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16 October 2018 at 20:45 #64575
@mudlark the dialogue did not have quite the wit and depth of Moffat at his best
Yes; no snap, little sparkle, but those are some of Moffat’s gifts — but not, as I thought watching B’Church, Chibnal’s. It’s going to be workmanlike at best, which kind of suits the steam-punkish look of things so far. I’d be missing Moffat’s brilliant flashes already, except that for me, the feel of this Doctor’s world is not brilliance but — sturdy exertion, rather as I expected. So far, anyway.
@notime The sniper bots were terrible shots. The native inhabitants must not have been nearly as quick as humans. Or perhaps they trained at the Storm Trooper Academy…
Ha! Too true. I wanted someone to make a snarky remark about how they needed tune-ups badly, but basically they shouldn’t have been specified as *snipers* considering how awful they were at hitting anything — just warbots still learning how to shoot would have been fine, and a crack about even a stopped clock etc. and ezbo’s wound could have kept the suspense up even so.
Did anybody else have a bit of a reaction to how often JoDoc uses the sonic? It’s solving an awful lot of problems in just this one ep — again, it’s very cartoon-y: a tool that can do whatever you need done at a given moment . . .
@tardigrade At that point, the Doctor hasn’t revealed that she has access to time travel
Yeah, that was a bit goofy — that Graham doesn’t follow it up, but of course there’s running to be done. I wonder if one bonus to having a couple of youngsters and an oldster on board the Tardis will turn out to be these characters begging for a look at historical bits — as the fans have been saying forever, let’s get more glimpses of interesting points in history! That could be fun — Ryan would want battles (though maybe not so much after his run-in (and run-out) with the killbots. What would Jaz want? For Graham — maybe Boadicca’s chariot? The building of one of the pyramids? And I’m sure saving Grace will be raised as a possibility, and the Doctor will have to explain why they can’t do that — or maybe they can, and Grace can rejoin them? Bit of a crowd, though.
On Ryan’s Dad — maybe he got grabbed by the Stenza on a previous leadership outing?
16 October 2018 at 20:12 #64574@mudlark perhaps my ageing brain has a problem processing words delivered at machine-gun velocity.
For me, it’s that plus the swallowed consonants — but I had trouble with “Deep Throat” for the same reason, and I’ve been watching with subtitles on ever since. It helps a lot!
the redesign of the Tardis interior; at first glance it seems visually very confusing
And crowded, and gloomy — I didn’t like it at all. It starts with a sort of Steam Punk vibe, and then gets all gigantic with forms that look — crystalline, but massive? It looked cluttered and gargantuan at the same time, and dark as a dungeon. The little video on the design helps — maybe if I look at it as being inside a gigantic semi-mechanical tree that’s also a cave full of gear wheels? Wot? I really like the concept as articulated by the designer — hands on, orgnical — but I’ll have to get used to the gloomy confusion.
@bluesqueakpip For equally obvious reasons the episode glossed over the projectile vomiting, major toileting failure, seizures, paralysis
Yeh; kids, don’t try this at home — LOL!
@jimthefish I just can’t get on board with Whittaker’s costume, especially when she even managed to make Capaldi’s tattered outfit last week look stylish. A good Doctor’s costume might convey quirkiness or eccentricity but it should also convey authority. Even Troughton and Baker I’s did this. Baker II, McCoy and even Davison suffered as Doctors because their costumes erred to far on the risible side and so, I fear, does Whittaker’s.
Gods, yes. Nail/head: it’s the *authority* factor that’s missing. This outfit makes an instantly-recognizable silhouette — of a cartoon character. The wide wedge form of the coat and wide culottes, and then the slim bare calves — and then a pair of enormous boots! It reminds me of Mickey Mouse and his ears, or Mister Natural and *his* huge shoes. I do like her haircut — no nonsense, but flattering.
@juniperfish immediately latching on to the oldest dude companion and seeing him as the Doctor by default, we are used, culturally and historically to bestowing authority more commonly upon men. Which makes the whole question of authority, and how the Jodie Doctor wears it, carries it, wields it, and is recognised or not recognised (in show and out) as having it, highly intriguing.
Good, that turns the costume thing into a bunch of interesting possibilities for me, instead of a bad joke. Thanks! So how does a female authority figure assert herself without wearing a version of male “authoritative” attire?
@arch Capaldi who I adore did his best work solo, Jodi I think will work better with a team.
Hmm. I thought Capaldi was brilliant as half of a two-hander as well. The emphasis with Whittaker on forming up her team of companions by repeatedly using them as a team and telling them they’re a team does support a group-leader identity rather than the unique wild card steadied by one powerful relationship that Capaldi gave us. Interesting in terms of gender politics as well, that contrast.
@wolfweed Stenza ™ is an American stationery company… !!! LOL!
@notime First place I would go is to the female racer’s home planet. Two reasons. Cleanse it of the “tooth fairies”
I agree that we’ll get back there — but next ep is 1960s US, which suggests to me that the Tardis is going to take them where it wants them to be, so maybe there’s some glitchy interaction there at first; but I’m betting we head for Albar later to sort the Stenza, and then go find Illin to make sure none of those captive scientists aren’t still being held by him as a slave labor force for planetary engineering. All that sneering arrogance and power must surely be addressed, and his next “game”, whatever it is, dealt with, IMO.
@geoffers maybe we’re in for (if not a full-on origin story) some new knowledge of the doctor from when s/he was a child…
Maybe when the Doctor was a child — and a girl, at least for a while, as Missy (was it?) remarked?
@nearlysane the defeat that Jodie Whittaker showed before the TARDIS appeared seemed a bit odd, and out of character,
Yes — but on the other hand, this is the first promise this new Doctor has made (to get them all back home stat), and it looks impossible, so her wobble into defeat reads right for a Doctor still a bit shaky from regeneration and faced with her first big setback.
@missrori Maybe Thirteen was getting flashbacks when faced with the possibility of three new acquaintances meeting their doom too…
And that — though for me that would have to be nailed harder (with a real flashback, say), and clearly this early on they aren’t going to be harking back to Capaldi’s run, I think, since they’re pushing the “new beginning” vibe still to back up a female Doctor. Maybe later there can be some clear reach-backs to the experiences of the earlier AG Docs as they connect with Whittaker’s character; or maybe that sort of long continuity work will wait til later in her series, when she’s firmly established as herself.
@notime I thought for a second the Doctor was going to pull out the sonic sunglasses for Graham to use….that would have been a little comical.
Me, too! I think that was a declaration to the fans that the sonic sunglasses are gone for good . . . a pity. I got fond of them.
@arbutus I love having an older Companion in the TARDIS!
Oh, yes; that’s really refreshing, and frees up Whittaker to not exercise her 2,000 year old woman self; a nice contrast to Capaldi’s rather stark “ancient alien bravely battles Time and loses” vibe (which I loved; but quirkily youthful is a great next step).
16 October 2018 at 18:37 #64572@craig @nearlysane @pedant Something I came across in the NYT Magazine section a couple of weeks ago about “The Good Place”:
My name is Ichabod, and I am addicted. People love this, or hate it (yes, a few misguided souls — er, viewers can’t deal with it, for various reasons). It’s appointment TV for me, every Thursday evening, and I am thrilled to bits to hear that they’ve got a 7 season arc not just, you know, “let’s see if we can stretch this thing to 7 seasons”, but plans (because there’s no way you could run this out that far without a pretty damn good idea of where it’s going and how it’s going to get there, IMO). On a discussion site for TGP, the general opinion seems to be that “Janet” is the favorite character of many fans — played by an actress with an impressive background in comedy improve, and boy does it show!
There’s a “blooper” reel online someplace for TGP, and it’s great — lots of improv going on, some that should have made the cut but didn’t, damn it — and yet! You can still see it! The glory of modern TV and the internet — here in The Ghastly Place!
Enjoy!
13 October 2018 at 09:17 #64417@pedant, quoting @kharis Every show a self-contained story” sounds to me like a return to 100% “monster of the week” and no need to bother staying for the end, because there’s no chance of failure, and everyone ends up exactly as they started so the next “self-contained story” can toddle on without any continuity with what came before.
That was actually me, talking not about the intro episode, in which people will change because the Doctor’s arrival sharply challenges the normality of their lives, and they have to react, but about what Chibnal said several times about the show as a whole — no story arcs, no multi-ep stories, thus monster of the week, which as often the format of individual episodes before Moffat showed up. And it was supposition, made before the premier appeared, so it wasn’t intended as a critique of the first episode. Whether it applies or not will become apparent as the season moves along.
I have to confess, when season-long arcs began showing up on US TV series — I think it was a gangster story, well before the Sopranos — I really hated it because it made missing an episode very dislocating. As a format, it was pretty new, I think, and a huge fuss was made about how it elevated series TV in a “literary” way, and its success — was it called “Wise Guy”? — spawned a quickening cascade of other shows doing the same thing. After a while I got used to it, and began to enjoy it, but I’ve also retained a fondness for the single-story X of the week format, probably because I’m impatient by nature. I like the story *told*, thank you, done and dusted, and let’s move on, as I realized when other shows began doing arcs too. I don’t know how to reconcile these two preferences for myself, I just know when I’ve had enough of one or the other.
So, having had lots of wildly hit or miss arcs lately (say, Ashildr’s story) I’m ready to enjoy an opening series that’s what Chibnal said, all discrete stories; but if that’s all we’ll have on offer, going forward, I know I’ll jump ship again, bored by more X of the week. And I don’t want to; I want to love it, either way.
I hope I can.
I can’t comment on last Sunday’s show because the relentless hammering of the ads in the US was impossible to deal with; so I’m going to buy the series and watch on iTunes or Amazon so I can actually see it and remember what happens without being driven to distraction by distractions.
5 October 2018 at 23:34 #64188@janetteb It was merely idle speculation.
Phew! Given the BBC’s weird ambivalence about its own show, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised to hear that they have demanded a soapier series for JW.
@blenkinsopthebrave there are seemingly countless articles that obsess about ratings and the size of the audience.
Indeed. Fans keep trying to second-guess the BBC bosses, applying what we can’t help but know/suspect their bottom-line fixation must lead them to think about DW’s prospects, then use that supposition as fuel in the endless discussions about which Doctors were “the best”.
Funny how this article buys into the “can she cement the future of DW” with her performance — when everyone ought to know better: there’s no way to insure the future of DW, ever. Culture changes, personnel changes, the political/entertainment landscape changes — the miracle of the show is that it has managed to persist despite 50 yrs of change, albeit with a sizable hiatus around the end of the last century.
I’m hoping for some great moments. I want to see a female actor do great Doctor moments that fans talk about for years afterward, right before my eyes. Gimme the good stuff! I hope Chibnall & co can and will deliver.
5 October 2018 at 06:43 #64184@janetteb I wonder how Chibnell will handle the producers’ request to ram in romance to keep up audience numbers if indeed that is the case
Good grief, has something like that been reported? Well, it’s going to be an interesting challenge in any case. Our local free paper (“The Alibi”) has a little column (by Devin O’Leary) on the return of the Doctor this weekend as a woman, and I quote: ” . . . giving the Doctor a female body to inhabit for a while is perfectly in keeping with the show’s canon. For the vast majority of the show’s run, the character has been completely asexual anyway. So what’s the big deal? . . . If the Doctor is now a woman and that has absolutely no effect on the narrative, then there will have been little point.”
There you have it: the gender change is “no big deal” [asexual male/asexual female, *shrug*]; but if it really is “no big deal”, then why make such a change at all? I’m thinking of “Prime Suspect” here as an example of the major character, DI Tennyson, finding that being a female police inspector (even, or perhaps especially, if she’s very good at it) a very big deal indeed — almost entirely due to the reactions of others to her as a female cop. But presumably most of the characters JW Doc encounters won’t know that there were ever male Doctors, will they, or Doctors at all, so they’re quite right to use the trailer to show her being challenged simply as an unknown female exercising authority without even bothering to claim it first — which I think is an excellent approach. That in itself stamps her as The authentic Doctor: natural authority; and knowledge (+ forgetting, of course).
Those qualities, in most cultures, read as “masculine” (yes; even forgetting — who thinks of “the absent minded professor” as a *female* professor? An absent-minded Professore is fondly allowed his lapses; an absent-minded Professoressa will likely be looking for a new job ). So, how will JW show us the Doctor’s womanly side, now that it has come to the fore? Because if she doesn’t — there will “have been little point” in making him female at all.
Which I think is just what the anti-gender-switch wing of fandom would like to see, so that when JW leaves, The Doctor can go right back to being a male role, as if nothing different had happened — just a blip, though that X story was pretty good, but never mind, here’s Kris Marshall (or some other guy); sigh of relief.
On the other hand — if we go with the idea that the Doctor himself chose to manifest as female this time, then his being the Doctor in a female body becomes a declaration that the Doctor isn’t so much asexual as — internally gender-proof? Pan-genderous (?), so it never makes any difference to him/her/it whether the body is this or that gender this time around (or species, for that matter, all other things being more or less equal)?
It’s almost midnight here and my brain is in the twilight zone, so g’night, all.
5 October 2018 at 05:13 #64181@mudlark It is difficult if not impossible to imagine that anyone who watches and enjoys Doctor Who and who understands what the Doctor stands for could ever have voted for Trump
So true. The Doctor really can’t stand bullies, can she.
@janetteb If only there really were a Doctor..
If only . . . !!
@pedant Hoodezfield! My old stompiing grounds, by damn! LOL! That were luvely.
Welcome, Nancy, Bambi, et al — the festivities are about to start!
5 October 2018 at 05:03 #64180@kharis @tempusfugit Well, this weekend is IT, and my feelings are — mixed. Every time Chibnall opens his mouth about the new season, my heart sinks a little more. “Every show a self-contained story” sounds to me like a return to 100% “monster of the week” and no need to bother staying for the end, because there’s no chance of failure, and everyone ends up exactly as they started so the next “self-contained story” can toddle on without any continuity with what came before. This can be fine — look at Star Trek NG (most of it, anyway) for a successful example. A problem is solved each time, and the ship sails on unchanged, which is reassuring for the young, but unchallenging for the not-so-young-any-more.
Yet, since we (those of us who found their Doctor in Capaldi’s version) can’t have more Capaldi but we love the show, we should be fine with a whole new tack being taken this time, something exciting and different. I’ve said I’m fine with it, and I am — except that I’m not sure that at 79 (this month!) such a format will keep me on board. Here in the US, at least, even the cop shows have story arcs, to keep adult audiences interested before and after the solution of the crime of the week (and many of them have also even gone boldly into multi-episode stories). Our most successful new series are things like “Sinner”, a supposedly closed-ended “limited” series that told a story from beginning to end of its first season. It now has a season two, a new story. Series like “The Bridge” and, um, “The Tunnel” are good examples — very strong on character and continuity. We’ve grown used to complex, long-form stories (GOT is that, strung out over 5 seasons I think it is, and the biggest hit in damn near forever).
In fact, we’ve grown used to limited series based on books — novels, whole series of novels — “Sharp Objects”, “Longmire”, “Secrets and Lies”, “Safe”, “The Expanse”, “The Leftovers”, and so on. That often means complex stories with lots of sub-plots, major characters, twists and turns.
But of course, these are all grown-up shows.
Which is exactly what has me dubious about DW: that it won’t be the least bit “grown up” any more. So — maybe lots for newbies, but nothing for me and my ilk.
6 September 2018 at 04:41 #64042@missy It will be interesting to find out how many ‘fan girls’ drop out during the next series.
Oh, I think the droppers on that score took off when Peter Capaldi succeeded Matt Smith and David Tennant. I’m wondering how many “fan boys” will scarper, now that we have a “girl” Doctor, after all that fuss and feathers about stomping off in a huff, back when Whittacker was announced. Of course, we’ll never know — but the fan-natter should be interesting.
2 September 2018 at 18:01 #63970@thane16 Hearts up, Puro! I envy you such a rich literary background and your knowledge of music.
2 September 2018 at 17:49 #63969@mudlark . . . think of Shakespeare who, in his day, vastly expanded the vocabulary and idioms in common use.
When you say he expanded vocabulary, do you mean that he picked up uncommon usages for his work and so his audiences also picked those up, from the plays, and spread them? Or that he invented new words or new ways of using them (something analogous our cultural habit now of turning nouns into verbs for no discernible reason: “She gifted me with a slow loris for Christmas”), or both?
2 September 2018 at 06:26 #63963@mudlark I’ve seen this before, this classification of Basque as unique and apparently unconnected (by way of origins) to any other language family. Is it mainly the vocabulary that’s unique, or is Basque grammatical structure alone among all recorded languages in the world?
Writers of SF and fantasy sometimes construct languages for their imagined peoples, usually (these days at least) by having a bunch of words made up by a computer program, complete with structure imitating some known language. I’m wondering whether anybody has adapted Basque for that purpose, and how difficult that might be to do . . . But you’d start with, what makes it unique? Sounds, tones, lack of certain very common words in other languages (“no” for example), an unusual —
Oh, sorry; never mind. This is the kind of thing I can go look up for myself! Lazy me.
1 September 2018 at 19:16 #63957@tempusfugit What do you think might account for the lack of English language proficiency in Spain?
@missrori Jo Walton is an outstanding UK writer of SF. “Among Others” seems to be at least partly autobiographical; the protagonist is a hyper-intelligent girl growing up in Wales, with a witch (a real one? Maybe?) for a mother and an affliction that makes walking painful. I’ve seen Jo at several US conventions (primarily East Coast ones). She uses Canadian crutches to get around, and is definitely brilliant. If she’s on a panel, I’ll do my best to attend.
SF fandom, the kind organized more around books and stories than movies and TV, still has a noticeably outsized presence of people on the spectrum, and convention committees often go out of their way to accommodate them. Just lately there’s often a “Quiet Room” for all those who need to withdraw for a while from the swirl and chatter in the hotel halls — “No eating, sleeping, music playing, or talking allowed”, according to the Quiet Room rules I read at the WorldCon that I just attended in San Jose, California. This is fairly new, as I understand it, and came about because of requests from enough attendees to make it an issue that got addressed, at least at the bigger conventions like WorldCon.
1 September 2018 at 18:55 #63956Well, see, that’s supposedly the gist of the argument: that all of them are like that… [Ichabod]
Ah, so that is their argument? Perhaps when writing “mouthy” I should have written “the companions had ideas, they were creative, they began to think like the Doctor but most importantly they already did speak like him, think like him
A little more complicated, now that I think it over a bit more. There’s a subset of the Moffat-can’t-write-women argument according to which he has only one “on” switch for female characters, which toggles between Clara/Rose/Amy (all reduced to “young women who exist only to orbit the central male authority figure”) and skinny, sharp-edged, black-wearing bosses, like the head of the Bank in “Time Heist” and wassername with the eye patch — cold lady villains.
Reductivism is very useful to whiners who slag Moffat off like this, both male and female ones; as, I’m pleased to say, was often pointed out in a spirited and detailed manner by DW watchers with more individual and nuanced thinking. I expect to see the ground of the argument shifted, now, to “that’s not my version of a female Doctor — she would never do/say/think like that!” All the more so, with female writers on board. “I am more xxx than thou, and this insufficiently-radical mistake you just made proves it” is a significant problem in protest movements, certainly in feminism.
@missrori I’m glad to hear that 12’s cosplayers are gaining ground, since Capaldi was concerned from the get-go that his outfit be easily and cheaply reproducible for fans.
@pedant 2. The explosion of social media that means people who might have written “could of” in a diary or note to a peer now do so publicly and a massive numbers.
Put that together with the fact that so many users of social media are doing that (and video gaming etc.) instead of reading actual books, and it’s no wonder that one of the great losses of our era will prove to have been a reasonably standardized written language. I think we’re headed right back to the days of making English spelling up as you went along, except for the more formal English that’s (still) the language of international business.
31 August 2018 at 23:44 #63944@mudlark I haven’t encountered the label ‘mundanes’ before. I suppose that it never occurred to me that reading and enjoying science fiction set me apart in any sense. I must have been very obtuse in some ways
Naw, yer fine. It was new to me, too, when I finally gave up my incredibly snobbish disdain for “those Trekkies”, i.e. Star Trek fans, whom I assumed covered all devoted followers of science fiction. I went to my first-ever SF convention, the World SF convention in Kansas City in 1976 (only because my own first book had been published in ’74, and my editor told me to attend the con for publicity purposes), and lo!
There they were — all the friends I’d been looking for all my life and then some (plus some jerks, some guys who never bathed, some people who insisted on belly dancing — complete with wildly jingling trinkets — in the corridor outside my hotel room at 3 a.m., etc.). That’s where I heard “mundanes” for the first time. It’s fallen somewhat out of fashion lately, since SF and fantasy have more or less taken over the film industry and swamped TV, so who can really be “mundane” in that sense of being oblivious to or disdainful of these genres, as mundanes were, any more?
31 August 2018 at 23:34 #63943@missrory I understand what it is to have no interest in small talk, to be grumpy, brusque, and blunt in the heat of trying to get things done
So do I, just from being the kind of introvert who prefers to read (or write) a book to going to a party (or, sometimes, even answering the phone). And that’s far from uncommon among the SF fans I know. There’s a truly wonderful book by a UK author, Jo Walton, about finding community among the strange and quirky mix of people who grow up burying their heads in SF and fantasy fiction — it’s a newish work of hers, “Among Others”, and a beautiful read, well worth seeking out.
31 August 2018 at 23:29 #63942@tempusfugit Thanks, but I have a secret weapon that sometimes confers an advantage in that respect (not so much around here, in this den of eloquence): I’ve been a professional writer for most of my working life, fiction and everything else, so . . . you know; practice, practice, practice. And you’re doing fine with English, by the way — one point, though, while we’re on the subject of English: the past tense of “to cast” isn’t “casted” but, confusingly, just “cast” again. Mind you, I’ve seen “casted” showing up increasingly, so if you just wait a few years that will probably become correct in common usage, as has happened with “to dive” = “he dove” = “he dived”, along with several other such shifts over recent years.
American English is in an unusually chaotic state these days, what with spelling and grammar barely being dealt with in schools, and the loss of depth in literacy leading to an inability to figure out what a newly-encountered word means and how it might be used, using familiarity with its root parts from Latin or Greek etc. Besides, we have to “make room” now for all sorts of clunky neologisms from politics, advertising, and technological change.
31 August 2018 at 23:16 #63941@ mudlark @pedant Moffat didn’t cast Tennant, RTD did
Right, thanks for that correction. I fell into the common trap of attributing everything about NuWho to Moffat, because as the latest show runner he sticks in the mind as the mover and shaker behind it all. And it was, of course, all about expanding the viewership to keep the show successful enough to avoid having it sidelined or trashed by the BBC, not *specifically* about appealing to girls. On the other hand, I think the way young female viewers flocked to the show for Tennant encouraged a certain flirting with romance (without actually committing it) in the scripts, capitalizing on the pull Tennant had on that demographic to keep that segment of the audience coming back for more. And it was a big change — were any of the BG Doctors youthful “eye candy”? Tom Baker wasn’t. Eccleston certainly wasn’t teen-idol material. To me, the big change was Tennant, followed by Smith, with Capaldi a turn back toward the original Doctor Who template — a mature man, more likely a bit clownish than seriously commanding (the exception being Pertwee).
they were won over by Smith’s audition as old [man] in a young body.
I did read that, yes, but conveniently forgot it while maundering on. The effect, though, was the same: the adorable raggedy-man/boy continuing on from Tennant, and then BAM, a man with lines in his face and thunderous eyebrows, not cuddlesome nor even Heathcliff-y “romantic”. Dismay: “Aagh, he’s OLD, he’s grumpy — we want our candy back!” Did the male fans get much into this “too old” stuff? Seems to me it was mostly a girl-thing. I think it was only later on, when the more serious undercurrents of the Moffat/Capaldi manifestation emerged, that some fanboys (and fan men from way back) began complaining that the show wasn’t fun any more.
31 August 2018 at 22:40 #63939@tempusfugit Thanks! I wonder whether that’s the crux of the difference between being a kid (of whatever age) and being a “grown-up”: the kid sees, and admires, and longs to be, The Hero — an idol, a power, a victor against all odds. A grown-up, though, is pushed past that. A grown-up who has in fact grown up has come to recognize that same protagonist as a striver, an idealist, whose efforts and victories are bound to be transformed or even reversed by time — and eventually forgotten. It’s myself that I see, of course: that’s me, fixing but failing to create fixes that stick, and underestimating the dumb obduracy of things-as-they-are enough so that taking action to try to change them seems worth it.
But that’s not the whole picture. The relentless persistence of human effort — in spite of its long-range futility — can be as true and real as is the ephemeral nature of “success”. That’s what we see in the Doctor and his companions: when all seems lost — nevertheless, they persist (and — usually — manage to succeed, or at least survive). That refusal to give up in despair is what a grown-up can realistically emulate (although it’s a hell of a lot harder in our lived reality than it looks onscreen*).
*[The sane and the fair-minded among us achieved the goal of an intelligent black man as leader of the US, two terms’ worth. Now, through a perfect storm of bad luck and deliberate thuggery, we have a senile Imp of the Perverse and his gang of scheming primitives at the helm, steering us rapidly backwards toward the 1950s. Same old, same old, for decades to come if the spiteful fool completes stacking the Supreme Court with willfully blind and heartless reactionaries.]
31 August 2018 at 19:02 #63929@pedant For some, women are only strong is they fulfil your expectations.]
Thanks for the reminder! Yup, nailed it.
@tempusfugit so these fans only watched because they fancied Tennant, when tennant left they didn’t give a fuck about the show.
Clearly; but Moffat let himself in for that, really, by setting Tennant, and then Smith, as bait to attract more fan-girls to the show (and it worked — boy, did it work!). Once the bait was, ah, devoured, these viewers who had enthusiastically joined in with the established fandom no longer had a reason to stay, because they weren’t getting the fix they’d come for any more. A whole bunch of them turned on Moffat for what was to them a dirty “bait and switch” trick, not, IMO, without some justification.
I’m an SF fan from my pre-teen years, we ‘uns used to refer, rather disdainfully, to the SF-blind as “mundanes”. I would chide Moffat a bit, for drawing in mobs of mundane girls to show that he could and to bolster the show, but acting all surprised and put upon by at the furious flouncing-off of the ones who really only came for the bait he’d set out. I think a lot of that flouncing centered on dissatisfaction with Clara as a disguise for anger that Tennant, in particular, was gone — but that was so childish a reaction that it had to be dressed up as rejection of “badly written” Clara, whom many of the Tennant groupies really couldn’t care less about.
At any rate, choosing this moment to finally introduce a female Doctor was, IMO, a brilliant move, and will of course generate its own flurries of criticism and defenses of how it’s handled among the viewers.
31 August 2018 at 06:24 #63924thane16 I think the small applause for Moffat -if that’s all it is – will eventually become a deafening roar
I agree. Hysterical hate-rants aren’t going to have much staying power, IMO. Moffat is too good a writer to be drowned by all that venomous envy and resentment.
By placing an actor of great note, who, I believe, understood the Doctor as well as Tom Baker all those years ago, into such a role was IN ITSELF an act of feminism; a way of ensuring that older women matter; that we don’t all want pretty lads because what woman in her 30s 40s, 50s and onwards wouldn’t applaud Capaldi as handsome?
Not just an act of feminism: an act of validation about aging, both in men and in women. It wasn’t just that Capaldi looked his age; the scripts occasionally *reminded* us, deliberately, that this was not a young man’s body (near the end of “Deep Breath”, the Doctor effortfully hanging onto the bottom of the elevator Half-Face is ascending in). The choice of Capaldi as a sexy asexual — an attractive male who plunges into a relationship with a pretty young human female that’s passionate in every way except sexual congress — is also a feminist statement in that it’s about both men and women being capable of deep and compelling cross-gender relationships that aren’t just tricksy pathways to getting them into bed together — that we are more than sets of genital organs calling all our shots, and genes “demanding” controlling us by demanding to be expressed into the future through reproduction.
And older women responded. We’re used to being ignored, deployed as stereotypes, or made into jokes, in our culture’s mass entertainment. Moffat had the guts to use DW to address us, not just the girls he’d won over with Tennant, in a show supposedly for kids, their parents, and the same kids grown up but trying to get back to kidness again. Holy cow — no wonder he got pilloried for it!
. . . Many people like to say Moffat can’t write for women. I find this a bleak and frankly stupid idea. I see the females in ALL of Moffat’s stories during Tennant’s time being ‘mouthy’ and quick thinking.
Well, see, that’s supposedly the gist of the argument: that all of them are like that, to some degree. Young women who are trying to be feminists are given the heroines they complain are missing, and complain even more, that they’re all the same, so Moffat can’t write female characters spanning the varied spectrum of real women. Only — would the Doctor, being the Doctor and not a gender ideologue, accept a slow-thinking, dull, meek companion, or one that only follows fashion, or a self-absorbed neurotic, or — etc.? Not bloody likely, darlings.
@pedant . . . the people who complain about Moffat, using his depiction of women, use exactly the same syntax ad those who style themselves mens rights activists or incels.
The men, yes. The young women, however, were doing something else (on tumblr and The Mary Sue at least) — complaining that Moffat’s female characters aren’t “feminist” *enough*. They were so busy trying to be more-feminist-than-thou that they completely missed the fascinating development of Moffat’s own feminist awareness as shown in his scripts. There was also, IMO, an element of shocked rejection — of the idea that a middle-aged Scottish man like Moffat could deliver what they were decrying the lack of (strong female characters with intelligence and agency in screen entertainment in general), and continue to keep trying to do it better. I think they showed a sort of naive essentialism here: he’s a man, he can’t possibly be writing these women right. I did not see that from those I thought were mature women rather than youngsters. And I suspect that some of the more outraged young female fans were angry that Moffat was pitching his stories beyond them, to older women who’d grown up as fans. I think they see themselves as much *better* feminists than us older feminists, and they were insulted. “Get Tennant back!”
In a way, Moffat deserved that: he did, after all, set bait for those younger women, in the forms of Tennant and Smith. They didn’t like not being catered to any more, starting with S8.
@tempusfugit I’m glad to find fellow 12th Doctor fans since he’s not well liked in the DW Fandom. I enjoy absolutely everything about him
I loved 12 too; and welcome.
31 August 2018 at 03:57 #63922@missy @janetteb @tempusfugit It was that brusqueness of Capaldi’s that made his Doctor so authentic, to me — if I were afflicted with a strong vein of idealism and went flying through this incredibly beautiful and incredibly harsh and treacherous universe for a couple of thousand years of very bruising adventure, I imagine I’d be pretty damned brusque myself. Eccleston had some of that as well, and I liked him for it. Both Tenant and Smith somehow didn’t seem truly connected with that backstory, to me. Or maybe, as a matter of taste or whatever, what they did with the role sort of made no mark in my memory.
Capaldi’s Doctor, struggling with his own identity and with such long experience of tremendous exertion that in the end makes no difference at all to the universe (because it went right on being as ruthless and “unfair” as it is by its nature) but that he can’t let that stop him — well, that drove home for me. I thought, that is who such a person would be, as an adult of feeling and perceptiveness. So he’s been my Doctor since “Deep Breath” because to me he’s the most true portrayal of the creature that the Doctor is.
What JW will do to make a true Doctor of her own is something I’m very curious to see.
31 August 2018 at 03:35 #63921@temusfugit I enjoyed all Doctors too but he has me glued to the screen
Yep, me too. Loved his work in the show, and I’m delighted to hear that he’s been back at work — he’s Mr. Macawber in Iannucci’s upcoming modern version of “David Copperfield”. Bring it on! I love Iannucci’s work, too — anybody see his cheerfully cynical bloodbath, “The Death of Stalin”? Now, that was a breath of rank air! Just right for our times in America (among lots of other places), IMO.
31 August 2018 at 03:20 #63920@mudlark I remember the hats and gloves thing very well. My maternal grandmother became a milliner in her adopted country, making hats and corsets right up into her sixties, when women came from other boroughs of New York City to be fitted in her living room — she was working from her apartment on 107th St. by then. She used to joke about it, even while she was making her living at it.
The Old Days are creeping up on me lately, though I wonder how much of those memories I’ve made up to fill in the blanks.
24 August 2018 at 08:19 #63858@mudlark Thanks; that’s fascinating. Als0 depressing. Christianity started off better (at least about this kind of thing) and just got — worse? *More* restrictive, *more* misogynistic, *more* about power, control, fear, and status, as time went on and the institutional structure solidified, centralized, and then began to fracture again. Wasn’t it a kind of free-for-all back in the early days? Hence the increasing urge to codify, prune away diverging ideas and opinions, and crush dissent to powder.
I hear very little about religions of any kind that softens my feelings about them. I hope more of us are finally starting to grow out of the need for the things. Of course, there’s no telling what will take their place . . . Just covering my bets here, on the “be careful what you wish for” theory of stuff.
23 August 2018 at 08:11 #63847@mudlark The Saxon church was adjacent to a monastery, a double house of both men and women, ruled by an Abbess.
Woah — an Abbess, in charge of monks? Do we know who she was? Was that configuration found elsewhere? She’d have still needed to be confessed by a priest, though, right? Just as all the nuns did, and the monks as well, as I recall.
23 August 2018 at 08:03 #63846@mudlark Right on the money, and thanks — that’s a lot more than my dinky memory coughed up, but I’m glad to find that the darn thing still works that well. So it was for “religious” as well as misogynist reasons that they killed her? God sakes; how could she be young and beautiful and still have had the time to rack up all that knowledge and a reputation plus being called to advise the great and the “good”?! Movies on historical themes are plague spots on the brilliant face of history as we can still know how it really was, at least to some degree. Though I suppose the same could be said of a great deal of historical fiction, which was one of the passions of my teen-age reading addiction. And in an earlier time, it was songs and poems, I guess, and sensationalist broadsheets, that memorialized such violent acts against men and women, probably with similar inaccuracies and added frills and thrills.
It amazes me that we think we know history. If our perceptions of our own lives can be seen as just shadows of the real thrown on the walls of our cave, our knowledge of the past seems like just shadows of shadows; except for things like the Thor hammer pendant. Even then we can go decades before realizing that the skeleton of that warrior buried with weapons and — horses? — was female. But that’s the thrill that’s part of keeping archaeologists digging, isn’t it — to touch the real, ancient thing, before the interpretations start flying.
22 August 2018 at 10:24 #63840Damn, but I love cat stories. They are our court jesters — entertaining us with silliness, showing us up, reminding us of Nature’s indifference, mystifying us, making us love them, and leaving too soon. No wonder they’ve taken over the world; just like us, in that respect, and just as destructive in their own ways. Of course we fall for them. If only we could put a stop to nine-to-a-litter! Reproductively, they’re as maladaptive as we are ourselves, though not, in their case, by choice.
Naps with cats; one of the great, deep pleasures of life on the physical plane. Funny; my psychic friend tells me that her sources tell her that throughout the universe, all “creatures of reason” (those that live by choices more than by instincts) have “companion animals”. Good. We need them.
@mudlark The fortnight’s work resolved the matters under debate, but revealed further intriguing questions, including evidence of Viking occupation
Those Vikings were *everywhere*. What a mob! I loved being a “carefree digger”, myself, there and at Newcastle, and in SW Ireland — wish I could do more of it. Finding that infant skeleton (“Roman Fort on Tyne”) hooked me but good. All that deep time. Loved it. The sense of it, literally materialized underfoot, felt like such strong support somehow: “Yes, you are real, because we were real, and we all still are.” Something like that.
Oof. Wine talking. G’night, all.
22 August 2018 at 09:55 #63839@missy You feel the way you feel, and you’ve plenty of company, judging by some of the comments I’ve seen elsewhere on the choice of JW to be Doctor 13.
Mind you, I think we might have been far better off with a female Jesus — only she would have been done away with a whole lot sooner, IMO. Uppity women — faugh! Wasn’t there a great philosopher in Byzantium, I think, who was murdered by a cabal of pissed of men for being female and daring to not only think, but open her mouth and talk about what she thought? The name that comes to mind is “Hypatia”, probably wrong, and it might have been Alexandria . . . but the story is the story.
22 August 2018 at 09:49 #63838@thane16 Puro — I think I read that during Capaldi’s run a lot of older female fans (or younger female fans when they started, attracted by Tennant, who had *become* somewhat older female fans) went all in for this Doctor. There were lots of posts, at first, among young female fans lamenting that Capaldi was “too old”, “a mean old man”, “too gloomy”, and the like. Counterbalancing that (on sites like tumblr) was much glowing appreciation for the “Yum, he’s a Silver Fox” factor, and “it’s about time we got a grown-up for grown-ups”.
But now that I think of it, getting older also means finding yourself advancing further and further into the ante-room of Death, with your friends and your family and your cultural icons from the days of your youth being snatched beyond Death’s Door from all around you — “lost”. Moffatt said he meant to “grow the Doctor up”, and I think he did, in so many respects . . . especially in regard to death and loss and how wearing they can be on survivors (“She is survived by . . . “). Maybe for many older women the positive response to Series 8-9-10 was just what you’re talking about, Puro, but at the other end of life — seeing what they themselves were going through addressed in this clever space adventure show, and validated as worth attending too by this Doctor’s own very perceptible anger, sorrow, and anxiety about Death and loss. After all, as the 13th Doctor, he came out of so much experience of both, and he came out wearing it, the way you do, not strolling away whistling.
I think Capaldi and Moffat saw that element — the dread of Death, the pain of loss — threaded through the Doctor’s lives, and deliberately set out to bring it forward (the way life brings it forward willy-nilly as we non-fictional people age) — through the relationships between the Doctor and Clara, River, and Bill, among others.
Certainly I felt the pull of this, but, being right in the middle of a fairly protracted personal experience of it, I only thought about my own situation, not those of others like me — other women of middle age and beyond, losing parents, siblings, friends, children dying prematurely, and of course spouses. Women live longer, so there are so many of us — more all the time. [Just this year so far, the SF community has lost Ursula LeGuin, Harlan Ellison, and Gardner Dozois, among others, following the loss of editor David Hartwell earlier; and many of my cohort report increasingly difficult health issues.]
What they tell me about widowhood is that it’s harder the second year: people tend to assume that you must be “over” it by then, because they want you to be. But you’re not.
But — where I was going with this is, I wonder whether my contingent, the older women looking after or waiting with bated breath for the bd news about, sick relatives, friends, and colleagues — whether that crowd will watch JW, and stories written by a much more varied set of writers, and say to themselves, “Ah, good, that’s one good thing done . . . ” and, slowly or quickly, fall away, because we are no longer being addressed. I can see that happening, and of course it would be fine with the Beeb, as we can easily be replaced, and then some, by younger viewers — little kids, bigger kids. The next DW horde. [I’m speaking primarily about middle-aged-and-up women not our of an exclusionary bias, but only because that’s the experience I can at speak from.]
I won’t be surprised if that happens. I’m just glad I was here for what happened before that. S8-9-10 sang to me like some sad and zany opera, and I’ll be forever grateful that the creatives on the show, during all of New Who actually, took that chance with darkness, age, and an inescapable awareness of Death — in a “kids’ show” about adventuring in fantastical space and time. I also hope that if that audience segment is significantly thinned by such departures, it’s not taken as proof that women viewers prefer male protagonists and heroes to female ones.
The thing about grown-ups is — it’s so much more complicated than that.
21 August 2018 at 07:39 #63822@thane16 Screeching Weasel and The Grateful Frogs . . . how did I miss that concert? Same way I missed all the other ones, I guess.
21 August 2018 at 07:13 #63821@thane16 Mmm; yup, statistics alone can be awfully shallow when it comes to viewership figures (well, not complicated for the bottom-line minders, but for viewers with a sense of the varieties of viewers and their, as it were, various views.
I see the Capaldi/Moffat era as a bold experiment that yielded a bumpy ride, but the highs were indeed high, like the ambitions involved. I’m still curious to see how these series rank when a couple more Doctors have gone by and more people have done more re-watching, since re-watching was claimed by many commenters who originally were put off to be what impressed them with these series’ many virtues.
Time will tell; and then more time will tell something different; and then . . . So it goes. I’m just very glad I was here for it all.
And I hope to feel the same about S11.
21 August 2018 at 06:49 #63820@mudlark . . . gone, alas, are the days when I could leap lightly in and out of trenches and assume and sustain the most contorted positions for digging in narrow spaces
Gone indeed; that archaeological dig that my husband and I went on in Thailand, during which we descended into a deep pit to dig up the skeletons of an ancient graveyard (it’s okay — we had the blessings of his late Majesty the King of Siam), was wonderful, but — when Earthwatch, the sponsoring organization, sends me updates and tries to lure me into signing up for another round, I remember going up and down those ladders. And being squooshed into far too small a space with dire warnings about, you know, falling over and crunching a clavicle or two (not to mention the allergy cough I brought home with me and lived with for half a year), I have to regretfully decline . . . And I do mean, regretfully.
Although, of course, I do understand that you can’t step into the same river twice — so the regret is tempered by realism: who knows what kind of infection or infestation I could bring home *this* time! My stepdaughter is going through the prep for attending my grandson’s Indian wedding in New Delhi next spring, and she tells me it’s a nightmare of shots, Rxs, antibiotics, anti-malarial daily doses, etc., on top of some slow bureaucratic paperwork. I wouldn’t want to take all that on again, either!
Walking the dog of an evening, now . . . that would be more my speed. An old dog. I had one, but she’s long gone, and neither of the cats take the slightest interest in walkies (good!).
20 August 2018 at 09:34 #63814@kharis Had been hoping the trailer would get me excited, but all it did was make me miss my favorite doctors.
On the other hand, you also got ice cream and wine . . .
Well, it’s just the wait now.
Thing that frustrates me is what @mudlark says above, and the inevitability of it. When DW was a low budget, quirky show for family viewing that had a limited fandom even in the UK, it could afford to be impulsive and a bit goofy because — well, if it fell apart and went off the air, these things happen (see, original Star Trek, that actually didn’t last that long).
BUT — once the thing becomes a huge success with a growing world-wide viewership and a bigger budge to help lure those viewers in, suddenly there’s so much more at stake for so many people (now including vendors of DW kitsch, people who stage massive DW publicity stuff, etc.) that you run into the risky territory of competitive viewing numbers — and that’s Lowest Common Denominator territory: stay bland and perky so as not to upset anybody anywhere, everybody just wants “light entertainment” for their family evenings, and the qualities that made the thing go in the first place get filed down to nothing, in an effort to safeguard a much bigger investment and a much bigger pay-off.
The perils of success in the entertainment business are not imaginary. Neither, I imagine, are the pressures on the Beeb to Make More Money with DW.
So I worry. And I’m also not a fan of karaoke and mime (although I think a female Doctor will be fine — just maybe not for viewers like me, if she comes with a significant degree of shallowing-up and dumbing-down, and more flash, less depth).
20 August 2018 at 08:59 #63813@thane16 I do like the idea of thankful frogs. A lot. I myself do not garden; getting down low enough to do it is hard enough, but getting back up again — Yog-Sothoth! What a hassle. Just this month, legs have become — unreliable. I hope that seeing a podiatrist will help. I *know* that a nice glass of red will — so long as I remain sitting down, anyway.
15 August 2018 at 19:59 #63768@bluesqueakpip Thanks.
15 August 2018 at 18:59 #63765@pedant [disputing Bluesqueakpip’s assertion of a significant slide in viewing figures during the Moffat/Capaldi era]
@pedant Having seen a good deal of discussion about ups and/or downs in viewing figures after the end of S10, I concluded that a person’s opinion varied with the sources they took their figures from (and, quite obviously in many cases, the biases they began with) — but how many reasonably reliable sources can their be out there? I saw both arguments stated and re-stated many times: “viewing figures dropped off a lot during Capaldi’s second and third seasons” v. “Viewing figures dropped for *everything on TV* during that time period, because of shifts in technology and viewing habits, and DW did no worse than everybody else.”
So — ?? I was confused then, and I’m confused now . . .
15 August 2018 at 18:51 #63764@bluesqueakpip Ah, thanks; yes, that makes sense. Love the kiss story!
@pedant I’ll go find your post — this recurrent issue drove me nuts back when it was hot and dripping vitriol.
15 August 2018 at 18:38 #63763@bluesqueakpip Yup, “childing it up” (as opposed to actively “dumbing it down”, although there’s some inevitable overlap there) makes sense. I have no quarrel with it as a strategy, and I agree on the type of arc that would work. But that’s pretty likely to lose me, and other older fans who don’t have kids or even grandkids around to watch with, and I can’t say that I’d be happy about that, and so what, really? It’s obviously more important to draw new youngsters in than to please an older crowd that’s already begun dying off, assuming that that that could be done and that enough of the oldsters would be pleased anyway. So best of luck to them, and I think it will work fine.
They did say in so many words that each episode will be a closed story, right at the start of taking up that subject, and that does worry me. It’s pretty much a sure road to a “monster of the week” formula after a while, and while that can be refreshing now, after all of Moffat’s (sometimes overreaching) complexities, in the long run (whatever that turns out to be) that’s going to lose everybody except kids and their parents. Even with higher-budget monsters, it gets old; when my husband and I stopped watching regularly, it was for exactly that reason. We always checked in for a look at a new Doctor, but didn’t stay long.
Which might put the show back to where it was before Tennant took off with it in terms of viewing figures. Good thing, bad thing — who knows? Nicer for the kids; but what’s the fastest-growing segment of the population these days? Not kids — although that could change too, I suppose.
I think what I’d like most would be to see them bring more science into it, but I don’t think that’s likely to happen either. More likely, “comical superhero” is the way they’ll go. I’m thinking about the success of “Deadpool”, which basically snarked its own genre and became very popular with teens because of it. Oh, Hell, who knows; I’ve no doubt Chibnall knows what he’s doing, and I’ve also no doubt that whatever it is, he’s definitely not doing it for viewers like me.
However, I, and some viewers like me, will stick around to see how the whole female Doctor thing works out. I suspect that it’ll be a smooth, low-key transition, barely a ripple in fact, with occasional spikes of controversy over this or that bit of business, or a (rare) story that deliberately confronts some rougher aspect of modern gender relations. Chibnall was quick to say that they’re deliberately starting out with the new Doctor just “trying to survive”, rather than any to-do about the gender switch. Probably a wise choice.
15 August 2018 at 01:30 #63758@blenkinsopthebrave Thanks so much! I never saw that one, I’m sure — and I’ll look for it.
My aversion to Troi is based on the irritating lack of anything real for this character to *do* in the series except state the obvious; but beyond that, the problem of the creators and writers seemingly assuming that a female character is *only* good for soft, nurture-y things like medicine (Dr. Crusher) and reading people’s feelings like Troi, for cripes’ sakes, at a level that any smart goldfish might attain — as if being an unusually high-level “empath” could be an actual function and reason for being a crew member on a star ship.
Oh, crap; do I have to write that one too?! No, no, please, somebody must have done it by now — extreme empathy as a) the “gift” that makes everybody hate you for exposing exactly the feelings that they’re hiding in order to be socially and professionally functional, and b) a crippling vulnerability that would leave you a howling mess a good deal of the time and not much good or anything. Great job; I’m applying immediately.
Did either of these characters, or Uhuru for that matter, *ever* get to be on an Away Team? Ever? If not, Q.E.D.
15 August 2018 at 01:18 #63757@blenkinsopthebrave @janetteb Quite right, sorry about the misattribution.
Yeh; nervous, with a doomy edge; though I do still feel that it’s fine either way, really, since those of us with a taste for the darkness that Moffat brought have had quite a feast of that over the past few years, a youthful lightening-up is probably the best option for S11, by way of a freshening contrast to all that at a time when the old DW audience is starting to die off (well friends of mine, and it’s people in their 60’s and 70’s that I’m thinking of).
If it’s the kids’ turn again, I don’t feel that I can complain; mourn a bit, maybe, but complain? No.
Though if I were to live long enough (which would be too long, really), I can imagine a DW somewhere down the line who’s both female *and* darkly-antic-with-depths, something like the “heroine” of a little series called “The Good Place” x Mrs. Peel x — who else have we got? I’m going blank; I don’t mean to go as far as “Fleabag” or Jessica Jones, but someone female who can trip the dark fantastic with an edge of sardonic humor and flashes of passion (I don’t mean sexual passion — I really prefer my Doctor a bit more mysteriously alien in that department).
You know, I just read a 2016 novel the heroine of which has the kind of edge I mean. I can whole-heartedly recommend “Borderline”, by (then) new author Mishell Baker — good, wry fun with a truly original take on a reason for the fey to get involved with humans at all (modern world setting). She rushed her ending a bit, very common beginner’s mistake, but wow, what a ride!
Oh, screw it. If I want something like that, I’d just damn well better write it, eh?
Hmm.
14 August 2018 at 23:08 #63754@blenkinsopthebrave I fear that Chibnell is trying too hard to be “different”
My impression is that he’s committed to being *the same*, but the same as in just like early DW in that this Doctor will be comic book adventures, nothing “troubling”, just lots of fun. “Fun”. Okay; I know; I was there. I left because lots of “fun”, in the somewhat older days, meant “See DW goof around and defeat Monster of the Week with nonsense pulled out of his ear at the last minute”, as I recall. Not always but too often for me, after a while.
“Escape”, they keep saying. I prefer engagement, even if only tangentially and in a fantastical manner, with some of the salient issues in RL, but in an imaginative manner as befitting a fantasy/SF show. I doubt I’m going to get it on DW any more; maybe now and then . . . maybe enough for me? Not likely; I’ve had my “fun”, and then some. But for a new generation(s) of potential fans — great.
Looks like it’s going to be just what I (and some others here and elsewhere) have been expecting. Here’s what I heard in these interviews: each episode is discreet, so you can jump in anywhere and not need to know anything about the (admittedly immense) backstory behind S11 (or even remember what happened in the *last* episode). Fun. Escape. Energy. Fizz. The Doctor is “delighted”. For the whole family to share together of an evening.
Back to the playpen, sounds like to me; an unusually bright, sophisticated playpen, to be sure, and, IMO, perfect for the purpose: seeding a new child audience to carry the show for another 50 yrs as they grow up and it does too, as it did with NewWho.
But – – big questions that may have no answers? Pause to reflect? Deep feelings that last for more than the length of a scene (that is, have implications down the line)? For that matter, depth of any kind? Sounds like, not. So: I’ll gladly give S11 a try, see if it has anything to hold my interest. I’m not too old for fun (partly because my sister keeps posting hysterical stuff on my FB page); but I don’t have time to spare for sprightly-but-shallow any more. Maybe next year.
Too bad my grandkids are grown. It would be much better to be watching with kids, I think, so cheers to everybody in a position to do that, and I look forward to others’ comments here when S11 begins.
14 August 2018 at 21:31 #63753@blenkinsopthebrave Oh ho — I await the revelation of your favorite favorite with bated breath — and hope that when you do name it, I can actually remember it! I find the original series ludicrously tacky now, as well as astonishingly ambitious in its politics, but still enjoy some of NG, if Deanna Troy isn’t in it. Okay, it was good of them to make room for more major female characters in NG (the Doctor + the Empath), but their jobs are still pit jobs — repairs and maintenance — while it’s the lads who get to drive the formula cars.
Still — “Darmok”. An ep like that (*are* there other eps like that, though?) counter-balances a multitude of casually sexist sins . . .
14 August 2018 at 02:20 #63748@craig Thanks so much for the whole set of interviews with Moffat — I’d not seen the third installment before. With Moffat, there’s always something fresh or new — to me, at least. Always a pleasure.
@thane16 @blenkinsopthebrave I try to see “Close Encounters” about once every 5 yrs or so; love the optimism, the lack of paranoia and general mean-mindedness that infuses so much SF now (just came off watching a series called “Altered Carbon” on Netflix, full of characters who hate each other even when they’re supposed to be friends or lovers, where the best character in terms of somebody halfway decent is a computer constructed personification of a hotel). The cynicism now is just soul-killing (for very good reason, I realize, but still), the violence disgusting — most SF now seems to be stories that include at least ONE extended scene of torture, gloating, and mutual loathing, which expresses where we are now, all right — in that sense, “Close Encounters” feels to me like SF *made in* a future, future in which we’ve somehow made it past the hideousness of our current wars of mutual hatred and distrust and into a stage of not actually *needing* an alien invasion to pull us together, because we’ve learned to work together because we’ve already had to. So yeah, optimism.
And I *love* Truffaut’s grumpy muttering re the (very mild) commanding officer’s attempt to keep the “invitees” away from the landing site: “They were invited,” he snaps, and turns away, “tete de merde.” I’m eternally grateful that that hasn’t been edited out for TV (maybe because nobody expected “Shit head” so nobody in American TV noticed it?) .
@winston Watching Star Trek — they just ran one of my favorite episodes from NG, “Darmok”, on TV here; I was on the phone, only caught the last 15 minutes, and now I think, sheesh, there was so much more they could have done with that — but it was still moving, and, for a language nut like me, as thrilling in concept as it had been when I first saw it, back in whenever-that-was.
@pedant The Pandorica Opens in Beacon, NY, and I’m out here in New Mexico! I suppose I could go visit my youngest sister, who lives and paints in the Hudson River Valley (right outside the town of Hudson, in fact). Hmm.
13 August 2018 at 23:27 #63747@hiker @thane16 @oswald PCap is my Doctor too — happy to join the crowd on this. He was the Doctor for grown-ups (hence the flat merchandise sales since most grown-ups don’t seem to be that much into action figures etc.), and he made the most of it. It was a wonderful “most”, too, and I think it will wear well on re-watch well into the future. I do miss the occasional new flash about Capaldi doing this or that — he said he was going to “just disappear” for a while, and has clearly made it so (what do you know, a person in the entertainment business who actually does what he said he was going to do). And what’s Pearl Mackie been up to? That limelight sure moves fast.
Meanwhile, JW’s launch draws cl0ser — that’s gonna be a blast!
6 July 2018 at 08:12 #63608@wolfweed Thanks for the link! Some interesting music — gotta scroll down a bit, though, to get past the first set (African mountains), which are very heavy on the single main theme, IMO. The bits of score everything below that are much more varied.
1 July 2018 at 07:59 #63601@blenkinsopthebrave the great science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who.
WHAT? My God, I had no idea — Harlan said that? Wow. If I’d known before, I’d have called him up for a natter about it. He was a very — ah — volatile party, who often did amazing favors for other writers and/or insulted, alienated, and occasionally punched them as well. He once, out of the blue, plugged a couple of my books during a convention panel we were on together; I was gobsmacked and dizzified at the same time, and we got pally for a while from that point. He was one hell of an electrifying performer, brilliant at improv. Some years later, he phoned me to rant about the latest copyright or plagiarism suit he was engaging in, and I pretty much called it quits after that. Harlan always insisted that you take sides, which put people in a difficult position when he was going off half-cocked and you had no way of knowing the whole story at the moment — only his side of it. And that he was way too excitable to be any degree of objective about that.
Some of his stories really struck sparks with readers. But beyond that, there’s been a tremendous amount of comment within our community, about how inspiring his work was to so many young (back then) writers in our field, and how helpful he could be to them. Some remember him with a certain sourness and reserve, but so many are really stricken by news of his death.
I love it that he spoke about DW that way! Smart, funny, impossible Harlan . . . of course he would.
16 June 2018 at 11:07 #63565@pedant — Thank you; applause right back. And thanks for the clarification.
And of course if most of the ground water is poisoned by chemicals from fracking, the raccoons don’t have much of a chance either . . . nobody does. Rich fucks don’t care; they just want another private submarine and a house in Monaco, and to hell with everything and everyone else. I think some of them actually think they can buy security for themselves in refuges being built (I’ve heard there’s already one in Colorado, and of course DC has access to a nearby underground city for lawmakers and, not their wives, but their interns, who are nice and young, prime breeding stock), while the rest of the world dies of heat, wars, starvation, poisoned water, and all the rest of it. Under these circumstances, heads on pikes are not an unreasonable concept. But revolutions rarely lead to anything other than another gang of ruthless thugs taking over, so that is not a good bet (though it could certainly happen anyway, if things continue on this present course as seen in the US).
15 June 2018 at 06:02 #63562@winston public service commercials on TV by Competitive Enterprise Institute calling climate change a myth and even saying that carbon dioxide was not pollution because “plants breath it” and that industrial waste was “harmless” and “essential to life.” The members of this institute were Exxon, Texico, Ford, Arco and General Motors .
SOP from the bastards running the show. If I could kill assholes like the heads of these evil creeps, I’d be willing to take on a hell of a karmic burden in debts to stinkers to give us a shot at at least clearing the way to *starting* to think about not what to *say* but what to *do*. Some of it we know, but that loathsome shit Dump is making even the smallest advances more difficult and more expensive. The karmic debt will be his — maybe for the suffocation and poisoning of the whole planet and everything trying to keep living on it. If we all dropped dead and the raccoons took over (opposable thumbs!), they’d be starting at square one, and having to go through all the learning that masses of us *are still resisting and denying*.
Or maybe they’d just start with more sense; who knows . . .
14 June 2018 at 06:05 #63556Love Tyson; tells it as it is. And as it is, is that we damn well better pull our socks up and get serious about things liek (today’s news) the Artic ice sheets melting faster than ever, and probably not because they’re mean and want to make like difficult for everybody, or because, oh, you know, it’s *time* for that to happen. @missy This is not a drill. This is *real*. And anything we can do to ameliorate these unusually sudden and drastic changes *we had damn well better do*, because otherwise we’re going to be sitting here cooking in our own grease and pointing our fingers at each other. Science is not a perfect tool — it’s a process of inquiry — but it’s better than the opinion of some fathead on Fox Noise etc. who just doesn’t want to have to *change* anything that might affect the bottom line of the CEOs of this world negatively. Change wins, or we all lose.
I just attended the wedding of my grandson to a charming young woman from India. He’s got $ from his other grandmother, enough to live modestly for the rest of his life, but he’s taking a brand new degree from NYU in Food Security and Nutritional Science, and working with urban “farmers’ markets” to make them more sustainable and effective. Shruthi, his wife, is pursuing a degree in social work. THEY understand what’s at stake, even though they don’t have kids of their own yet.
So I don’t bloody well feel like sitting back and taking the word of paid spokesmen for a bunch of fat-assed rich guys who keep getting richer on The Way Things Are that nothing needs to happen except more de-regulation and stupider schooling, and leaving those kids and their kids to the mercy (non-existent) of reactionary goons, morons, and soul-less profiteers. I’ve got skin in this game; based on your posts about this, I have to say, I wonder whether you feel that you do.
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