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@alexwho  Why hasn’t he been on Doctor Who????

Glad you found that!  He’s probably not been asked to do something on DW, assuming they could afford him (or, if he’s a fan of the Doctor, he’d do it for less just for the fun of it).  Acting is a very unpredictable profession; who knows!

@missrori  You might try doing something completely different — do some drawing, or walk around taking photos.  Sometimes a foray into another medium kicks the impulse loose.  You could take up another language, listen to language tapes and look at the history of the English language (it’s fascinating, to me, at least).  Physical activity is too, too — Tai Chi, Chi Gong, yoga.  Baking.  Anything absorbing, that takes your mind away from the things that it just won’t do right now and focuses it on what it will do.

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@thane15  Well, I was walking around the paradox problem to look at a different problem with the idea of using time travel to fine tune the past and/or the future.  To me, it looks as if we are all flying blind most of the time, since we can’t possibly know beforehand (or afterward, for that matter) most of the consequences, small and large, of our own actions (let alone *all* of the consequences).

I think of this as a very good thing, actually.  It’s what pushes us toward listening to and trusting ourselves, our own ethical sense — relying on it, testing it, being hopeful of more good “results” than bad; for those with an interest of knowing themselves, that is (obviously, many have no such interest, at least in this lifetime — there’s always hope for future ones, in my view)(yes; even for nearly formless blobs of bloviating ego like Trump).  We have to learn to be brave, and thoughtful, and flexible, because we never know just exactly what is coming next.

As for the Doctor, he knows all this in his bones, but we often see him driven by emotion and frustrated idealism into deliberately testing the limits of what he can or can’t get away with as a Time Lord (which turns out to be not much, or anyway not much that’s like what he originally had in mind — see Clara and Ashildr, for example).  I’ve enjoyed the way Steven Moffat has played with this — looking forward to how he wraps it all up in S10.  As a writer, I can’t really handle the Mobius Strip (sp?) of time travel stories, so I stay away from them.  Traveling with the Doctor by proxy, I can at least get a sense of what it might feel like to understand time travel!

The film “Arrival” is a great time travel story that has no actual time travel in it . . . I think.  And I had to see it on the screen before I could get a grip on the original short story, “The Story of Your Life”.

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@alexwho  A knight in shining armor . . . I’m going to see “Logan”, the new movie about Wolverine, solely because sir Patrick is in it . . . His recent appearance, with Hugh Jackman, on Graham Norton was pretty funny too — I got it through FB, but maybe it’s on Youtube by now.

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@pedant    just a[n] intellect reflecting on things.

A particularly capable intellect, at that.  And I see that “echo” (that face, this face) as the recognition of a thematic connection, not some sort of deliberate structural one, so there’s no “designer” behind it (well, except Moffat & co, of course!).  The theme is, IMO, “You can’t save everyone, but you can try save somebody!”  He makes a poor choice, and saves Ashildr in a way that wrecks her human life; a bit like the way he saves Clara by parting the two of them, come to think of it.  That “saving” stuff is tricky, since even the Doctor doesn’t know what the longer term consequences of a rescue will be, for the rescue-ee.  Saving, or sparing — if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, or leave young Davros to die by hand mine . . . ?

That’s why intent is everything (in karmic terms, at least, as I understand that concept): no one can ever truly control the rippling effects spreading outward and forward into the future of their own action.  I suppose the Doctor could spend his very very long time jumping forward in time to track the effects of his own acts, and then going back, if he deems it necessary to change the outcome, and running do-overs of, say, reviving Ashildr with changes.  Only even he couldn’t recognize all the future effects and the routes of how they came to be after Ashildr woke up.  It’s impossible, even with a time machine.  These ripples intersect with the ripples of something someone else did, or something he himself did earlier that’s still sending ripples out . . .

Gotta roll those dice.  Or don’t.  What matters is what you mean to do, but what happens, happens.  That’s why the Doctor has to be able to forgive himself for his mistakes so that he can be willing to make mistakes.  Fear of making mistakes can paralyze you into nothing but a road sign, going nowhere and doing nothing . . . by your own will, at any rate.  I think that’s what happened to SmithDoc, in his Tardis up on a cloud, until Clara got him down from there again and into the mix of events (she really is, in her own way, a very good teacher).

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@missrori  . . . Titan Comics miniseries Supremacy of the Cybermen (which ran last year) shows the Doctor’s mercy in banishing Rassilon to backfire badly.

I haven’t thought about that as “mercy” — in Hell Bent, the Doctor seems to me to be far more intent on rescuing Clara than on vengeance.  What he does to Rassilon is simply carry enforce his own initial demand: “Get off my planet!”  Rassilon won’t go, of course, so the Doctor sends him, more or less with a wave of his hand, after he’s taken control: Rassilon et al barely matter to him.  He only shoots the General because the General insists that the only place Clara is going is back to Trap Street and the Raven.

And that this was the time he finally remembered where his face came from, and what he must do if he is to be the Doctor

Oh yes, he’s working from that declaration — “I’m the Doctor — I save people!”  Only with Ashildr he’s kicking hard against the implied constraints on that purpose: he tries to save some people, but he can’t always do that, let alone save everyone.  And he’s thinking about how at some point he’s going to “lose” Clara, too, as Ashildr’s father has just lost her.  The hero’s dilemma: that he can’t stand by and do nothing, but neither can he do it all.

 

 

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@missrori  I don’t see how the Doctor was turned from a sword to a plow through his ordeal in this story.

The Confession Dial was the forging fire, but remember, the Doctor is now, per Moffat, one half of the Hybrid.  He acts as a sword carried by the strength of his anger and his determination.  It’s not until he rejoins his “other half” that her response to his plan brings him back to himself — his new self, his re-made self, a man who listens, a man who hears what his other half — but a person, not *just* his other half — says to him.  He needs to get her whole parting message again, and this time *really get* it: “You, your real self, isn’t a sword, that’s over now, so stop acting like one.  Be what you are: a Doctor.”

And he settles right down and sees, with his Doctor eyes, the truth of the situation: that they must dismantle the Hybrid identity immediately and for good, but not with a cold sword-stroke; with a gentler parting in which each has, literally, a hand.

@pedant  He ‘won’. But in storytelling, winning always has a toll. Always.

That, IMO, is storytelling doing its job: telling the whole truth, because winning always brings its costs along with it.  It’s that thing about choice: choosing A means choosing *against* B, C, D . . . “having it all” is nonsense.  But you do need a long perspective to see things that way, in the real world instead of just in stories.

@missrori  Hmmm…maybe zen study is for me?

Here’s the deal on Zen, as it’s worked for me: I spent a lot of time in my late teens reading about Zen Buddhism, books by Alan Watts and other writers who helped popularize those ideas in the US.  But what really worked for me was the sitting practice; that’s something you can find instruction on anywhere.  It’s like making art: all the theory in the world is useless until you put marks on paper or canvas.  If there’s a practice group anywhere near you that you can join, at least for a couple of sessions of zazen, that would be your best indication of whether or not this is a method that helps you.  If not, you can try on your own, and expect to begin with short efforts and gradually extend the amount of time any home session lasts.  It’s partly a skill.  Maybe it’ll do you some good too!

@winston  The only reward for the Doctor is being true to himself and his own moral code , being The Doctor ,

Yes — whether he is a “good man” has been a worrying concern for him quite recently, as it must be for anyone of principle who also has a good deal of power.  “To what effect do I use these powers?” must always be a question, maybe the most important question, because at any point the answer might change from a reassuring “for good” to “for destruction, for personal gain, for revenge”.  That, not rewards or recognition, is always his basic concern.

But @missrori has point — What starts all this trouble?  The Doctor says, “I’m so tired.  I’m so tired of losing people.”  So he acts to try to keep Ashildr — and there are reasons that it’s so not a good idea.  It’s Ashildr, trying to be a good powerful person herself, who betrays him and Clara in Trap Street to safeguard others.  The lesson is, to be good, you can fight to postpone death, but you can’t up-end the laws of the universe (things do die) without getting some rough blowback.  So yes, in this particular instance (Hell Bent) he <i>does </i>want<i> </i>a reward; Clara alive again and his companion.  But that’s not an option, because “things end.”  Life is tough that way, no matter W/who you are.  He has just bumped up hard against his own limitations, and in doing so has regained his sanity and self-control.

Which is, I suppose, a reward and a win in its own way.

 

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@thane15  Om right back to you, fellow red-face!  Just what you’ve said helped to get me to the place where I could duck out from under the grim dark of realizing the metaphorical meaning of that law — is it the first, or the second law of thermodynamics? If I stop to look it up, I’ll lose my train of thought, such as it is — and bask instead in the glow of the moment.  That’s what got me into doing zazen in the first place — sitting with a half dozen others in the bookstore after hours once a week, one light on, and an occasional roach visiting from the restaurant next door.  I needed stillness, and I think it’s through that exercise that I got settled enough in myself to be able to see that dark-light interplay and balance without, well, plain old despair.  So I think I know what you mean, and yes, that can work; but it doesn’t change the balancing act.  It does put me more into the light-part, the kindness part, though.  So I can try to be more good, and more good-feeling, than not.  Brian Cox is right, IMO.  But I think I am, too.  I’m a big fan of paradox and ambiguity, yin in yang and v.v., because I see them all around me.  Zen study helps me to not exhaust my energy by railing against it all the time.

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@thane15  We are trained to look for huge discoveries and enormous loud lines and act but Moffat, Gattis and the rest write with such economy that you are required to look for the good. Why?  Because that’s exactly how it is in real life, not the movies.

What a great way to look at it!  Nicely put, too.

I think physical life is harsh by its nature; sometimes we can ameliorate that, sometimes not.  Personally, I think that harshness is a given and is not fixable.  A change for the better has a cost, a crushing footprint, somewhere down the line, just as change for the worse also creates benefits somewhere to some creatures even if in an initially obscure and serpentine fashion.  Bad events are always *louder*, though, because they frighten us.  We  have to actively pay attention to notice the softer-sounding, seemingly smaller-scale, positive events.  That’s hard to do when the din gets really loud, but I think it’s worth the effort.  (Oh crap, did I really just write the equivalent of “Always look on the briiight siiide of life”?  Hides face in embarrassment.)

@missrori   No, nobody came to help (except mind-Clara); but who actually knew where the Doctor had been sent or what was happening there?  Rassilon, Ohila, other TLs knew, but they were busy with their fears of the hybrid Prophecy, and to them the Doctor is a troublesome renegade anyway  He doesn’t give up the secret, so they toss away the Dial and get on with their own concerns.  That’s the TLs the Doctor hates, true to form.  Rigsy and Anahson are bystanders in a confrontation between immortals — Ashildr and the Doctor.  What regular human can be expected to muscle in on that?

Basically, though, Steven Moffat decided that no one would be in a position to help the Doctor, in order to put our hero under maximum pressure leading to extremes of behavior that in turn lead to a breakthrough in understanding for the Doctor himself.  This is how good writers make a story worth reading or listening to — to produce a “pay-off” that feels “earned”.  The Dial situation is a set-up.  The set-up’s ultimate success demands that the Doctor fight his way through it alone — until Clara (who does love him) demands that he not repeat an old mistake to solve his problem, but instead get past his self-absorbed feelings to see her feelings as equally valid, and to honor her feelings as such.  And he does.

I think that’s a stupendous moment.  But it only “works” because of the extreme pressure of the Confession Dial that led up to it.  To beat a sword into a plough share — a tool of chaotic destruction into a tool of nourishing plenitude — you first heat the iron in fire and then hammer the hell out of it.  The Doctor is more steel than iron, so the fire must be very, very hot, and that’s what Steven Moffat provided with the ordeal in the Confession Dial.

This is a structural take on the absence of help, allies, and gratitude that you decry, and probably doesn’t answer your feelings of outrage about it.  But from a writer’s point of view (this writer’s, anyway), it makes perfect, and extremely satisfying, sense.

 

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@thane15  ”mum will run me over even if I’m dead” (source: one of the Chinese Australians

Oooh — a Tiger Mom!  As if life weren’t tough enough . . .

@missy @thane15  My sister’s favorite dog (of the many she’s had) was a Great Dane that died ated 12 yrs, apparently a very unusual age for such a big dog.  They usually only make it to around 8 yrs, she says.  The very big dogs, bred for size, like the Irish Wolfhound and the Dane, tend not to live very long, because the heart isn’t sized to match and it can’t handle the strain of running such a big operation for very long.  Gigantism just isn’t good for you; another of Nature’s dirty tricks.

@missrori  He must have his day, and receive what he is owed at last.

Well, I hope Moffat and co. come through on that — I agree that it would be very satisfying!  There’s that trope from the old Westerns, though, that kind of fits the Doctor as a character: the lone, traveling hero who’s always moving on shows up at the embattled homestead, gathers others like him to defend the defenseless, and then leaves alone again, with the little kid calling after him, “Shane!  Come back!  Shane!”  And the grown-ups stand around wide-eyed asking each other, “Who was that masked man?”  And then turn back to their normal business.  Even they know that when the guy who fixes trouble shows up, even if you don’t have trouble yet, it will sure follow him into your town.  And the Doctor in particular is well known for fixing the immediate threat and then leaving the clean-up and re-build to others.  “Love”, under those circumstances, is a problematical thing.  Fictional heroes tend to be restless by nature — they need problems to solve, dangers to face down and protect others from — and it’s hard to do that from within the bosom of a loving family (in whatever form it exists for him).

And then being nearly immortal, on top of that — well, it’s not a great formula for creating lasting, loving bonds.  As for the Confession Dial, the most important person to 12 *did* actually show up: Clara in the mind-Tardis, and she *did* help him, with some good, “tough” love.  And that was perfect, for that story, IMO.

On the other hand — this is a UK show, not a US one, so who knows?  I would like to see Moffat bring back some of the Doctor’s fellow-travelers for the close of this Doctor’s career, and I doubt that he’ll be able to resist the temptation to do something like that.  After all, it’s Moffat’s finale, too, as a DW writer.

Well, probably; you never really know, do you?  It is, after all, Doctor Who!

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Hey, some good news out of Texas, for a change!

http://doctorwhowatch.com/2017/02/26/boy-scouts/?utm_campaign=FanSided+Daily&utm_source=FanSided+Daily&utm_medium=email

So sad that DW is always so ruined but all those annoying creative people, eh?

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@blenkinsopthebrave  Excellent example — thanks for reminding me.

@pedant  Sorry to hear about the Fisher King . . .

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@pedant  All kinds of progress, yes.  What time-binding abilities are good for is tracing back effects to causes, and making corrections to get different, better effects from now on.  Maybe that’s what “sapience” is, at least in its practical manifestations?  Seeing those connections in time between “cause” and “effect” because you can remember back to what is identified (not always correctly) as “cause”.   If Time’s Arrow didn’t go in only one direction, could we still do that?

Reading a book called “Why Time Flies” — maybe I’ve already mentioned it here?  It’s put my brain into Timey-Wimey mode.  Good stuff, but tiring (also wine), so off to bed, and I hope in time to not have written something idiotic here.

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@mudlark   A new project — super!  I’m still ruminating on my dreams these days, feeling that, yes, there’s a new story in there someplace, trying to get out . . .

@blenkinsopthebrave   I’d love to see more historical adventures, keeping in mind that the research and costuming must be pretty difficult and expensive to do on the sort of schedule they keep.

As for CapDoc’s end — I have trouble thinking about it, really.  We just had a *sort* of a regeneration at the end of S9 — “This is right.  I accept it.”  But that was part of “making amends”.  I just can’t seem to make my head go there this time.  Luckily, I don’t have to; Moffat and Capaldi will imagine it for me, and I trust them both.

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@craig  I’m glad you put that photo up.  It’s good for us to look at good faces, and think about our own good folks gone.  Reminds me of the last lines of “The Lovely Bones”, which are also the best lines of the book.  It goes, more or less, like this: “My name is Susie Salmon, ‘salmon’ like the fish.  I was here for a while.  Now I’m gone.  I wish you a long and happy life.”

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@missy  @thane15  Ichi and i were talking about PC and the chance that we might have kept him a bit longer.

Yup; and I’m still talking about it, under my breath, to myself, grumbling and growling and snapping at the air . . . good thing it’s bed time, after a nice soothing glass of wine . . . But DRAT! and damnation!

But I also think Thane’s right — this is about PC’s recent announcement re S10, not about Hell Bent, so we should probably we doing our snapping and snarling on DW News.

 

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@thane15   The minus protects the past from us/or John and Sherlock so we can’t go back but only forward. This protects the cause and effect of the show.

Hmm.  So — do similar terms work for “real life”, too?  Something prevents me from actually going back in time, even in my memories (which are distorted by the passage of time and my frame of mined etc. so every time I re-member, what I remember is further from the reality of what — if anything! — actually happened).  I can only go forward, which protects my past from me meddling in it (or anybody else, for that matter.  Even the Doctor is forbidden to do that).

John was able to somehow “tie his grief up with a little bow.” We might be seeing things from a different perspective -not necessarily John’s?

Well, with Gatiss and Moffat, you never know, do you?  They are capable of anything, so we can get as bonkers as we please with explanations.  Which is why the internet is happily going nuts with theories about their show.  I’m thinking the original idea was to give John a “Sherlock” to love and marry, a female Sherlock, in Mary, since some fans are so invested in a John/Sherlock sexual relationship: “ha, okay, here it is, but we’ve doubled Sherlock with a character that’s Sherlock as a *girl*, a woman of action superspy, Jane Bond!  Howya like *them* apples?”  That would make Sherlock and Mary direct competitors for John, and Mary taking a bullet to save Sherlock rather than the mere dad of her daughter.

And Sherlock, the silly doodlesack, never twigs to any of it — what?  Bonkers!

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@missy   No, I didn’t know he’d done such a documentary, although I saw some comments on the subject that he made in a couple of his later interviews, talking about the disease.

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@missy  Yep, that’s pretty much the feeling.  I had persuaded myself that I was all right with this — three season, okay, pretty standard — but reading about *this*, I’m snarling.  Wish Chibnall had kept his mouth shut about it, frankly.

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@mudlark   Thank you!  Not bad at all!  I had only remembered the psychiatrist, and the rich white woman (?) whose ship Voya was, as I recall.  Definitely conflated the shrink with the blind lady.  This certainly sounds a whole lot better than the story as I remembered it!  Which makes me happy.  Goodness knows it made a hell of an impression on me — “Fourmyle of Ceres” arriving at a party in a train chugging down a track being laid for it on the spot was unforgettable.  Or, at least, that’s as I remember it.  Even then — I was in my teens, checking in every day for the next installment in F&SF, I think it was, down at the magazine rack in the corner drug store.  Bravura work.

I’d better dig out my own copy and give it a whirl now.  So many books, so little time — I don’t do a lot of re-reading these days; my loss, I think.

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@missy  I just read an article in this or that place, interview with — Chibnall?  Said Peter Capaldi was hovering for a long time over the decision to stay or go, and Chibnall almost had him persuaded —

God Damn It!  I am gnashing my teeth and tearing my hair.  Well, metaphorically.  But really — DAMN it!

 

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@missy   Ah, the Luggage!  One of the great inventions of a great and inventive mind.  Fond memories . . .

@mudlark  Thanks for the enlightenment!  But — but — Morris dancers?  Why, lord, why?

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I’m one of those who was very intrigued by Eccleston’s Doctor.  I was very disappointed that he didn’t continue.  I found him a bracing dose of the Doctor as a man with his heart on his sleeve.  Well, one of them, anyway.  Hearts, not sleeves . . .

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@missy  Oh, that’s great news!  Nice for Cumberbatch and well-earned, but important in a different way for Capaldi.  So much for the naggers and haters who’ve been saying things like, “Capaldi is killing the show — because all those international fans of the Doctor love it for Tennant or Smith, not Capaldi”  because “He’s too old!” or “His Doctor is too cold and mean!” etc.  I hope these moaners aren’t (as has been suggested) mostly teen-aged tumblristas defensively fixated on their favorite, David Tennant; how embarrassing that would be, for anyone who ever was a teen-aged girl!

Which reminds me; I do wonder how Capaldi feels about all this now.  I hope the positives outweigh the negatives; but that’s usually complicated for people who are granted their lifelong wish and then have to deal with all the elements of it — the downside as well as the imagined (and the real) upside, of living it out in reality.  He did say, coming in, that he wanted to play the Doctor “as long as they’ll have me.”  Apparently, BBC did ask him to stay for S11 (although that may be a face-saving lie).  But he’s decided not to after all, and I haven’t seen any discussion of what he might do next (the way Jenna was already signed on for Victoria when she left).

This poll results should be a strong lift for him; I hope so!

 

 

 

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@thane15  Yes, just checking — we’re more or less on the same page about Time’s Arrow.  I’ve just started a book called “Why Time Flies” by a man named Burdick, very new, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, so I might have some good Time tidbits to bring to the table.

Meditation is good for relieving stress, provided that it’s a technique that works for you.  I’m doing drawing lessons to help with that — I’m better at contemplation (focusing in an unforced but pointed way on something outside of self) than at meditation, myself.  Chores can also be done, part of the time anyway, in a meditative or contemplative way, which is (I think) how I came to no longer dislike washing the dishes.  Lots of great sensory input in running water, slippery dish soap, clattering of dishes and silver, the shiny look of things . . . soothing.  Taking out the garbage, maybe not so much?

@craig  @juniperfish  I’ve started listening to the interviews.  Strong stuff; thanks for links.

@mudlark  Ah; so that’s what a “well-dressing” is!  Is there an outdoor ceremony that goes with this?

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@missy  Me, too.  The weird thing is, CapDoc already makes me miss two years of my life that I would otherwise gladly just gloss over and forget (health problems, mainly, piling up after years of neglect); because there’s this wonderful excitement and mystery associated with it — “Who is this Doctor?  What’s he like?  He said what?!  (‘She cares, so I don’t have to.’)  What’s he gotten himself into now, and how the hell is he going to get himself, and his bright and complicated companion, out of it again?”

Just the sort of stuff we ask with each regeneration, but somehow it signified so much more to me this time around — maybe because I really did need an escape that was also a sly way of focusing exactly on those painful issues that I needed to escape from . . . and I know I’m far from the only one that’s been true for, regarding other portrayals of the Doctor too.

 

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@thane15  It got better, I think, because its creators got more ambitious, seeing the potentialities in growing it up a bit (well, by the time AG rolled around, there were all these grown-ups out there in the viewership who’d started watching as kids and were now — some of them — looking for — what?  More bones under the meat?  More developed depths?

Come on, April, where the heck are you?!!!

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@thane15   others also exist in their personal ‘nows.’ If this is the case, everyone’s ‘now’ is actually the future. If that’s the case, the future must exist. It always exists.

Clarify?  If you mean that everyone’s “now” includes thoughts and intentions about the future, I wouldn’t say that that means that the future exists but rather that a vast number of potential futures exist in the form of ever shifting thoughts in everybody’s heads.  From the “God’s Eye” point of view, past, present, and future could be said to all exist fully formed in the mind of the all-perceiving consciousness that people call “God” because time doesn’t apply to God; it stands (?) outside of time.  But that viewpoint is meaningless to us because all of physical reality is infused with Time (is the exercise of Time, you could say, because the physical universe is in a constant state of change, and those changes as observed by us are how we mark and measure Time).

For us, fixed to our human’s eye view traveling with Time, Time’s Arrow only goes in one direction.  We can’t see the past (only whatever fragments we find and use to infer what it was like), or the future because from our fixed-but-moving p.o.v. it hasn’t been woven yet out of the billions of individual choices + actions/reactions of the laws of physics, that haven’t happened yet (that’s what computer simulations of future trends are for, and also why they are so — inadequate).  We can’t step away far enough (to where “God” stands, outside of Time) to see the entire universe whole from beginning to end, complete in every detail at every second of its existence.  (I think maybe that’s why we’ve kept inventing Gods — for the security of feeling that Somebody knows the whole story.)

I wouldn’t worry about being 15.  I’m a lot older than that and still muck things up.

And I do like the idea of including “English” with science and math — all languages.  Happy S.T.E.A.M.ing!

 

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@thane15   Sometimes you just can’t help applauding machines.  Does Cox believe, do you know, that “we” (sapient, choice-making beings) are inevitable, at some point and in some form, everywhere?  I mean space aliens, of course.  I think they’re out there because we’re in here, and life even as we know it on our own planet seems to be just about infinitely adaptable, like the creatures that live at the deepest sea floors where no light goes, or in the fissures of undersea volcanoes.  The stuff is just *everywhere* on this planet, so why not others too, some sapient, some not?

 

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@lisa   Yes, dystopia is us right now — or we fear we’re becoming that, and are checking out how bad it can get so we can reassure ourselves that at least we’re not *there* yet (full-on 1984, or Fahrenheit 451, or Handmaid’s Tale et al).

As for Raptures and Turnings etc., I think we’re at a place of critical choices.  The reactionary backlash rising everywhere against the powers that be is an indication of the strength of the pull of momentum toward a future characterized primarily by massively increased and increasing interconnectedness (like — anti-Trump demonstrations not just in New York and San Francisco but lots of inland towns and cities, and cities not even in the US; like flashmob videos — and everything else — passed around on Youtube etc., like my sister’s FB friend in Norway who wants her to come visit [or stay, if that were possible]) with all of the plusses and minuses that that entails.  Parochialism is being drowned, and it’s fighting back.

I think we’ve got decades of this war (at all levels) between the drive to go forward toward necessary cooperation and innovation, and the frantic drag of people trying to force a return to a splintered distortion of the past that pits every group against every other group for fear of some bunch of “inferiors” getting ahead.  Bannon is a malicious savage, a chieftain in the latter mob.  Even if he were to prevail, I don’t think it would be for long.  Americans get restless with authority — any kind of authority.

But with all that said, lots of us share you fears.  The loyal opposition — loyal to the Constitution, not to the knuckle-draggers — has a lot of backbone to grow in a short time.  I do like the way Elizabeth Warren has turned the ass McConnell’s own “Me Tarzan, you shut up” words against him.  We do know the way; inspiration helps.

I’m looking for a button to wear — “Nevertheless, she persists.”  Damn right she does, sonny boy.

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@misrori   The last “literary” novel I read was one by Ishiguro about people wandering in some sort of nebulously fantasy version of England — had a picture of a grail-like object on its very drab cover.  I didn’t like it much, didn’t see the point, but the writer is excellent, and I was dragged along to the (unsatisfactory) finish willy nilly.  The rest of the stuff that I see advertised and reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books I tend to ignore.  I like murder mysteries, preferably with a bit of the supernatural.

Right now, for example, I’m enjoying a fast, flippant private eye novel called “Her Nightly Embrace”, about a young East Indian Brit who sees various gods (from all kinds of religions) lurking around as he pursues a very peculiar case.  Instead of, say, “Middlemarch”.  I think I read that one a few decades ago, but . . . maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.

Barnes & Noble is usually pretty good, in terms of breadth, especially in mysteries, but also nonfiction, which I also like very much, when it’s readable and surprising.

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@thane15  OOps!  — I mean the story below the Evans one, with the cover of Doctor Who magazine #509, with pertinent stuff (I think) buried in the quote from “Nardole” boxed in the text.

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Two “spoilers” spotted in this text:

http://www.doctorwhonews.net

I mean, clues to — S9/S10 continuity, I think.

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@thane15   A bit deep, yeah — but a great take on the subject!  Perfect forms — for me, Tom Baker’s Doctor, and CapDoc.  Madness in one, desperation in the other, if a darker undercurrent suits you (as it does me).  I like a bit of constitutional extremity in a hero, a grounding sense of limitation.  And some pretty young man with soulful eyes won’t work for me, not right after our gaunt and glorious 12 at any rate.  Your bad angel is also a very smart angel.  I’d keep it.

I have to ask — what kind of guy is a “unit kind of guy (not UNIT)”?  Sounds like a lego guy — rectangular, with rounded corners.

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@mudlark   Oh, I know that feeling of being yanked by the ear out of a story by a glaring mistake that you know hardly anybody else even notices!  It’s maddening, especially if the book is otherwise good — that just makes it worse.  Connie’s books, though — they mostly leave me cold, but Doomsday’s ending slew me, emotionally, regardless of wobbles in the (too long and too contrived) story.  It was the recognition of Entropy, and the futile but insistent human response to it, that worked for me (as I recall; I read it a long time ago, and a lot of printed pages have passed under the bridge since then).

I’ll definitely go look for the Pulley book — sounds just my meat, and thanks!

 

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Some good stuff is coming down the pike, though (one hopes) — the concluding series of “The Leftovers” (and they’d *better* not muck it up); a new season of “Stranger Things” (likewise); other stuff, I’ve got a site bookmarked with some good possibles on it.  Will find and post.

But books — yeah, books are better.

Well.  Not “50 Shades of You Know What” . . . but nothing’s perfect, right?

 

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@missrori  Sure!  Goodness knows, he’s earned it!

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@missy  Thumbs up, then — !  Yer in.

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@missrori  I guess the difference is that I see it as the Doctor *choosing* the strong possibility of a raw deal because — he’s the Doctor.  And I love him for it.

@pedant  Twilight started as fanfic. That should be warning enough.

It is, it is — who could forget?!!  But — as a writer, I have admire the passion and the inventiveness that some amateurs bring to their fanfic, and the fact that to me it’s a sort of validation of the power of creativity to spread itself.  I’m not talking about quality now, but about having the personal courage to go beyond taking an author’s blue print — the authentic text — and playing it out inside their receptive minds.  That step beyond is to dare some creative effort of your own, using other people’s inventions as a jumping off place.

The boundary of both legality and ethical behavior here is exactly the one Whatsername overstepped when she published her T fanfic as original material, for profit.  But fanfic writers who write for their friends remind me of the people I used to see in the art museum, learning by copying, studying and learning, and then going home and trying to do original work with what they’d learned.

The secret at the heart of this situation is, to my mind, that many of the published authors I know *began* writing, as kids, by writing their own made-up stories about (in my time) Tarzan, the Lone Ranger, Nancy Drew, this or that girl-and-her-horse, Captain Nemo, or Superman.  That’s how some of us start learning our craft and gain access to our own imaginations, by giving ourselves permission to write the stories we want to read about established characters we love.

Truth?  I did this myself, making my own Tom Mix comics complete with pictures.  My first published novel was originally a western, using characters I stole from a late 19th c adventure story, and put through so many drafts and permutations that they became unrecognizable — became mine.  Happily, publication came late enough to capture them at that point, not earlier, so they went public with my name (and their new names and more twisted psychologies) legitimately attached to them.

I guess I have a bias . . . or just a sentimental tolerance for labors of love .

 

 

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@missrori  He decides to be the Doctor and accept Clara’s death

But I don’t think he did accept Clara’s death; he accepted being “transported” by Ashildr to the Confession Dial because he was looking for someone to punish (and perhaps to bargain with for some way to get Clara back alive); punished himself instead; took over Gallifrey *to get her back*, and finally did accept not her death but her departure, into a life without him and a life for him without her.  He did his grieving for Clara in the Confession Dial (her portrait hung in the castle to remind him, and her “ghost” reminded him in his mind-Tardis).  She *was* dead during all that time, he had no real plan yet to try to get her back.  We saw that grieving and its associated penance there, and it went on for a freakishly long time, as befits a bereaved Time Lord.

When he brings her semi-zombie self back, the grieving is done; she’s got as much of a life back as is possible, and she must leave in order to avoid the pursuing TLs.  What’s left for the Doctor to do?  The mourning for the life they had together that’s now over, and the loss of *that* is what he gives up along with her continued companionship.  Accepting losing even the living memory of her is part of his “making amends”.   That’s okay, IMO.  It acknowledges an old wrong (Donna) that he meant to repeat with Clara; it releases an apprentice who no longer needs a Master; and it liberates the Doctor from more anguish over her.  Those results are all rewards for right action — realistic ones, bittersweet.

When they promised us that 12 would be “darker”, this is what they meant: not bloody destruction and blowing up worlds, but personal conflagration resolved in loss, but bringing peace and freedom to both of them.  The doomed relationship ends, but its members survive with open futures.

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@pedant   There are several good sites for DW (and other) fanfic that I’ve seen (I think I linked to one here a while ago).  A forum, as in a discussion site, probably exists too, maybe several.

@missrori  On mixed resolutions rather than happy and rewarding ones:  Is it just a move by Moffat and company to make the show more realistic and sad?

Well, Moffat said he wanted to grow the Doctor up with Capaldi.  To me “growing up” includes crises with ambiguous outcomes, facing those alternatives you have to choose among even though they’re all bad ones, and figuring out how to enjoy your wins while dealing with your losses as best you can.  It’s an honest take on life on any scale, and it worked beautifully for me in S8-9.  But it has upset some fans, so I think we’ll be seeing softer landings in S10 (and gods know what from ChibChurch in S11).

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@mudlark  Yup, not much “normal” around here . . . DW selects, I think, for “bored with normal” individuals who have accordingly eclectic tastes.  In my parents’ house, was allowed to read anything I was tall enough to take down from the bookshelf.  I was a tall kid, which didn’t help when it came to “Gormenghast” or “Finnegan’s Wake” (my dad left most of his books behind, and he was an autodidact of wide-ranging interests, so . . . ).  The local branch of the New York Public Library was my second home.  I also was in an all girls’ middle school, Hunter elementary, until my mom got nervous: I didn’t like boys much.  Girls neither, but she was working off the middle class urban European lady model she got from my Viennese grandmother, and I as furiously rejecting it — she got that part right!  Being a smart girl among a lot of smart girls was *great*, and something I returned to with college  — Barnard is a small, strong, liberal arts college and was all female at the time.  Being not only expected but required to use my brains (without being ridiculed for it) was the best thing that could have happened to me.

Just read a good new novel, “Beloved Poison” by E. S. Thomson.  It’s an historical mystery set in a London hospital about to be torn down and replaced by a railway stations in the mid-19th c.  Interesting, and the author’s note at the end identifies her as an historian.

Next up, the newest Flavia de Luce story, by Alan Bradley.

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@winston   Happy to hear it.  I’ve been reading and writing about these issues for a long time now, and I think the best ways for me to get at it is through the big picture shifts.  Right now these earthquakes are rolling through, and they’re carrying whole masses of people with them: forward wave, and frightened, angry backlash, with lots of cross-currents to confuse the situation.  When this stuff happens, I think individual experience takes a back seat — something many Americans, with our institutionalized and unrealistic worship of individualism, just hate to hear.  But, you know, the “Global warming is a lie because it’s 32 degrees and snowing on my house right now ” is just childish gibberish that has no meaning in the wider context of the world — that “Global” part.

I hope for the best, for all our grandkids — boys some see as cannon fodder, girls they see as kitchen slaves popping out children for the glory of their wretched God-fantasy.  At this point, literally everyone has everything to lose, including the dunderheads who think they’re winning.  With luck and effort maybe enough of humanity will understand in time, and back sanity.

Bah; rant over!  I’ve got grandkids too.  I fear for them.  But I hope for them, too.

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@mudlark   Thanks for that — as an old-ish person with pretty patchy internet-nous, I only remember what an algorithm is (a sorting tool for picking out/imposing patterns in data?) when somebody else remember (for me) that the word exists.

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@pedant  It is not, in principle, any harder now than trying to discern the extent to which Caesar was bigging himself up, or Tacitus et al were sucking up to the boss (see threads elsewhere).

Agreed; I wasn’t thinking of principle, though, but in terms of sheer *volume* to sort through, check, and counter-check.

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@juniperfish   The historians of the future, if there is a future and it contains actual historians, often come to mind, and my first thought is, how in the hell are they ever going to disentangle the immense amounts of lying, “disinformation”, lying advertising, trolling and fake news fabrications, puffed-up “biographies” written by paid ghosts to flatter the vile, etc etc etc etc etc — from real-world reports of real world events from enough viewpoints to reveal something of value as history?

Poor bastards!  Even with a Tardis, you’d have a tough time finding reality.  History itself, and not just in the US, might not survive this relentless onslaught of BS we live under.

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@juniperfish  Yes, I’ve been more or less aware of the carryings-on you speak of — one of my husband’s law partners was a longstanding member of a chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars in Santa Fe (a smart, charming fellow I can’t speak with any more, because of political differences, or I’d be chatting with him about this).

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@missy  — Pratchett?  I’ve got all his books too.  An all around good guy, gladly remembered, though sorely missed.

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@missy  Thanks!  PC is my Doctor, and I don’t expect to see his like again — but on the other hand, I don’t *need* to.   He’s thrown himself into the project of growing up the Doctor with everything he’s got, and and it’s been wonderful.  Here’s a “motto” that I saw on a mammy lorry (a truck delivering goods and people, often to an open air market, in Nigeria):  “Let them Say!”

Let them say, indeed.  I know what I’ve seen, and what a gift it’s been.  And here comes another season, with whatever it brings.

I am a melancholy doggie, but a happy one, too, because of the goodness that sometimes comes our way.

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@juniperfish  “The Lost Special” — amazing, how Moffat and Gatiss keep creating fannish myths (some of which come true — !)  I love it.

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@winston  But why not a female Doctor?

Well, I can offer a generalization derived from what I’ve seen on reddit, Den of Geek, etc.  The Doctor is still around, still the object of intense, heartfelt discussion and waspish rage, and that means the figure of the Doctor has power.  Cultural power.  And power cast consistently in male form up until now, with a secondary role offered to female viewers through the companion.  Moffat can insist that the stories are actually more about the companions — the Doctor’s effect on them, their maturing as people through their working with him, and often opposing him with good reasons that they perhaps have never had occasion to think out and articulate before.  But — ultimately the powerful figure, the time traveler with the brain and the box who can talk his way out of almost anything — that figure is tried and true western male authority figure.  People who find that kind of leadership comfortable and comforting — whatever their gender own gender — don’t want to give up the power of that figure, and the security they feel with it, for what feels like either unknown territory (“how can a woman be that figure effectively with all that — that physical stuff, the tyrannical ovaries and the bobbing top load that’s so distracting, etc. etc.?”) or, worse, feeling control of the cultural discourse being “taken over” by — MOM (omg the *nagging*), or some teacher telling you not to smoke, or that weary female bureaucrat who can deny your application for X.

People rarely voluntarily give up power, or even the illusion of power, that they rely on to keep control of cultural discourse so that it can’t change from what reassures them.  It will change, in time, unless we bomb each other back into the Stone Age, literally (always an option, alas).

Meanwhile, I’ve liked my Doctor masculine, so far (though there have been moments of massive Ick).  The basic paradigm is wobbly (and that, IMO, is all to the good), but it still works for most of us in fiction.  On the other hand, I’m a curious person, and I’d love to see what a female Doctor would be like that’s different from what the male Doctors have been like — and what’s the same.  Some fascinating choices would be forced on the writers, and the actor, all of which would be offensive to some fans and maybe some offensive to all fans (as I’ve said elsewhere, I want to know which actors really want to get into this conflagration, because no matter who it is, a conflagration of protest, outrage, and resentment is sure to follow).

In a way, Steven Moffat has forced us all to acknowledge what has been true for some time — that gender on modern DW is, like gender all over western culture and media, a hot potato that will get you a bashing on no matter what you do (in double servings where race is brought into the discussion).

And about time too, IMO.  The producers must get up to speed with what’s on people’s minds, or see the show dwindle into triviality and irrelevance.  Like it or not, we’ve got huge changes carrying us forward with lots more to come; and exactly the kind of furious backlash that huge change draws by its nature.  My money is on change.   Backlash digs its heels in; but change never stops.  And the Doctor lives and dies by the understanding about this of his creators and enactors.

A female Doctor?   A POC Doctor?  Sure, bring it on.  I think the show can survive that — and, in fact, thrive on it.

 

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