@lisa  — Yes on Warren, but it’s been pointed out that we need her badly in the Senate . . .

@bluesqueakpip  — I’d never made that connection before — I knew that “Christos” meant “Annointed One”, but not that “Messiah” was the same word in a different language (that would be — Hebrew?).  “Healer” never seemed applicable in the case under discussion — healing the sick (and occasionally the dead0 was just something that figures like t…[Read more]

@Lisa

I bet Jesus had some kids

These would be the kids who are never mentioned despite our knowing a lot of Jesus’ other relatives by name?

😀

@lisa   Basically, I don’t see him as Jesus either: no Son of God claims, no miracles, a few companions rather than a dozen devoted disciples, a dud and a runaway as a kid (not brilliant lad confounding the adult scholars), roaming all of the universe in his vehicle rather than going by sandal-power from one village or town in a tiny area of the…[Read more]

@craig,

The rest of the world laughs at him. You should see the coverage he gets. That would be a good start.

Oh we know the coverage our great idiot gets world wide, or as I sometime refer to him, “our great embarrassment”.  Don’t get us started though please. This is one of the places I come when I need to forget that I live in a country ruled…[Read more]

@Lisa

People don’t try to deny other peoples culture heritage generally speaking.

Errr… I think most countries could provide you with cultural groups who’d disagree with that statement. Often quite strongly.

There have been some absolutely wonderful ideas, eloquently expressed, about the nature of the Doctor over the past few days!

@Craig   I’m pretty sure that Campbell’s writing has come up before in discussion here. I would agree that I find the mythic hero at the root of all the stories a more convincing connection between the Doctor and Chris…[Read more]

@lisa   I like it when she bops his head to stop him scaring young Rupert with a too-grown-up-for-him take on scary stuff, so he shuts up and lets her take over.  But he leans in himself, listening to what she has to say and how she says it.  One thing I like so much about this Doctor — his uncertainty, his wobbly sense of self, makes him more of…[Read more]

Urgh @lisa you have done it to me again. I can waste hours on that FBDr Who Hub page. I have done so and concluded that there are infinite images.

In a way those images reflect something of what @ichabod was saying about the generating of the Doctor as a mythic figure. I think that status was established by the old series but has come to…[Read more]

@ThePapalMainframe   Okaaayyyy . . . so . . . not really something to inquire about.  It’s a MaGuffin until the writers need it to be something else, at which point they’ll come up with, um, some more words . . .

I’m a fan of mysterious thingies, so, not a problem.  Actually, kind of a criterion for sticking with the Doctor, come to think of it…[Read more]

@lisa Thank you for that! It was pretty awesome.

@lisa  Yeah, somehow the idea does make me laugh — I probably wouldn’t, if I knew the details, but for all I know the story is just a gossipy anecdote with some other story behind it.

“Pathological fixation” is right!  And “devotion”, yes, in a weird way.  After all, MissMaster has no friends, does she? Not even colleagues.  She has “mi…[Read more]

@lisa  Oh, Clara will still have her fragilities and weaknesses, I hope — otherwise, she’ll be flattened out again to a plot-mule instead of a real-seeming, engaging character.  Our weaknesses, and our ways of dealing with them, are a huge part of our effective reality in the world; this is why we instinctively distrust apparently perfect p…[Read more]

Off topic question but i have to ask.

Which Doctor is your favourite?

@ichabod, @purofilion, @lisa, @JimTheFish.

@lisa   I think MissMaster not only respects the Doctor — she’s utterly obsessed with him, and with some kind of fixation on their childhood days together, which she probably doesn’t remember accurately anyway, being more or less certifiable from way back.   As somebody else noted here earlier, she’s basically a crazy stalker, wants to own the D…[Read more]

@lisa Definately, I can speak English but I can’t speak Ancient Greek for sure. I started learning English earlier than I did Ancient Greek. I got my last diploma in English when I was 15. English has become an international language. Everyone can speak it now, if not well at least the basics. In school its a compulsory (if that’s the right word)…[Read more]

@lisa — People who are desperate to control things are, in my experience, mainly motivated by fear of being fatally out of control, or controlled by others, at least at the outset; once established, the appetite for power feeds on itself and the connection to personal fear becomes obscured.  That’s why I am unconvinced by everybody calling Clara…[Read more]

@ichabod    I wasn’t a fan of the story arc construction in Series 6 and 7, and one of my wishes for Series 8 was that it would be a lot less arc-heavy. Interestingly, while watching, I really felt as if I was getting that wish; it’s only retrospectively that I realize that there has actually been lots of “arc” in this series. I think that the di…[Read more]

@lisa Nice to know that you are a fellow Hardy fan. I love his novels but I do have to make a slight correction. It was Far From the Madding Crowd (of which a new film is imminent) where the Valentine Card sets in motion a Hardyesque chain of events leading to tragedy. In Tess the trigger for the chain of events is her father’s discovery of the…[Read more]

@lisa  “Orlando”, that works for MissMaster, but I don’t recall the story in that story . . . I’m not up on Hardy at all, only read a novel or two way back in school; too damn depressing for my taste, I think.

I googled “asexuality” to see what came up — the topic has surfaced recently in a noticeable way in SF now that some of the feminist…[Read more]