give an air kiss, not even actually touching the glove with his lips, signaling the appropriate response of respect and maybe even attraction, but honorable and unyielding self-restraint.
Well, the Doctor is only sometimes a gentleman in terms of manners at least, and the circumstances or particularly special, so — Capaldi and Coleman deliver perfection, IMO. Right there, in beautiful public.
@pedant To me it was very clear that the Hybrid was the gestalt entity of the Doctor plus Clara – in itself a powerful meta-statement about those who inhabit the Tardis.
Yes, that was stated outright plainly enough. I just didn’t find it entirely definitive as an explanation of such a broad term, so I can only take it as — if you like — 0ne very useful meaning of “the Hybrid” among several. I like it as shorthand for the equal-but-not-equal, yet incredibly strong, even fatally strong, partnership they’ve developed, but I can’t deny a persistent undertone of skepticism.
And yes, the Doctor *loves* a long game! It’s way more diverting and entertaining than a short one, and he’s had enough experience at winning such games to have strong expectations of coming out the winner, which underlies his sometimes very impetuous jumps into risky situations: if they turn out not to be long games, he might be able to prolong them himself, with clever moves. Like Sherlock, the Doctor needs diversion from his own mind, and his own company. Only the Doctor is, IMO, more invested in being the Caretaker of the universe he knows and loves than Sherlock — who isn’t, poor fellow, alien or powerful or experienced *enough* to dare that. Sherlock is “just” a very smart guy. The Doctor, as Capaldi said once in dry and gentle rebuke to an interlocutor who used that term about the character he plays, “A ‘guy’? The Doctor is not ‘a guy’.” And (unless I’m making up this part myself because it was so strongly implied), “I’m a guy; the Doctor is the Doctor.”
So true; but, from what’s publicly known about him, *what* a guy!
18 July 2016 at 09:11 #53321@puroandson Words couldn’t be his weapons in this or every instance -“every good man faces the world with actions” and sometimes, with inaction, which is symbolic in itself.
And Clara has pent up his best weapon herself: “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.” She disarms him and forbids him to *act* out revenge. He bows to her wishes (at least in the heat of that moment), with a silent action of love, not rage — that kiss on the knuckles. (I read that he came up with that while doing the scene — damn, Capaldi’s good.) I can’t see her speech as a pep talk either — I think it’s much more layered than that. I think it’s a speech about being realistic about limitations: the pragmatism that life teaches by demanding it.
She says, My limitation is that I got myself into this and must must choose to accept the consequences, including not being able to make it less hurtful to you (“What about me?” “If I could do something about that, I would”) in order not to fail my own integrity. Then she says, now you must put limitations on yourself — that’s *your* part here. So he does.
To me, that’s not a pep talk. It’s a complex, deeply intimate interaction between the two of them. But I’m probably “over-thinking” it, as they say (one of *my* limitations, I guess — if there are depths, I’ll find them, and if there aren’t, I’ll make ’em up!).
17 July 2016 at 23:27 #53312@missrori Thanks! Heading up toward B&N now, will stop there after gym/treadmill. Great! A cool drink in a desert . . .
17 July 2016 at 20:30 #53310@missy Well, the best Doctor for thee and me, anyway. So far, that is, but it *is* pretty far, 50+ yr span. I think what clinches it for me (in other cases too) is the most effective portrayal of the internal struggle between high intelligence and high passions (in the broader sense of course, not the romantic one). Capaldi has embodied that for me, particularly in his work with Moffat (I think they spark complementary creativity off each other brilliantly). I have a hard time imagining someone else doing that as well as Capaldi does in this role, let alone *better*. So, for the present, I am a happy (if slightly starving in this year of Doctor famine) camper, along with you.
@missrori Welcome to the crew, however belated on my part, and thanks for bringing up the Titan comics. I’ll try to find them online, since our local comic book store is pretty basic — all war, big robots, and ridiculous superhero costumes.
-
AuthorPosts
