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@idiotsavon

I was a bit rushed when I posted earlier, but I have been thinking further about what you wrote and am inclined to continue the discussion, even though it means straying further off topic.

The idea that the interwoven threads in traditional stories have their origin in a prehistory common to all speakers of Indo-European languages is an enticing hypothesis. The problem, as you are clearly aware, is proving it. For a start it is a mistake to assume that there is an exact correspondence between linguistic and cultural dissemination, and the migrations and mingling of populations is a lot more complex than the old idea of waves of invaders displacing or wiping out whole populations. DNA analysis alone has shown that. Then we are faced with the problem of interpreting all the intangible aspects of preliterate societies.

It is a joke among archaeologists that any artefact which cannot be identified as having an obvious practical use tends to be classified as  ‘ritual’ and probably related to religious belief. But, as I and my contemporaries were taught, you can infer practice from material evidence, but you cannot reliably infer belief from practice. We still don’t know a great deal  about religious beliefs in pre-literate European societies other than what we can, with reservations, deduce from the material evidence and from what observers in the Greek and Roman world recorded, and it must be borne in mind that the accounts of the latter observers may be clouded by misunderstandings, preconceptions and prejudice.

Apart from the accounts of Classical authors, the earliest documentary sources of evidence are stories and legends written down during the medieval period but having an origin in an oral and much earlier tradition dating back at least to later prehistory: the Tain in Ireland, for example, or the stories which make up what we know as the Mabinogion, or the Poetic and Prose Eddas which record much of what we know of Northern Mythology.  As an example of how stories migrate, the stories in the Mabinogion include tales of Arthur and such stories are found again in Brittany, brought there by migrants from Britain. From Brittany they came later to be incorporated in medieval French courtly romances, and in that form they returned to England and were reworked by Mallory into the Morte D’Arthur , which is a long way removed from the stories in the Mabinogion,  though the names of some of the knights of the round table correspond to those of British chiefs or petty kings recorded in the sparse historical records of the post Roman Roman period.

When it comes to the stories collected by the Grimm brothers and their successors, there are some which  incorporate elements of are probably pre-Christian beliefs, but the cultural churn and process of cross-fertilisation was and is continuous and we do not need to reach back into prehistory to account for the common elements which those tales share with other traditional stories around the world, even if those elements have roots in prehistory.

 

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@idiotsavon

So that might explain why the Grimm brothers didn’t confine themselves to purely German tales: they didn’t see folk tales as existing in geographical isolation

The point is that by the time the Grimm brothers were collecting them the stories had been thoroughly assimilated into German folk culture and given a regional twist, and they thought of them as having their roots in Old Germanic beliefs. Insofar as they noted the similarities to stories found elsewhere in Europe they seem to have thought of the latter as having the same origin. Certainly the collected tales were understood by their contemporaries and by most people subsequently as being specifically German in character, and Nazi propagandists eventually exploited that perception in their own perverse way.

My very battered copy of the collected Grimm’s Fairy Tales was given me when I was six, but it wasn’t intended primarily for children and has a lengthy essay by Joseph Campbell at the back in which he discusses at some length the multiple origins of European folk tales and the ways in which these were transmitted, retransmitted and transmuted to form the base of a common tradition and re-emerge in regional variants.

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@thane16

Marl in common English usage and according to the Oxford dictionary definition is a soil consisting of clay and lime used as a fertiliser. The marl which was used in this way in parts of Norfolk is to be found as a subsoil beneath lighter sandy top soils and overlying the chalk.

If your camellia looks healthy, with dark green, glossy leaves, then it’s happy; yellowing leaves would be a sign that the soil did not suit it and it wasn’t getting the nutrients it needed.  They do best in soils on the acid side of neutral, and don’t thrive at all alkaline soils. There are things you can add to the latter to raise the acidity, but in my  experience it is a losing battle and not worth the effort. I don’t even use fertiliser on my shrubs, apart from mulching the soil occasionally with leaf mould and the camellia has grown tall and bushy and flowers profusely. If you live in a hard water area it’s also not a good idea to use tap water for watering ericaceous plants. Our water is so hard you can almost crunch it, so I have two barrels to collect and store rain water from the roofs of the garden shed and the greenhouse. But the well established shrubs, other than those in containers, rarely need watering even in dry spells – in fact it can be counter-productive in that it encourages root growth near the surface instead of at depth. If you do need to water, water copiously so that it penetrates deep into the soil.

I wrote earlier that adding lime was unnecessary unless the soil was acid, but in fact it does also help improve the structure of clay soils – just not if you want to grow ericaceous plants 🙂

The most successful approach to ornamental gardening is to stick with plants suited to the local soil and climate, and not to try and battle nature.

 

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@idiotsavon

Yes, there is always that cross connection of recurrent themes and it goes back a very long way. People don’t always realise how much traffic there was across the whole of Europe, not only in goods but in cultural ideas and material traditions, even in prehistory. This was further facilitated during the centuries of the Roman empire, not excluding the people beyond its borders, and that cross fertilisation increased further  in historic times as the population grew.   A few days ago I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 Extra about the stories collected by the brothers Grimm, and though they were all collected in Germany and are often thought of as being from a long established regional folk tradition, in fact they are a rag bag of tales derived from many diverse sources including the courtly and sophisticated world of Perrault to the middle eastern tradition of the 1001 Nights – themselves a collection from several different countries – and beyond.

Somehow, nevertheless, the myths and legends of the North have a resonance for me that classical mythology does not,  though the latter has its own appeal.  It has been so since I was a child, as if it were some atavistic inclination,* and that is a great part of the appeal of this episode for me, from the very first atmospheric shot of the Tardis and crew in the pine woods which gave me a tingle up my spine.

*My ancestry at least as far back as the 16th century is English with an infusion of Welsh, but perhaps that includes a strain of Viking   (when I was young and travelling in Europe I was often mistaken for Danish or North German).

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@thane16

I’ve always assumed sand is, well, sand! With a normal pH and not at all acidic

I was generalising, of course, but sandy soils do tend to be acidic as well as low in fertility; the latter because they are so free draining that the nutrients get leached out.  In parts of Norfolk the soils are sandy and light from glacial deposits overlying chalk, and the traditional way of countering the ‘sourness’ and improve fertility was to add calcareous marl from local pits dug into the subsoil below the sand and gravel. Old marl pits can still be seen in some fields, though a lot of them have been filled in now.

The sandy loam in my garden is sufficiently acid in parts for acid loving shrubs such as rhododendron, azalea, camellia and Japanese Maple to flourish. Also, unfortunately, holly. There is a large holly tree in the corner of a neighbour’s garden abutting the corner of mine and I am forever pulling up holly seedlings. The neighbours on either side don’t do so and I have nightmares about ending up entirely hedged in by self-sown and untended holly. When I took over the garden I removed about six well grown hollies which had established themselves during the preceding period of neglect.

If you were nicking sand from a children’s playground I presume it was fine grained and would probably have been thoroughly washed and sterilised so possibly neutral. In any case, unless you added it in huge amounts it wouldn’t make much difference to the soil structure or the pH.. As I said, grit would be far more effective.

When my brothers and I were small my father made us a sandpit in the back garden, but the sand he used was obtained from a sand pile adjoining an old sandpit in the corner of a field opposite. It contained a lot of iron oxide, so it had a tendency to stain us and our clothes bright orange – not that this bothered us in the slightest. My mother may have had a different view of the matter.

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@craig

I emailed that link to my brother in France and his response this morning was. ‘Nice one! But isn’t there a worrying bit at the end where she falls off a cliff holding it, into an all-consuming fire, and the whole country comes crashing down?’

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@cathannabel

The Antizone certainly shared some characteristics with the labyrinth, and Ribbons perhaps the Minotaur

The labyrinth and the minotaur of classical legend are to me firmly rooted in the Mediterranean and sun-baked Knossos, not the North of myth, legend and fairy tale which is evoked here. The Antizone reminded me more of a natural cave system and the caverns of the Troll king and the svart alvar. Ribbons was part guardian of the way, to be negotiated with and placated, and part Gollum, who is also a better fit for the northern setting, given the sources which were the inspiration and foundation of Tolkien’s writing.

@KevinWho

I only dreamed once that he was still here, and felt nothing wrong at all, only joy

I had a similar experience not very long ago. Occasionally I dream of my parents, but vaguely, in a context which is associated in some way with the past when I was young and still living with them. Two or three years ago I had one very vivid dream which was different. The door opened and my father came in, exactly as I remember him before his final illness, and I jumped to my feet, ‘Dad, oh Dad, you’re back!’ and ran and flung my arms around him feeling, as you say, only utter joy.  On waking  I still retained a sense of comfort which has never entirely left me.

When he died 42 years ago I don’t think I ever went through a conventional process of grieving because at the time I was too preoccupied with supporting my mother emotionally and practically through her grief and readjustment, while holding down a demanding job 150 miles away from her.

 

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@nerys

There are times when I would have agreed with your husband; the frequent recurrence of the old familiar monsters can get stale except when the writer comes  up with a completely fresh angle. RTD’s initial reintroduction of the Daleks was stunning, but the impact decreased with their every reappearance. Moffat’s use of them was sometimes underwhelming but he did find several very effective new ways of approaching the theme – as, for example, in The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar. Cybermen had less potential from the start, I think, and I would be more than happy not to see them for a while; but the reintroduction of the Mondasian type was welcome and effective.  It hasn’t really bothered me that the monsters this series have been, not just new, but for the most part not even the central element of the stories.

The trailer does hint at the reappearance of an old antagonist, (let bonkerising abound) but if so I hope it is something which hasn’t been exploited recently, and certainly not one of the usual suspects because I’m not sure in such a case that Chibnall could be trusted to come up with a completely original approach. (OK, I’m prejudiced, but I would be more than delighted to be proved wrong).

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@arch @pedant @bluesqueakpip @thane16

Reverting if I may to the subject of moral issues raised by the decision to confine Tzim Sha in a stasis pod rather than killing him, I wrote yesterday evening that it might be considered a crueller fate than death. That does not mean that I thought it was not the right decision, not least because for Graham to have killed the monster in a spirit of revenge would have destroyed the essence of all he is, his soul, if you will.

@bluesqueakpip  you wrote

Being placed in stasis allows him to experience what he made others experience.

And that is justice, on the principle of ‘an eye for an eye’. But what, in this instance, does it mean to be put in stasis? It could mean a state of suspended animation in which everything – all physical processes, all sensation and all thought are suspended or, in other words, unconsciousness for eternity or however long the stasis pod endures; in which case Tzim Sha is simply removed from all possibility of doing further harm, without any element of punishment.  Or it could mean to be preserved in full consciousness in the moment in which one entered the stasis pod. In the glimpse we had of him in the pod we saw his hand move, which suggests the latter –  in other words, the most solitary of solitary confinements for ever and not, @pedant , just

a long prison sentence

And maybe a sentient creature who kills for sport and status, who kills casually and takes pleasure in the kill, and who is prepared to destroy whole planets and their populations deserves no less, assuming that he has any understanding of moral choice.

In the 19th century well-meaning prison reformers came up with the idea that prisoners convicted of crimes might be rehabilitated if subjected to a system of complete isolation with only a bible and ‘improving’ moral tracts to read (assuming they were literate). There was to be no contact between the inmates and only minimal contact between individual inmates and prison warders and, although church attendance was compulsory, even in the prison chapel the prisoners sat in stalls screened from one another. This regime was instituted in the newly built panopticon prisons in which all common areas were visible and under constant surveillance from a central station. The theory was that complete isolation would force prisoners to reflect on their lives and their moral values and so be reformed. In reality the result was widespread and severe mental breakdown among those subjected to the regime.

From the point of view of the condemned, what is there to choose between death and a potential eternity of solitary confinement?  In this case it seems to me that the determining factor is primarily if not entirely the moral impact on those passing sentence.

 

 

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I really wanted to like this, but my feeling while watching was that it was very much a curate’s egg – good in parts, but overall disappointing, because the story struck me as having a great deal more potential than was realised. It was a particular disappointment after last week’s episode, seeming as if Chibnall was aiming for a grand, pyrotechnical finale RTD style and falling short. The tone was uneven and some of the expository dialogue was decidedly cringeworthy, as in the Doctor explaining the Ux – to the Ux.

On the plus side, there were signs that Whittaker is beginning to get a much more solid grip on the role and glimpses of how her Doctor could develop given the chance. Sometimes, on the other hand, the Doctor didn’t so much seem to be working things out as she went along as making things up on the fly, with a great deal of rather too obvious hand wavy gobbledegook along the way. Maybe it will hang together better on second viewing.

More could have been made of one the central themes – the dangers of following false gods, and it was a lesson all the more resonant in that those conned by a false god in the shape of the inadequate Stenza, Tim Shaw, were a people with great mental powers. An episode ending in a confrontation with Tim Shaw also served to bring the series full circle, and in doing so it gave scope for development and resolution of the relationships and unresolved tensions among the human Tardis crew – the continuing real strength of the episodes this year.

The fate of Tim Shaw, as decided by Graham and Ryan echoed that to which the Doctor condemned the Family in Family of Blood, and it is arguable whether that is not a more cruel fate than death, even if the conscience of those opposed to killing was salved; a very Who-ish paradox. Another direct call-back was to The Stolen Earth, not one of my favourite episodes from the point of view of plausibility though that had a somewhat less convoluted resolution.

Maybe, being generally slow of thinking, I need more time to digest this. My first reactions are not always reliable.

 

 

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@thane16

It seems that you too are multiplying 🙂

I have to say “the grey leaves as a hint” wasn’t a hint for me

It’s all to do with conservation of moisture. narrow, greyish leaves with a thick surface – e.g. lavender, rosemary, santolina – retain moisture much better than large, soft leaves. Succulents, with thick, fleshy leaves and a leathery surface have evolved a different method.

I thought sand was ‘good’ for lavender.

Now you’ve got me confused. Sand tends to be acidic, if anything, Liming a soil, on the other hand, means adding an alkaline, calcareous substance – lime – to an acid soil to raise the pH and make it more fertile. Gardeners generally use slaked lime for the purpose.  Adding sand to a clay soil may help improve the texture and drainage a little, but adding coarse grit of the kind you should be able to obtain from any good garden centre is a much more efficient method. Clay soils are fertile once you have improved the drainage so that they don’t get water-logged in wet weather and bake hard in hot, dry weather. They are very good for growing roses, though that is not so relevant in your climate I would guess.

Double digging is not nearly so risky as double jeopardy, though it does entail a certain amount of toil and sweat. It’s a technique for digging a garden plot to two spades’ depth, used for breaking previously uncultivated land as well as improving the drainage of heavy soils. I’ll send you a diagram.

 

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@thane16 (puro)

From your description I take it that the ‘landscaper’ has cut some (many?) of the stems of the lavender back to the bare wood, in which case they are very unlikely to sprout again. You could try cutting the bare stems back to ground level which might stimulate new growth from the base, but I would be inclined to just start again with new plants as you suggest.

As you doubtless know, lavender is a south European/Mediterranean plant in origin and adapted for dry summers and well drained soils – the narrow, grey tinted leaves are a giveaway. I should think it could tolerate a certain degree of humidity provided the soil is very well drained, though if it looks like you are heading for a full-on tropical climate they might struggle.

If your soil is heavy with a lot of clay I would suggest double digging and the incorporation of a *lot* of horticultural grit and plenty of organic material such as garden compost or well-rotted manure. Liming shouldn’t be necessary unless your soil is acidic (i.e. with a low pH). Rather than a nitrogen fertiliser, which just promotes leaf growth, I would incorporate an all-round general purpose fertiliser in the soil when planting – I normally use Blood Fish and Bone which contains a mix of nitrogen, phosphates and potash, and then leave well alone. Lavender doesn’t need a lot of feeding and clay soils have one advantage in that they retain nutrients much better than the kind of sandy loam I have in my garden.   Once the plants are well established they shouldn’t need watering either since they are well adapted to drought.

Hope this helps. Happy gardening 🙂

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A very Doctorish take on Through the Looking Glass, and perhaps the best and most imaginative episode so far this year. The initial misdirection was neatly done and the concept of an alternative and lonely universe yearning to connect with ours was compelling, though it rang faint bells and I’m not sure it was entirely original. As @pedant says, it was also an effective way to  further explore the themes of love and loss and grief which has been recurrent this series.

I could have done without the passing reference to a bloody ovine revolution, which chiefly brought to mind Dennis Healy’s description of debating Geoffrey How; an unnecessary and distracting embellishment. And too many grannies for comfort.

@miapatrick   Most moths, other than the kind which ate my teddy bear* and the toy fox terrier to which I had been particularly attached, are furrily cute and colourful and every bit as attractive as butterflies if you look at them closely.

@jimthefish  What have you got against frogs?  As a gardener, I consider them friends and do all I can to encourage them. In fact the idea of a would-be universe manifesting itself as a frog is decidedly appealing.

*The teddy bear in question was a wartime improvisation, with a multi-coloured, knitted body, and therefore unique and irreplaceable.

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@craig

I agree. There is nothing inherently wrong with Chibnall’s approach or with any of the stories so far, and much to enjoy; but once we have talked about the merits and/or possible flaws of the individual episodes there hasn’t been nearly as much food for discussion or speculation as in recent years

Moffat took the concept of time travel, shook it out, and exploited all its philosophical and paradoxical potential in a way which obviously appealed to a majority of us here, as well as teasing us with complicated narrative arcs. Chibnall, going back to the established tradition of earlier BG Who, has been using time travel simply as a convenient device which allows a succession of stories alternating between past, present and future to address important contemporary issues in a manner long established in science fiction. To that end we have been presented with linking themes in place of the narrative arcs, and everything has been accessible pretty much on the surface. For some of us that can lead to a slight feeling of frustration because, once we have discussed the obvious, where is there to go?

As for the trolls or suspected trolls, my view would be to give them the benefit of the doubt on first post unless they are outright offensive, but challenge them to justify their opinion and present a cogent argument. If they can’t or won’t, then  by all means point, laugh and – zap!

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@thane16 (17)

Happy birthday Thane. Enjoy the day, even if it does include school. 🙂

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@pedant

So why is it suddenly an issue when Chibnall is doing what has usually been done?

Not suddenly at all as far as I am concerned. As I stated in my post above, it is something I have always wondered about, even if in the overall scheme of things it is a relatively minor stumbling block – and I emphasise, minor.

Evidently I came across as a lot more critical of the episode than I intended to be, though I was simply trying to put my finger on  reasons why I found myself a bit less engaged than with those preceding it this year, and why from the beginning I have tended to be less happy with episodes set in the past, though I have loved others such as Thin Ice. It has nothing at all to do with Chibnall or Whittaker as the Doctor.

Mudlark, in a slightly grumpy mood.

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@blenkinsopthebrave

Yes, it does sometimes feel as if I’m beginning to disintegrate, but considering all the near-misses I’ve had in my life, from  polio at age 6* onward, I’m just happy to have survived so far in relatively bouncing form. And the inner me is  no than 30 – probably less.

* The mild form of the disease, so for me it entailed a little more than a week in the isolation hospital and a lot of presents, and there were no permanent after-effects. I was too young at the time to appreciate how scared my parents and other relatives and friends must have been.

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@arbutus (and everyone)

I saw the dermatologist yesterday, and she confirmed that the GP I saw was haring of on the wrong track and there was no way it could be a melanoma. She (the GP) was very pleasant, but if she does not know what a melanoma looks like I feel a bit relieved that she is not my regular doctor.

The consultant dermatologist thinks the thing on my nose could be a basal cell carcinoma – which was my first thought – or a pre-cancerous lesion (solar keratosis), neither of which necessitates urgent action. The blob had its photo taken from every angle and I am booked for a biopsy on December 21st, which isn’t particularly convenient since I am hoping to travel to France on the 22nd or 23rd, but no matter. If further action is needed other than treatment with fluorouracil it will presumably have to wait until the new year. Meanwhile, my nose survives intact and only marginally disfigured 🙂

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@pedant @bluesqueakpip

It isn’t at all that I want or expect that a work of fiction, whether in a novel or drama, should adhere to facts at a documentary level; I do know the difference. It would, though, help me to suspend disbelief if there were, to adapt a quotation from W.S.Gilbert, enough  ‘… corroborative detail … to give verisimilitude to … [the] narrative’.  The portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in ‘Wolf Hall’, for example, is somewhat at odds with the sleek, narrow-eyed and ruthlessly ambitious fixer depicted in his portrait by Holbein which is probably nearer the truth, but it is convincing because, in the novel and the TV adaptation, the narrative is embedded in a background which is thoroughly researched and evokes the essential facts and the ‘atmosphere’ of the period in question and brings it all to vivid life.

In this episode care had been taken that the house and its furnishings were of the right period, even if the exterior of the house showed the effects of four centuries of weathering. So unless, as Pip suggests, there is some as yet unrevealed point in the fact that the Doctor and her crew don’t bother to show up appropriately dressed, why don’t they? Even if they had dressed appropriately for the coronation of Elizabeth I, they wouldn’t have looked much out of place 60 or so years later in rural Lancashire.  I know that this discrepancy is nothing new, but it is something that has always bothered me.  Equally, it wouldn’t have harmed the narrative to have provided a little more factual underpinning.

I have no problem at all with the character of Becca, which was complex and nuanced. Here is someone who profoundly believes in witches and satanic possession and who, one level, thinks she may be able to exorcise what she knows is attempting to possess her by projecting it onto the villagers, and on another barely acknowledge level is, as you say, Pip, frantically trying to silence people who might expose her. I just found it hard to accept that her extremely irregular actions would have escaped official notice for so long, even in darkest Lancashire.

I have found plenty of things to like about this year’s series, but perhaps there is simply an underlying lack of engagement on my part, as compared with much of AG Who, which results in this kind of detail having the power cut the cord which suspends my disbelief. Perhaps, also, I have been paying too much attention to all the talk there has been of a return to the original concept of the show as educational. My loss.

@pedant

And every AG Doctor has been a gurner. Co-o-o-me on!

Are you by any chance conflating my post with someone else’s earlier comment? Because I don’t recall a mention of the Whittaker’s Doctor ‘gurning’ in anything I have written. In any case, Tennant could out-gurn Whittaker any day of the week 🙂

 

 

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For anyone interested in the Pendle witches and who hasn’t already come across it, I can recommend the novel ‘Mist Over Pendle’ by Robert Neill.  It is quite a while since I last read it, but this has prompted me to consider re-reading it, perhaps over the Christmas holiday.

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Many people here and elsewhere clearly found a great deal to like in this episode. I have just watched it a second time with that in mind, because my initial reaction was that it confirmed all the reasons why, in BG Who especially, I tended to prefer the futuristic episodes where anything goes, to those set in the past – with or without alien monsters. The linking themes or threads which have run through all the episodes of this series are clear enough here, and on one level I can appreciate how they have been used, but that is not enough to overcome my awareness of the historical errors and fudges.  No doubt I should be more tolerant in these matters in a show like this, but I can’t help the fact that it continues to irritate me to a greater or lesser extent.  Nit-picking ensues 😈

The Tardis translation circuits or the implants referenced in the first episode can be invoked to explain any problems of communication between early 17th century speech and dialect and modern idiom; and although modern dress, and especially women wearing jeans or culottes would have appeared utterly bizarre and outrageous to people of that time, those of us bothered by such things could rationalise the general lack of comment by assuming that the holographic effect referred to in Time of the Doctor was in operation, except that a joke depended on the fact that the King did notice it.

Alan Cumming camping it up to the nth as King James VI & I was fun, but it was a somewhat crude caricature of the historical person, even in the references to his traumatic upbringing.  True he believed in witches and was interested in the subject from a theological point of view, but he was also intelligent and well educated, and he tended to be cautious and sceptical when it came to the evidence in witchcraft trials. It is also a matter of record that he had a strong Scottish accent, although what that meant exactly in 17th century terms is anybody’s guess. An Edinburgh Morningside accent would work for me in this context 🙂

The story of the real Pendle witch trials is fascinating, although the sociological and psychological complexities might be too much for a Doctor Who episode to tackle. It is however, a prime example of the fact that people accused of witchcraft were tried and sentenced in regular courts. This part of Lancashire was at the time regarded as something of a wild hinterland where superstition was rife, but even so I doubt whether any Lord or Lady of a Manor could have got away with drowning so many people in such an irregular fashion. Ducking, a humiliating punishment for women who were accused of malicious gossip or of being ‘scolds’, was in any case distinct from the superstition of ‘floating’ a suspected witch. The latter involved trussing the suspect and chucking them into a pond or river. If they floated, they were guilty; if they sank they were innocent and, since they were attached to a rope held by those on land, could be hauled back to safety – although some accidental drownings probably did occur.

The monsters looked reasonably scary, even if the concept was not particularly original, but zombies have been overdone of late in my view. They were, however, a metaphor for the monster within and worked well from that point of view.

There were a few occasions when the dialogue seemed a bit stilted to me, but I think that was probably to do with direction and editing. Visually, though, it continues to be often stunning.

 

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@ichabod

I’d read about pubs going under all over the UK, a development that I’ve seen attributed to the influence of inflows of muslim residents into old neighborhoods

This seems a more appropriate space to continue on this topic 🙂

That explanation sounds like the kind of thing propagated by UKIP or Fox News. Where a relatively large Muslim population is concentrated in distinct areas – think Chinatown or Little Italy – there will certainly be little custom for a pub, but that only affects a few districts in a few large cities. Elsewhere, the closing of pubs is more a consequence of changes in the way people spend their leisure time and the increased variety of rival attractions.

It used to be said that my home city of Norwich had as many churches* as there were weeks in the year, and as many pubs as there were days, and that wasn’t far off the mark. The population here does not include a particularly large number of Muslims, and for the most part they live dispersed among the wider community. Over the past two or three decades many pubs have closed nevertheless, but on the other hand night clubs and restaurants offering a wide variety of culinary delights have proliferated. It does not mean that there are not still numerous pubs, but those which survive tend to be those which have made more effort to attract a loyal clientele and to foster a community spirit.

Where pubs fail in rural villages it may be because the population is simply too small to make it economically viable in the modern world, or the result of a loosening of community ties as the original population leaves or dies off, or both.

* The number of medieval churches was always more than was strictly justified by the size of the population, but was a reflection of the wealth of the city and the pious pretensions of its citizens.  A few of them were destroyed in the last war, courtesy of the Luftwaffe, and others had disappeared before that, but some remain in use as churches and others have been adapted for alternative use.

 

 

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@ichabod

The village of Akenfield does not exist under that name, but Charsfield in Suffolk, the real village on which Blythe largely based his work is close to where the elder of my two brothers lives, only 50 miles or so from Norwich, Norfolk where am, and within the region which I covered as an archaeologist from 1991 until retirement, so I know the area pretty well. Another book which had a big effect on me when I read it many years ago was The Rabbit Skin Cap, in which the writer describes growing up in extreme poverty as the son of an agricultural labourer in Norfolk in the late 19th century/early 20th century.  Both Suffolk and Norfolk were and still are predominantly rural and agricultural counties, though the form of agriculture, land ownership and land tenure, as well as relative wealth in the two counties differed historically for social, economic and geographical reasons *. As a result of long-term agricultural depression in the 19th century and much of the first half of the 20th century, wages for agricultural labourers were pitifully low even when I was young, though that was offset to a limited extent, in that most lived rent-free in tied cottages belonging to the farm and had gardens large enough to grow vegetables and perhaps rear a pig.

Now the villages are mostly inhabited by retired people and middle class commuters, because the increasing mechanisation of agriculture and husbandry means that there is no regular work for the younger people growing up there.  So, like their predecessors in the late 18th/early 19th century, they have to leave to find work in the towns and cities. Today that often means the service or retail industries which, given the advent of on-line shopping and the like, does not promise a secure future.

The villages they leave are increasingly divorced from their original economic roots and are having to re-invent themselves as communities. What is encouraging is that some are doing so successfully. In the fairly large village where my brother lives the pub was failing as a business and was about to close. The community combined to come up with a business plan, find the finance, and buy it to run as a joint, voluntary venture.  It has succeeded so spectacularly that it is thriving as a community centre, they have paid off the loan and can now afford some paid staff.

There was no village shop, but the success of the pub prompted them to sound out the population to find out what was needed, raise the finance and build one in the grounds of the pub, and that, too, has been successful, simply because it breaks even financially while providing another, much valued community service. Maybe that is an example of a possible way forward. Profit need not be the only incentive, if one thinks on a small scale.

There has always been has been economic and concomitant social change, now at an exponentially increasing rate, from the feudal systems of the medieval period to the present day, and the process of adaptation has always lagged behind. Adjustment is easier in small communities than it is on the larger scale, though even small steps make a difference.  What is lacking on the macro scale is a full recognition and acknowledgement of the problems of change, and the will to address them properly, but that does not mean that a story set in a hypothetical future in which people are obliged to earn a living in a galactic Amazon should be taken as a prediction rather than a warning.

* In the medieval and early post medieval periods Norfolk was one of the richest counties in England, thanks to sheep and the wool trade, and Norwich was the second city after London in terms of size and wealth, though admittedly quite a long way after it.

 

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@ichabod

a) it’s going to take more than a Doctor and crew to “fix” what’s rapidly shaping up to be humanity’s second biggest 21st c problem — the sucking out of the system of work without considering what could replace it as a lifetime focus … and b) that the social solutions that work best have to come from and be carried by the people affected by the problem, rather than friendly outsiders.

Science fiction has often provided an oblique insight or satirical commentary on contemporary problems without necessarily offering solutions, and this is how I interpreted the episode. One would hope that in what is presumably meant to be the far future, the question of how to provide people with a means of living and a sense of self worth in a world where most routine jobs can be automated would have been resolved, but for the purposes of the story they have not, and in those circumstances what can the Doctor do but help to solve the immediate crisis and, in so doing, bring the problem to the attention of those who might be in a position to begin to resolve it or at least mitigate it ? Not very satisfactory, but it is realistic. If we are to resolve the current dilemma, there will be no fairy to wave a wand and it will take time, will, thought and effort.

Several people referred to the example of the industrial revolution in Britain, and there are similarities, but also considerable differences.  The problems then arose as much as anything from the speed of change, and although the speed of change now is even greater the circumstances are not the same.  At that time there was plenty of work in the industrial centres, even if the hours were long and the conditions harsh and sometimes dangerous. People migrated to the manufacturing towns and cities because they could no longer make a living in agriculture or as independent craftsmen and women.  Those who had had a stake in the land in the form of copyhold tenancies lost that minimal security as the land owners took the copyhold land back in hand and enclosed the commons,  depriving the villagers of grazing land and other rights such as pannage and the right to gather firewood.  Even yeoman farmers who owned their land struggled to make a living in the agricultural depression which followed the Napoleonic wars.  The mills and foundries offered regular employment and more money than people could hope to earn as agricultural labourers, often seasonally employed, but the manufacturing centres to which they flocked could not grow fast enough to accommodate them. Houses which had been hastily and shoddily built were multi-occupied, without sanitation or access to clean water, so disease was rife, as in the cholera epidemics of the 19th century.

Those problems took more than a century to resolve, through the efforts of many people and not least of the workers themselves.  It is to be hoped that we can do better, although I’m not particularly optimistic at the moment.

 

 

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@ichabod  @idiotsavon

Thanks for the good wishes. They are indeed taking it seriously. Out of curiosity I looked up the record of the consultation, which can be accessed on a secure site, to see if there was anything additional to what was discussed during my consultation with the GP, and it was marked ‘cancer, fast track’. Skin cancers can be sneaky, but I think that even in the UK people are generally now more aware of what to look out for.

@thane16  (puro)

You make it sound as if we were homeless itinerants, rather than a family moving house post war in one of the harshest winters of the 20th century! It wasn’t *that* bad, and quite funny in retrospect 🙂

Cold mince pies and ice cream, hmm. I can see the appeal of that in an Australian Christmas, but in this hemisphere and in this latitude I’ll stick with hot mince pies, preferably with brandy butter. But not for another month, because I like to keep things strictly seasonal. My mother was a mince pie fiend and used to make batch after batch, well laced with booze. One Christmas Eve we were entertaining the family of a school friend of mine when, around 11 pm, my friend’s aunt said she was leaving to go to midnight mass at the RC cathedral in the city, a six mile drive. My friend suggested we go to the midnight service at her Anglican church near the cathedral, so the three of us left after a final nip of whisky, with mince pies hot from the oven to sustain us on the way. I cannot guarantee that we were quite sober on arrival.

If all goes well I shall be spending Christmas in Suresnes – the place with the American cemetery where Trump did deign to turn up and deliver a garbled speech. My brother called a few days ago to request that I bring a Christmas pudding – although it’s too late for me to make one because they need to mature for at least a couple of months, so it will have to be shop bought. My sister in law in the background was more concerned that I bring the home-made florentines.

 

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@craig  Fransico alice apparently wants to be my friend, too (message now deleted). I checked on her/him/it, and apparently they registered here about a month ago.

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@jimthefish

And I still can’t get over how cramped that console room is compared to the last few iterations.

Yes, especially when there are four people crowded into it, and the massive crystalline structures just contribute to the oppressive,claustrophobic atmosphere. I was hoping that it would somehow open out to reveal a larger space beyond, but that doesn’t seem likely now. I do not like it at all, and the quirky features of the console, such as the hour-glass timer, contribute nothing IMO.

It has just occurred to me that maybe I really am weird, because I don’t pop bubble wrap, I generally squirrel it away for future use :-o.

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The old style pattern of alternating historical and futuristic episodes continues, and this for my money was the best so far of the future set episodes. The plot, with all its mildly satirical contemporary references and relevance, was sufficiently intriguing and involving, and it ended with a satisfactory twist which was equally applicable to current events. But best of all was the dialogue, which had more of a Doctor Who-ish snap and wit than of late and gave the cast plenty to work with as an ensemble

Team Tardis have clearly had enough experience now in unseen adventures to develop confidence and an easy  working relationship, without having to rely always on the Doctor for prompting and direction. But she was shown still to be the one with the knowledge and skills to pull everything together. This was the first time since episode 1 that I got a hint of a Doctor with an emerging, more substantial and individual identity, perhaps because the script allowed this. The fez was a cheeky incidental link to a past self without being unduly laboured.

One that is worth a re-watch, I think.

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@pedant  @thane16  @jimthefish  @KevinWho  @blenkinsopthebrave  @bluesqueakpip

Thanks everybody. As I said, I have been through this before and it turned out OK. Been through it twice, in fact. if you count the time they thought I had ovarian cancer, although I was reasonably certain then that it was just a very large cyst. And boy, did I feel smug when I turned out to be right (though I was careful not to let it show while the medics were around). I remain optimistic for the time being.

The reason I was surprised when I realised from her questions and mutterings that the doc was thinking on the lines of melanoma, was that there was never any mole on my nose and there is no pigmentation. The melanoma on my back did start out as a mole. I’d had it most of my adult life and, because it was very dark in colour, had checked on it at fairly regular intervals. This, though, looks like a small pit in the skin about 1.5mm in diameter which bleeds, oozes and scabs over and doesn’t heal and, on minutely close inspection, is surrounded by a very slightly raised, pinkish area. It has developed over the past 5-6 weeks and, if it is skin cancer, it doesn’t seem to be typical of the common types.

So far I’m optimistic, and maybe I’m fortunate in that my ‘local’ hospital is a modern and well equipped University teaching hospital and that so far they seem still to be coping with remarkable efficiency in the face of all the problems of finance, understaffing  etc. facing the NHS at the moment. The GP practice where I am registered has for long been a miracle of efficiency – a wide range of services, same day appointments standard provided you phone Reception early in the morning, and referrals to specialists are streamlined and swift. Prescriptions are  paperless, as I think is now usual in England, and are sent electronically direct to my local pharmacy who then deliver to my door, often on the following day, even though they are only ten minutes walk away from where I live and I never asked them to do so. Repeat prescriptions can be ordered on line. All of which is more than my relatives in France can boast 🙂

Thane: 16/17 does seem young for a melanoma, but it can develop at any age, and you do get a lot more sun in Oz than we do in the UK 😉

Pip: Fingers and toes crossed that the suspicious mark on your toe is just in the nail; it would be a very uncomfortable place for an excision. It’s reassuring to know that the medics are keeping an eye on it

 

 

 

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@cathannabel

Thank you. It does sometimes feel as if I have reached a stage in which life is throwing just one damn thing after another at me, but so far I keep bouncing back 🙂  The hospital phoned this morning to give me a date for my appointment with the dermatologists – 12 pm on 26th of this month, so only ten days to wait.  I’m hoping they will deal with it on the spot, as they did with the melanoma in 2000, just so long as they don’t dig as big a hole in my nose as they did in my back on that occasion!

@blenkinsopthebrave

it feels (to me) that Chibnall is recapturing the approach of the Verity Lambert/Sydney Newman years. The original brief of the show was to have a show that was directed to children that was both entertaining (adventures in outer space) but educational (history lessons like The Aztecs  and Marco Polo). 

That is very much my feeling too, although I hope that the aim is to expand on and develop that concept rather than simply to resurrect it with all its limitations, albeit with a far bigger budget and vastly improved visual effects. So far the historical episodes have been of a higher standard than any of those I remember in BG, perhaps because they both dealt with events which occurred within living memory and the writers were people for whom those events would have particular resonance.

The episodes dealing with future time, space  and aliens have by comparison seemed pedestrian and, though it’s early days, there has been nothing to compare with that first appearance of the Daleks. The monsters have, as @bluesqueakpip says, been pretty rubbish so far, and although the contrast between the build up of the Pting as one of the most dangerous and fearsome creatures in the universe and the absurd reality when it finally appeared was presumably meant to be comic, it struck me as merely bathetic.  On the evidence so far, Chibnall appears to lack the kind of imaginative vision which produces the best science fiction and fantasy, but I’m prepared to wait and see.

 

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In other news, it looks as if I may shortly be having my nose reshaped in a less than aesthetically pleasing fashion.

Over the past five weeks a small, doubtful-looking, oozy spot on my nose has developed, and first thing this morning I finally got round to calling the GP practice and arranging an appointment to have it looked at. It turned out that the doctor I normally see was unavailable as it was his turn on call-out duty (yes, they still do home visits), so I ended up seeing one of the other partners, a very pleasant, jolly lady.

I had been thinking on the lines of ‘possible basal cell carcinoma’, so I after had given her the background details I was a bit disconcerted when she started asking pointed questions about family history of melanoma (answer: yes, I had one removed from my back 18 years ago, but this thing looks nothing like it).  Whichever is the case, I have been referred to a dermatologist at the N &N University Hospital – a convenient 4 miles from where I live, and we shall see.

A complication I could have done without, soddit.

 

 

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@ichabod  @thane @janetteb

Your confidence in my omniscience in all things historical is very flattering, but my knowledge of the incidence of plague is not very detailed. There were few if any places in Europe not devastated by the Black Death, least of all urban centres, although Poland is supposed to have remained largely unaffected. This 14th century pandemic originated in east Asia and arrived first in Europe via the maritime ports – Mediterranean, Atlantic and Baltic – spreading from there, as Janette says, along inland trade routes and via people fleeing from the cities into the countryside to escape it. In Britain it was introduced through the ports on the south coast of England and spread north from there over the space of about a year.  I don’t know how badly Prague was affected, but I doubt whether it escaped altogether.

Don’t forget, though, that Bubonic/Pneumonic plague remained endemic in Europe until at least the mid 18th century and there were many further, more limited outbreaks, mostly centred in cities which certainly included Prague. The Great Plague of London 1665/66 is the last such in England, but far from the last elsewhere.  Given the very limited medical knowledge of the times, there were other epidemic diseases which might also have been regarded in a similar light to the plague.

I have wanted to visit Prague ever since I read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s description in Between the Woods and the Water, but I fear my travelling days may be over, other than hopping Eurostar to Paris 🙁

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@pedant

Don’t underestimate the influence of the Wahhabi’s since the 50s.

Yes. In Birmingham in the 1970s I often saw women wearing the salwar kameez , but very rarely with their heads covered, and never with the hijab.

The widespread adoption of the hijab, let alone the niqab is a relatively recent phenomenon.

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@troygorsline

The dupatta (the long scarf worn with a salwar kameez), or the end of a sari might have been drawn over the head in public or in the presence of strangers, but not necessarily in informal circumstances and not within the family. It might have been expected when Graham and Ryan appeared, but wouldn’t have been imperative. The custom of strict purdah would applied more to women of the upper classes and was in any case much relaxed by the 1940s. It wouldn’t really ever have been practical among those much lower down the social scale or caste system

Caveat: my relatives by marriage are from southern India, and Brahmin Catholic converts to boot (which is not apparently a contradiction in terms), so I don’t claim to be an expert in such matters.

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There was just one trivial detail which bothered me in passing. On past evidence the Tardis can provide a wardrobe of clothing for all occasions, so why not a shalwar kameez for Yaz, especially when she knew she was going back in time to see her grandmother?  Her clothes, however nondescript in a 21st century context, would have stood out like the proverbial sore thumb even in the Lahore of 1947 where she expected to arrive, let alone in a rural village, and would in reality have caused more than just a few raised eyebrows.

Her family also talked of burying a Hindu sadhu rather than cremating him, but I put that inconsistency down to the fact that they were Muslim.

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@juniperfish

it’s creating a negative space in the narrative arc screaming, “We MUST DO something to stand up to bigotry!!!” which, as I’ve said upstream, Chibnall and team are thereby inviting us to apply in our own time.

That thread and the continuing moral imperative is, above all, what is keeping me engaged with S11, because there is a small part of me which agrees with @jimthefish , if not to the extent that I am inclined to give up watching.  Up to a point I have no problem in accepting Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, although so far she seems to lack that essential underlying sense of gravitas and age-long experience – more Peter Davison than any incarnation since.

From the start my expectations were lower and on that basis decided to concentrate on whatever was positive. I can therefore cope up to a point with the diminution of imaginative scope and any fall in the quality of writing or direction, but it is perhaps significant that the two best episodes so far, in my opinion, have been those not written by Chibnall. They were also stories set in specific historical contexts, which was a surprise, since those tend to rouse the nit-picking historian in me and are therefore generally not among my favourites *. These, though, packed a powerful and emotional punch, not least because the events portrayed are precisely the kind of lessons of history which are still most applicable more than half a century later.

* There is still something a bit disconcerting in using the term ‘historical’ about events which occurred within one’s own lifetime.

 

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@bluesqueakpip

It’s well worth watching; it can be distressing. Especially seeing the genuine footage of the real cost of the war – all those dead young men, without the distancing effect of black and white.

Yes, it is astonishing how much colour and sound effects contribute to the sense of immediacy, and this was very well done – far more so than any previous attempt at colouring old B & W footage I have seen to date.

I recorded the film yesterday evening and have just finished watching it, and it was a very direct and powerful testimony to the feelings and experience of the men at the western front. The coda, with the survivors’ reflections on the lack of interest in or understanding of their experiences which they met when they returned home was also very poignant. I know that few ever talked of it later, whether for that reason or because they felt it was impossible to communicate the reality.  And then many of them had to deal with unemployment and desperate poverty.

 

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Partition was such a difficult subject for a show such as Doctor Who to address, in view of the millions who died in the needless and senseless bloodletting, that I was reluctant even to watch this episode for fear that it would be mishandled, and the title, suggesting the introduction of alien antagonists, was not reassuring. My fears were unfounded and, for what my opinion is worth, this was the best episode yet.

The title had a double meaning, and the aliens were of course not the real demons at all. As in previous episodes, the monsters were human, or rather the monsters which can be aroused in the human psyche by those who manipulate human fears. The immediate and horrific consequences of partition were brought home without any attempt to portray the larger picture, which would have been wholly inappropriate in this context. The human cost was shown  by focussing with sensitivity on the impact on two families, neighbours and former friends on two sides of the arbitrary boundary, and on two individuals whose destinies were determined  by that line drawn on a map. The culpability of the British government and Lord Mountbatten in rushing through the process of partitioning the sub-continent was alluded to for those attuned to the nuances*, and in the division between two brothers, one who had been away fighting the Japanese and the other who had stayed at home and been radicalised, the consequences of a political struggle between leaders who encouraged and politicised divisions between Muslim and Hindu was illustrated, all without resort to overt exposition.

The Doctor was, of course, wrong in her assessment of the situation, and her intervention made no difference to the course of events except insofar as she was the intermediary in revealing the purpose of the ‘demons’; to honour and bear witness to the unmarked deaths. As @bluesqueakpip and @juniperfish said, a theme wholly appropriate for today, the centenary of the armistice.

One exchange among many which stood out for me was the conversation between Yaz and Graham.

Yaz . I thought I knew my Nan … But if this is true, if this is her life, then she lied to me.

Graham. … that girl in there, she ain’t your nan, yet. It’s only later that she’ll decide how to tell it. And I honestly don’t know whether any of us know the real truth about our own lives’.

Having been the recipient of much oral family history, and having done some fairly intensive research on family history in recent years, I can only say, ‘How true’.

* If there was one thing that the Attlee government really and totally fouled up it was in the way they rushed through the negotiations and formalities of Independence and shrugged off the unresolved difficulties saying, more or less, ‘It’s your problem now and for you to sort out’.  The partition boundary was apparently drawn up by a civil servant in a matter of weeks, on a map and without any knowledge of, reference to or provision for the actual communities on the ground.

I

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@nerys

It is the difference between reading a novel which you may enjoy but, at the end, feel there is nothing more to be learned from a second reading because everything is there on the surface, and reading one which you immediately want to read again because you know that, however much you have understood and gained from that first reading there are additional depths and nuances to be found.  There are some novels you can read again and again and still find something new on each occasion. Television drama tends to be more immediately accessible but, just as with novels,  the best always repays further viewing

 

 

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@ichabod

There was a six part BBC adaptation of The City and the City early this year, although I only recently got round to watching it. It diverged in some respects from the novel, giving Borlu a back story and an additional motive in the form of a wife who had disappeared, and greater prominence to the archaeological excavations. What made the dramatization particularly effective in my opinion was the distinctly noir-ish flavour and, cinematicaly, more than a hint of Blade Runner influence. I’m not sure what viewers who hadn’t read the book made of it, since Mieville’s work does, as you say, tend to be convoluted. For the most part I find it worth the effort of reading.

I haven’t yet had time to watch The Cry, which @pedant referred to. It is a drama based, I think, on the Dingo Baby case a few years back and the reviews seem generally to have been good, especially of Jenna Coleman’s performance.

 

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@pedant

Ouch!  and commiserations about this additional sideswipe by the fates; but excellent news about the blood sugar levels 🙂

Fingers crossed that the aches and pains will not trouble you for long.

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@pedant

Thank me later.

Or curse you, more like 😈

 

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@KevinWho

It is probably asking too much of Chibnall to hope he will come up with something wildly imaginative; that isn’t his strongest suit 😉  Moffat had an almost limitless imagination and a willingness to take risks which made even his less successful episodes interesting. It is significant that Rosa is the only episode in this season that I have felt I wanted to view twice, whereas I watched all of the episodes during Moffat’s time in charge at least two or three times, and sometimes felt it necessary to do so before I could even venture to comment.

My expectations of Chibnall were lower from the beginning, especially in the light of what he said about the direction in which he wanted to take the show, so when it comes to commenting on the episodes so far this season I am assessing by different criteria,  primarily according to what I think were his aims and the aims of the writer if different, and how well or otherwise they succeeded

As I indicated in comments earlier, I am British and was in my early teens in 1955. Although events depicted in this episode impinged only lightly on my consciousness at the time, by the mid 1960s I was politically very much aware of both current events and the background and I can understand your frustration over the fact that the complex subject was treated in relatively simplistic terms.  It was, however, aimed at people who, if they were aware of the facts at all, viewed them only from a simplified historical perspective. It succeeded insofar as it jolted awareness by conveying the visceral and emotional reality, through the experience of Ryan in particular, and that was the basis of my judgement.  My judgement as a historian didn’t really come into it.

 

 

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@thane16

On the evidence you should do well, although if the person doing the assessment isn’t really qualified to teach the subject, what is their assessment worth?  Either way you cannot lose 🙂

Once the basic tools have been imparted the overriding purpose of education is surely to teach the student how to think critically, and from that point of view studying philosophy in year 12 seems an excellent idea and I wish that I and the majority of those in my generation had had that opportunity.  On the other hand it is no use prescribing an ideal syllabus if there are not enough teachers qualified to teach all the subjects in that syllabus; and in my limited experience, even when the teachers are so qualified (and mine were for the most part), that doesn’t guarantee that they are effective in their job.

One of the better memories of my schooldays is the feeling of mixed apprehension and liberation when, within the first week of entering the sixth form (years 13/14), one of our history teachers  told us, ‘From now on you are expected to think for yourselves, and if you simply regurgitate what you have read in one source or what has been discussed in class you will be penalised’.

 

 

 

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@KevinWho

The grounds for your reservations about the episode are valid, but I’m not sure that the nuances of the psychological and sociological roots of racism in Montgomery in the 1950s could ever have been adequately addressed in one 50 minute episode of a show intended for family viewing and aimed primarily, in this case, at an audience of younger viewers of many nationalities for whom the events portrayed would be as distant as the Boer Wars or equivalent were for me in 1955.

The writer chose instead to explore the basic issues by showing one of the pivotal events in the history of the struggle for civil rights in the USA from the 21st century point of view of three British people of various ethnic origin, one middle aged and two young, confronted in shocking fashion with the, to them, unfamiliar reality of a racism which was not only deep rooted and pervasive, but encoded in segregationist law and with a legacy of extreme violence behind it. The mentality and the motivation of the white racists who featured in the episode were not explored and so they might seem stereotyped, but I can remember the shocking filmed reports not long after Rosa Parks’ protest, of  black students running the gauntlet of angry mobs when schools were first desegregated, and the stereotypes are recognisable.

As @bluesqueakpip says, the more intricate questions of why racists are racist, the complex of fears and insecurity which fuel racism, and how racism becomes embedded as a social norm with the force of law behind it are not the subject of this episode, but they are implicit for those who may be prompted to look further and ask questions. If even a few viewers do follow up in this way, then I think the writers will have done their job.

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Did my eyes deceive me, or was the Doctor’s jumper purple in this episode, and if so and not a trick of the lighting, what is the significance. Over to you, @juniperfish .

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The episode was entertaining and as visually impressive as the first four, but the overall impression after first viewing is that, although it contained plenty of good things, the tone seemed a bit uneven and I’m not sure that the component elements really meshed together to form an integrated whole.  I agree with @juniperfish that the real strength was in the way that the relationship between Graham and Ryan was further developed and revealed, here against the contrapuntal theme of the relationships and interaction between members of the staff of the Tsuranga, General Cicero, her brother Durkas and the android Astos,  not to mention the outsider,the diffident Mabli and the patients.  Yaz continues to be more of a foil for the others than a character with her own agency, but did come briefly into her own when she captured the Ptang and booted it into touch, which was a delightful moment.

We were promised that the monster would be the most unusual and destructive creature in the universe, but in the event it was the weakest element and hard to take at all seriously. The concept of an energy devouring creature threatening the integrity of a space ship is fine, but when the creature itself looks like cross between a bad tempered miniature slitheen and an obese piglet the effect, deliberately or not, is more comedic than threatening, particularly as the CGI animation in this case was not nearly as subtle as that of the spiders last week. Ptang was also perhaps an unfortunate choice of name, at least for older viewers in the UK, because for me it immediately evoked the Goon Show.

The Doctor saved the day by realising that she could arm the self-destruct mechanism of the Tsuranga to lure and dispose of the Ptang though, as so often, it was a last minute and risky gambit. Her most impressive and definingly Doctorish moment,  though, was when she invoked her philosophy of hope and invites the others to, ‘Imagine the solution and work to make it reality. Whole worlds pivot on acts of imagination’

 

 

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@idiotsavon  @lionheart564

Even if the nuances escape those of us not indigenous to Africa, there tend to be obvious differences in build and facial features between people from West African Countries and those from East and North East Africa.

Fun fact, which you may already be aware of: modern studies of DNA show that there is a much more genetic diversity within the population of the African continent that there is within or between the populations of any and all regions of the world beyond it. That is presumably because everyone outside Africa is descended from a comparatively very small population of modern humans who migrated from there. Minor differences in physical appearance have very little significance beyond the fact that some are adaptations favourable to local conditions. So, for example, it seems from recent DNA analysis of early human remains that the first modern humans in  Europe were dark skinned but, in regions towards the poles which get less sunlight, the process of evolution favoured those with less melanin. It pretty much makes a nonsense of the whole concept of race, which can therefore be seen as a purely social construct.  It is not as if we are any of us of different species; and even in the matter of species, it now seems that Homo Neanderthalensis contributed a small amount to the genetic makeup of modern Europeans.

It all begins with what seems to be a deeply rooted tendency for people to identify themselves and their immediate community in terms of who they are not or, to put it another way, in relation to the ‘other’. We in our family, clan or  tribe are people. Those others who are not of our group may be rivals, and maybe they are not quite people like us, maybe not even entirely human, so perhaps we need not treat them as such. Even among the indigenous (if decidedly mongrel) population of  England, a small country, we tend to define ourselves by the region or county we come from and sometimes to be a little bit contemptuous, even if only in a joking way, about those from other regions. And the relations between the countries which make up the UK can for historical reasons be a lot more edgy.  At the most trivial level, support of a football team can be the basis of a strong sense of identity, and rivalries between teams taken very seriously, even sometimes the pretext for outright violence.  Given that seemingly innate mindset, whenever there are stresses in a society it is all too easy for people to make scapegoats of members of the population who form an identifiable minority and to blame the ‘other’ as the source of their problems.

As to what constitutes racial ‘otherness’, there doesn’t seem to be any consistency. The Romans did not apparently  discriminate between people on grounds of colour or regional origin as long as they were Roman citizens. In their world the ‘outsider’ was either the citizen of a rival empire such as the Parthians, or a barbarian, and the term barbarian stems from Greek and originally meant simply, someone who did not speak Greek and was therefore, by inference, not civilised. In the Roman world, once the barbarian was incorporated into the empire as citizen he might even aspire to be emperor.

When civilisations which had been geographically separated by distance began to come into direct contact there was a good deal of cultural dissonance which I doubt was necessarily to do with ‘race’ as we tend to think of it now. The Chinese, with a civilisation far older and for a long time more technically advanced than that of peoples in the lands to the west of them, seemed to have conceived of their empire in solipsistic terms as the centre of the world, so, when people from Western European nations came to the court of the Emperor they thought they were on a diplomatic mission to establish a trading relationship. The Emperor and his ministers, on the other hand, interpreted the mission in terms they understood from long experience, as a an embassy from an inferior nation offering tribute. It was an unfortunate misapprehension which had long term and regrettable repercussions, but how much it was to do with concepts of race, except as justification after the fact, and how much to do with a cultural clash between a very old established civilisation and a younger and more aggressive mercantile one which was rapidly starting to outstrip it in technological development, is debateable.

 

 

 

 

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@thane16

I am probably the last person to consult on matters of philosophy, having never studied the subject except at the most superficial level. That said, when I read of your philosophy assignment the first thing that occurred to me was, how do you define the terms fundamental to the argument? Logical argument depends on the premise, and what is meant by ‘God’ when the concept seems to mean so many different things depending on belief, even within the Abrahamic religions and the various sects which comprise those religions? I remember having heated, and probably not very coherent arguments on the subject with a schoolfriend who was a devout high church Anglican (i.e. Catholic in all matters other than recognition of the authority of the Pope). She thought of God as somehow external, to which or whom the sacraments were our sole connection – a kind of lifeline. My concept, brought up as I was in the Quaker tradition, was somewhat different and more personal, based as it was in the concept of the ‘inner light’ and seeing ‘that of God’ in everyone.

So, given that many of these concepts were formed long before there was any knowledge or understanding of the vastness and complexity of the universe,  is the God of your argument the creator and prescriptive ruler of the Israelites, an omniscient,omnipotent and ultimately benevolent overseer of the universe and our human destiny, the Ground of Being integral to the existence of all living beings, the Atman or universal soul, or what? And how do you construct a rational, logical argument  on that basis?

All of which will probably be shot down in flames by those better grounded in these matters. Moral Philosophy (or Logic and Metaphysics) were required first year courses for many students at Edinburgh University when I was there, but not for honours Archaeology students, and I opted for Social Anthropology instead 😉

 

 

[Mudlark @replies]

@lionheart564   @miapatrick

Discussion of whether health care is better provided by the private sector or by a socialised system such as the NHS, funded by taxation and free at the point of service, is particularly complicated when it comes to comparing China and the UK. On one level it is, as you say, a matter of scale. The UK is geographically much smaller than China, its population is less than a 20th the size, and the systems and problems of government are not the same. Equally significantly, our historical experience is different, and because of that experience our understanding of the meaning of  ‘socialism’ is probably very different.

Private enterprise, competition and the profit incentive have certainly proved more efficient in the manufacturing industries, the retail market and certain non-essential services, although even here some degree of regulation seems to be necessary, since unfettered capitalism tends to result in a very unequal society, both economically and socially, as we are seeing now in the UK and in the USA. Not to mention that an inadequately regulated financial sector resulted in the crash of 2008.

When it comes to public services such as health care, public transport and the utilities such as electricity, gas, water and sewage, the advantages of private enterprise and competition are a lot less evident. The privatisation of regional transport services and the utilities in the UK has not, in my experience, resulted in greater efficiency than when these services were nationalised, and it has certainly made them more complicated and expensive. The maintenance of the national railway tracks for example, after being tendered out separately from the regional railway services, was so inefficient that it had to be renationalised.

On the subject of the NHS I am perhaps a bit more knowledgeable, because I have family members who work or have worked within it as doctors and nurses, some of them at a very senior level. I have also, throughout my by now fairly long life, had a good deal of experience as a patient, and have some immediate basis of comparison since I have relatives in France and am familiar with the system there.  My experience is not necessarily typical of all other regions in the UK, but for what it is worth I have found the NHS here generally to be extremely effective, not least because it is an integrated system with efficient communication between the various sectors.  At present the NHS also costs less per capita than any other system which provides universal coverage, and at least some of the problems it is currently experiencing could be remedied by increasing the level of funding to that in Germany or France.

The government determines the amount of money allotted to it, provides oversight on standards and can, for better or worse, make changes to the way the system is organised.  But contrary to the misconceptions in some quarters,  in the day to day running there is no central command structure. GP practices – the primary care providers – are privately owned and managed, usually by a partnership of several practitioners*, but most are wholly contracted to the NHS and allocated money according to the range of services they provide which can be fairly wide.  The majority of hospitals in England are run by regional trusts. Neither GP practices nor hospital trusts need to make a profit, because there are no shareholders involved.

A conservative government in the 1980s introduced the idea of market competition within this national health service, based on an ideological conviction that it would result in greater efficiency. Sometimes it did, if fiscal efficiency was the only intended result, but that was often at the expense of the primary purpose of the service: to provide effective and timely health care. It also placed an added administrative burden on staff. As my brother once said, ruefully, ‘I seem to spend half my time now pushing paper round a desk when I would rather be out on the wards saving lives’.

In the past two decades, reliance on the private sector rather than public borrowing to fund the building of new hospitals has left hospital trusts burdened with onerous repayments out of a budget which could otherwise be spent on their patients. Health ministers in government since 2010 have also been keen to tender NHS services out to the private sector. To me this doesn’t make sense. The money still comes from the public purse, but if a service is run by a private company, however efficiently, a part of that money will necessarily be creamed off in profit to pay their shareholders and their (probably) overpaid CEOs. The likelihood is that either the service provided will accordingly be more expensive, or corners will be cut to save money and the service will be inferior.  There have certainly already been problems, and some companies which undertook to provide services have had to concede their inability to do so.

For those who can afford it in the UK there are also private hospitals and doctors who treat patients privately, and for that you may get a private room and slightly better food; but if anything goes wrong you are likely to be transferred to an NHS hospital for treatment because they have better and more extensive facilities; and generally speaking the same is true for anyone who is critically ill.

* The medium-sized practice where I am registered, one of several in the area which I could have chosen, consists of five GPs in partnership, one salaried GP employed by them, a practice nurse, healthcare assistants including a phlebotomist, a practice manager and receptionists, in addition to their access to district nursing staff, midwives etc.

 

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