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@ps1l0v3y0u If you listen to the stacked vocal harmonies, overdubbed by Karen and Richard and sung perfectly in tune, that’s a result of Richard’s vocal arrangements. It was as characteristic of their sound as Karen’s solo voice. And, because I have hearing loss that started in childhood, I think those vocal harmonies were part of their appeal to me. Because of the overtones created in the vocal harmonies, my brain caused me to hear more sound than was actually there.

Karen’s eating disorders are well known, sadly. Richard had his own issues and had to enter rehab for Quaalude addiction, which is when Karen recorded her solo album, which A&M shelved, which led to her disastrous marriage, worsening her anorexia nervosa and bulimia … though she made a halfhearted attempt to get treatment. Anorexia nervosa wasn’t well understood then, but anyone who had experienced it knew, even then, that it couldn’t be cured through an hour-long outpatient session.

People have forgotten that, besides being a remarkable singer, Karen was also a good drummer … at a time when it wasn’t really accepted for women to play drums. I have always believed that Karen having to largely give up her beloved drums, in favor of sending her to the front of the stage as the star singer, is part of what led to her descent into eating disorders. The sheer joy on her face as she played shows me how much she loved it. This is one of my favorite clips of her singing and playing live: The Ed Sullivan show

@winston Yes, Karen could sing it all. It’s sad to think of what might have been, had she lived. The music she could have made? But beyond that, I like to think that her life would have been richer and more rewarding. Such a tragedy.

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@dwnerdfrommars Karen and Richard suffered from an image problem, especially in the United States. The image was largely manufactured by their record company, A&M, who recognized a cash cow when they saw it and wanted to keep the middle class money rolling in. So the PR department really laid it on thick, when it came to describing the “wholesome” image. Part of this was because they also had no idea how to promote a brother-and-sister act.

After Richard and Karen both suffered physical setbacks, Richard’s arrangements less inventive, more “by the numbers.” By the time they were both back in the studio to record their last album together, radio had entered the synth-pop age, and the Carpenters were trend-chasing in the hope of regaining their U.S. chart popularity. It just didn’t work.

But for me, the music is what it’s all about, and they were consummate musicians and professionals. Most of their studio albums reflect this. If people can get past the image and really listen, I think they can hear it. Even if “silly love songs” are not your thing, every artist or group has done them. The Carpenters did them especially well.

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I know the Carpenters are not everyone’s cup of tea. I was a fan as a kid, drifted away when their song choices and arrangements got more syrupy in the late ’70s to early ’80s, then reclaimed their music after Karen died in 1983. I’m currently listening to the 5.1 remixes of their complete Singles 1969-1981 SACD album on YouTube. I love the crystal-clear audiophile quality of these mixes.

Listening to this through headphones really helps me appreciate one of the all-time great singing voices. Karen sang like no other, and Richard really knew how to arrange, especially for those stacked overdubbed vocal harmonies that he and Karen sang. Hearing her warm, uniquely intimate voice nestled in his superb vocal and instrumental arrangements is an exquisite listening experience … at least for me.

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@winston @dentarthurdent I also find myself liking what I see of the Doctor’s companion. She reminds me of a (bottle) blonde Clara. I say that without having seen “The Church on Ruby Street” yet. The trailers are all I have to go by. As of now my public library only has DVDs up through the 13th season, so it may be a while before I get caught up.

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I must say, the trailer looks good. It captures the Doctor’s whimsy and charm, while also delivering a sense of danger posed by … who? The enemies aren’t made clear, but I didn’t see any Daleks or Cybermen, so maybe it’s a whole new cast of characters.

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@blenkinsopthebrave I love the trailer. And thank you for sharing that Radio Times article. Both make me feel more enthusiastic about taking up with Doctor Who again. But, as I’ve said before, I really don’t want to subscribe to Disney+, so I’ll have to wait for the DVDs to make their way to my library. (If we didn’t already have too many DVDs, I’d consider buying them.)

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@dentarthurdent The first time I saw Quantum of Solace in the cinema, I was so disappointed … but only because I felt it didn’t measure up to Casino Royale. However, on second and subsequent viewings, I came to love it.

I think it’s incredible that they achieved what they did, given the fact that the writers’ strike meant they had to work with a bare-bones script. I think that’s why we got some of the “low attention span” editing in several scenes, to try to compensate for the lack of script development.

But other than that, I really do enjoy the film. Like you, I liked Mathis and was sad to see him go. Bond’s handling of Mathis’ body got a lot of flack at the time, but it made sense to me, given who Bond was. And with Jeffrey Wright playing Leiter, you can’t go too far wrong. He’s such a good actor. I’m glad they brought him back for No Time to Die. (Though, speaking of Mathis ….)

I just saw Olga Kurylenko in The Water Diviner, a 2014 film that marked Russell Crowe’s directorial debut. I thought it was a very good film, and she was very good in it.

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@ps1l0v3y0u I like ZChib. It’s a keeper.

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@dentarthurdent As to why the Doctor’s doing this (‘adopting’ Bill), I’d hypothesise that he needs the companionship. Who was it who said the Doctor shouldn’t be alone, it wasn’t good for him. River?

I seem to recall both Amy and River telling the Doctor he should never travel alone. And then in “Listen” (after the Doctor goes on a tangent about whether anyone is ever truly alone), Clara asks, “How long have you been traveling alone?” We saw that when Tennant’s Doctor was alone for so long, it did not go well for him. So perhaps that made him realize how much he needs his companions.

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@dentarthurdent Yes, Silva was the one with the island and “mommy issues” with M. Bardem played him beautifully!

I didn’t much care for the Brosnan era (though I do respect the fact that he helped to bring Bond back from the brink of extinction). As I recall, Tomorrow Never Dies is the Bond film of his I liked best.

Before Craig, I didn’t really like Bond films at all. The two that did appeal to me were For Your Eyes Only (Roger Moore) and The Living Daylights (Timothy Dalton). After Casino Royale, I reviewed the earlier Sean Connery films and developed a respect for the first four.

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@dentarthurdent Oh, right, thanks for the correction! Quantum of Solace is one I tend to forget. At first I was disappointed in it, then on subsequent viewings came to appreciate it. It was marred by a couple of things: the writers’ strike and disjointed editing of the chase sequences. Apparently Marc Forster was aiming to put the audience into the action, but it had the opposite result for me. And maybe he was trying to compensate for the bare-bones script he was left to work with. But, after I got over my initial disappointment, I still found a lot to like.

Blofeld was strangely portrayed. I think that was a missed opportunity with Christoph Waltz, who is usually so good. Even in Spectre, he wasn’t as intimidating as I expected. The best arch-villain in Craig’s arc was, in my opinion, Javier Bardem’s Silva in Skyfall. He ticked off all the Bond villain character trait boxes with a gleeful menace.

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@dentarthurdent I loved No Time To Die. It’s a natural culmination of the Daniel Craig era, though I admit I was surprised that they ended it the way they did. Having watched all four of his Bond films (Casino Royale was the one that hooked me), I felt that there was a tragic trajectory. I think giving Bond a daughter, only to have him sacrifice himself for her and Madeleine, was not a universally popular decision, but the story gave Craig a richer emotional palette to work with than he’d had in the previous three films.

One criticism of the film is that Rami Malek’s character was not particularly menacing. I disagree. Unlike past Bond arch-villains, I don’t think the point of his character was to focus on him being a global threat (even though he was). When he picked up Mathilde and carried her around, he was absolutely chilling. I really didn’t know what he was going to do … and neither did Bond. That scene was beautifully played by Malek and Craig.

And isn’t it poetic that when Bond turned back to retrieve Mathilde’s Dou Dou, it sealed his fate?

Last night we watched Get Out, a 2017 horror film written, co-produced and directed by Jordan Peele. What a brilliant directorial debut! I love any film that makes me think, and when one from the horror genre achieves that, I appreciate it. It also stimulated lots of emotions, mostly sadness and dismay at what the main character goes through. I’ll be contemplating this one for a good long while.

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In the “what have you been watching lately” vein:

Still Alice from 2014, a deftly devastating portrayal of early-onset Alzheimer’s and its impact on the individual and her family. The film affected me so much that I couldn’t sleep that night.

I was surprised to learn about one of the co-directors, Richard Glatzer, having ALS and being unable to speak. Watching the “making of” documentary was a remarkable revelation of how everyone, cast and crew alike, made this work.

There was one scene among the deleted scenes that I wish they could have kept in, because it showed the intrusion of the disease into Alice’s professional life. This scene made it clear how intelligent and incisive she had been, and what Alzheimer’s was inexorably stealing from her, her colleagues and her students.

Julianne Moore is amazing in everything I’ve ever seen her in. I think the first time I saw her was in Magnolia, still one of my favorite films. (Though, in my opinion, neither she nor Anthony Hopkins could redeem Hannibal, which I felt was just cashing in on The Silence of the Lambs success. Same with Red Dragon. That whole franchise was, for me, an unfortunate development … though, given its box office success, I’m sure the studio was quite happy with it. I’m probably alone in this, but I consider Michael Mann’s Manhunter to be a vastly superior film adaptation of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon novel.)

Enough about that. Though this train of thought reminds me: We recently rewatched a film I have long loved: 84 Charing Cross Road from 1987. Anthony Hopkins has done so much brilliant work. But here he shines in a movie about letters, which must be one of the most challenging subjects to depict in a movie. I’m guessing that at least half of the film is done in voice-overs. He and Anne Bancroft (plus Judi Dench in a supporting role that still surprises me because of how subdued her character is) are so skilled that I find myself forgetting about the voice-overs.

The only part that doesn’t quite work for me is the ending. The film was based on a stage play, which in turn was based on Helene Hanff’s book of correspondence between herself and a London bookseller. There are a few instances of breaking the fourth wall, including one at the end. I have a feeling it worked better in the stage play than in the film. But I find the rest of the film deeply moving, nostalgic in a way that perhaps is over-romanticized, and yet it resonates with me.

And, speaking of Anthony Hopkins, I’m sure The Father has been discussed here. I rewatched that a while back. It’s another heartbreaking portrayal of the impacts of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Olivia Colman is stellar, as always, but Hopkins delivers a stunningly believable performance.

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@winston @ps1l0v3y0u I tried to like it, and wanted to, but mainly found Chibnall’s tenure wanting. My favorite episode was the “Eve of the Daleks” New Year’s special. It caught the magic, I thought … then dumped it. Such a shame.

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@ps1l0v3y0u Yes, I thought Jack Robertson in “Arachnids in the UK” and “Revolution of the Daleks” was the character most obviously based on Trump. Like so much during Chibnall’s tenure, the writing was handled in too heavy-handed a manner to be effective.

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Does anyone here watch True Detective on HBO? (It’s quite violent, so might not be everyone’s cuppa tea.) It launched its fourth season on Jan. 14. I was a little underwhelmed by the first episode. Too much tell, not enough show. But I get that they had a lot of characters to introduce and ideas to get across.

With that behind us, the second episode was much better. And, to my surprise, whose name did I see in the opening credits? None other than Chris Eccleston! So far his character is not very likable. But then again, few characters are in this series. Good to see him again!

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@ps1l0v3y0u I just hope, loon that he is, The Master has been told it wrong.

Now, wouldn’t that be providential? The Master as an unreliable narrator. Except that it seems too easy, in the same way that “it was all a dream” was a cop-out for Dallas (but brilliant for Newhart).

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@ps1l0v3y0u Midnight: bbc iplayer has an embarrassment of riches on this side of the pond. Hope it’s there for a while!

Sadly, I don’t think I can access it unless I pull some shenanigans. I’m sure I can access the DVDs via our public library system, so I’ll go that route.

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@ps1l0v3y0u “Midnight” remains one of my all-time favorite Doctor Who episodes. I would love to watch it again … except I can’t, since it’s no longer on Crave. Maybe I can get it on loan from the library. *sigh*

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@ps1l0v3y0u Yeah, the endless exposition is one of many things that doomed “The Timeless Children” … if you have to explain everything (and have the Master, of all people, doing it), then that’s probably a clue about the quality of the storytelling. “Show, don’t tell.”

@dentarthurdent Yes, you and I were discussing Layer Cake. It may be worth a second watch for me, too.

The only other thing I can recall seeing Jodie Whittaker in was Broadchurch. She was part of a large ensemble cast, not the star of the show. But her character was so pivotal that she got a fair bit of screen time in a demanding role, and her acting impressed me.

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@ps1l0v3y0u But Jodie Whitaker was unfairly served by her scripts. That’s down to Chibnall. And there were a lot of other problems.

I absolutely agree with this. For those who criticize her Doctor, I believe she could have done so much better with scripts that measured up to her talents. That didn’t happen. I have no idea why. Too many cooks in the kitchen? But whatever the reason, a show’s success or failure usually ends up at the feet of the showrunner.

There were some good episodes. Just as I felt a season was gaining momentum, it fell flat. Repeatedly. “Eve of the Daleks” was the one standout episode, for me. The plot, the humor, the acting, the chemistry between the characters all came together like a proper Doctor Who episode. I wish more of Chibnall’s episodes could have been like that one, but that’s the one by which I choose to remember Jodie Whittaker’s tenure.

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@cedarbranchtardis Doctor Who will not be available on BBC America. The BBC continues to air Doctor Who in the UK, while elsewhere Disney+ is the only service streaming Doctor Who.

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@blenkinsopthebrave Oh, that does look good! I refuse to subscribe to Disney+ simply to keep up with one series I love, so I will have to wait and see if our library system will be getting it in digital form. Up to this point, they’ve been very good at adding each season’s and the specials DVDs and Blu-rays to their collection. I don’t know if the change in Canadian distributor will change that. I hope not.

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@craig Just a heads-up: Looks like a spammy post in The Winchester.

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@dentarthurdent Layer Cake – I didn’t really like it, didn’t dislike it, but I couldn’t stop watching – just had to see how it all worked out. And I have to say I was expecting a bad ending, but then there were several reversals in the last few minutes and I thought XXXX was going to get away with it and the final shock came from a totally unexpected (but in hindsight quite justified and predictable) quarter.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts. I saw it through to the end, confused by a fair bit but still able to roll with it. My husband was more frustrated by the ending. Like you, I found it to be a fairly plausible outcome, given all that had happened.

(Sorry to take so long in replying. I haven’t seen the new Who specials yet, so I have been trying to avoid spoilers.)

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@dentarthurdent I have never watched the series, but I loved Neverwhere the book. You mentioned you saw the series first. Did it measure up to the book?

My husband was watching Benediction on Crave. It too features Peter Capaldi. I want to watch it, and so I hope to do that soon.

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@dentarthurdent What did you think of Layer Cake? I found it just a little too complicated for my tastes. If it weren’t for the three principal actors — Daniel Craig, Michael Gambon and Colm Meaney — I think I would have given up on it altogether. My husband hated the ending.

But, having said that, I can see why this was the film that made Barbara Broccoli think Daniel Craig would make a good James Bond. And she was right.

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@dentarthurdent That’s interesting. I really preferred “Heaven Sent” to “Hell Bent” … which fell slightly short of the mark, for me. Despite Moffat’s wonderful writing, and superb acting by Capaldi and Coleman, what should have been an emotionally intense sendoff for Clara didn’t quite come together for me. I’ve never been able to pinpoint why. I appreciated the episode, but never found myself fully immersed in it. I think it’s just one of those highly subjective things.

Sorry to hear about Mrs. D’s accident while the two of you were on holiday. I hope she is fully recovered, physically and emotionally.

@janetteb We just watched Layer Cake last night. As good as Daniel Craig was in that, Michael Gambon almost stole the show, as he did in nearly every performance I’ve seen by him.

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@janetteb I agree with you about Mother Nature. Sadly, things have felt apocalyptic here this summer.

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@winston Thanks for the thumbs-up. We just started watching the third season of Breeders … not realizing that the fourth season is also available. So we’ve got some catching up to do. After that, we may start with Annika. I think you’re right, and I will like it.

(Post-tropical storm Lee was not as bad here as I’d feared. We had storm surge, but not devastating, thank goodness. And the wind and rain turned out not to be as severe as we were warned it might be. The damage from this massive storm actually turned out to be far worse northeast of us. So we lucked out. But others in our province did not.)

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We’re halfway through Season 5 of Unforgotten, and I’m finding it every bit as engaging as the previous four. I was afraid they would be heavy-handed with the interpersonal conflict in the void left by Cassie’s death, and the introduction of a new DCI, but I think they are handling it deftly. Conflict would be expected on many levels, given the circumstances, but they’re not making it melodramatic. Exceptional acting by the entire cast, and it’s good to see the other regular cast members getting more screen time now. It feels more like an ensemble cast, which I think it was meant to be until Cassie’s storyline took over.

Somehow I missed the news that Nicola Walker is in another series, Annika (also on PBS). We’ve been fans of hers since Touching Evil, so we’ll have to check this out.

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@nuwhovianjean I’m not sure where you live, but in the United States, HBO Max carries past seasons of Doctor Who. In Canada, we were able to watch it on Crave, but it was removed earlier this year. (Oddly enough, I just checked, and it looks like one episode from Season 3 got left behind. Guess I can still watch that lone straggler.)

I will have to figure out what I want to do about the upcoming specials and the new season, whenever it airs (since it sounds like the new season will be impacted by the writers’ strike). I don’t want to subscribe to Disney+. It would mean adding another streaming service to an already expensive monthly bill.

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Hello, all! I see that Unforgotten is set to air a new season on PBS starting tomorrow. I’d read that they were committed to a new season, but wondered how they would pull it off sans Nicola Walker. Now I get to find out!

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@blenkinsopthebrave Thank you so much! Some evacuation orders have been lifted, allowing those folks to return home, which is good. Needless to say, we felt relief that we have not had to evacuate (though it’s hard not to feel guilty about that). We were saying the other day how we are living our lives almost as normal, when so many people are not. We are lucky … and it somehow feels wrong to be on the right side of luck, with others going through so much stress, anxiety and fear.

One of our friends, sadly, had allowed her house insurance to lapse because she was planning on selling in the fall. (She doesn’t have much money, so I’m sure she felt it was one less bill to pay. And, I’m sure in hindsight, it’s a decision she regrets.) She thought she had lost both of her houses, but thankfully, it looks like one house was spared (after things were not looking good). So there are little miracles.

Here’s a CBC News story celebrating today’s beautiful rainfall. May all the incredible firefighters who are coming to our aid stay warm and dry in their tents, and safe as they battle this wildfire!

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Thank you, everyone, for your care and concern! I’m sorry to be so late in posting. We were without Internet for a while, which limited my ability to communicate.

The Barrington Lake fire (whose billowing smoke plumes are visible from across our harbor) is a massive wildfire, the largest ever in Nova Scotia. The Lake Road fire was a smaller wildfire northeast of us that triggered evacuation alerts fairly close to us Wednesday evening. We weren’t in the evacuation zone, but we had our bags packed in the car, just in case we had to leave.

We could see the Lake Road smoke plume from our front porch. We watched as Department of Natural Resources and volunteer firefighters, RCMP, emergency personnel and other crews raced to the scene. And, starting Thursday, we had many more water bombers on the scene. So that fire was brought under control very quickly.

We have heard that the fish gelatin manufacturing plant where my husband works is still standing. The problem is that there is no power out there, and two bridges have collapsed, hindering access to the plant. They were able to get in and transport their inventory of frozen fish skins to a freezer elsewhere in the county.

The sad thing is that human activity (people doing outdoor burning, when we are under an outdoor burn ban) caused these fires. So all this destruction, trauma and stress was completely preventable and unnecessary.

The ground and forests were bone dry. The soil is dust, even deep in the forests. Before yesterday, we hadn’t had significant rainfall since winter. The rains finally came yesterday, and we have had steady rain ever since. I can see puddles forming in our parking lot. It won’t put out this massive, extremely hot wildfire, but it will slow it down. And it will make the conditions far more favorable for our firefighters! But after the fire is finally doused, many people’s lives here will never be the same.

I am sad about ichabod’s passing. I always enjoyed her posts.

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@blenkinsopthebrave Well, I watched it. I agree that it was better, but I can’t say that I was as taken with it as you were.

I think my problem is that I never followed the original Next Generation series with any regularity. I tuned in now and again, when nothing else that interested me was on, and never made any commitment to it. (The only Star Trek series I watched from beginning to end was the mother ship that aired when I was a kid.) When Picard‘s first season aired, I knew enough about the character to be intrigued, but was happy that it wasn’t imperative to know the entire backstory in order to understand what was happening.

This season has changed all of that. I’m sure that it’s very satisfying for people who followed the original series, but it leaves me trying to fill in gaps that I don’t really want to fill.

My husband followed Next Generation and the various spinoff series far more closely than I ever did, but I think he was happy to be freed of all that history in the first season, and has felt a bit dismayed to see it take center stage this season. So I think we are not really Picard‘s target audience.

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@blenkinsopthebrave OK, that’s reassuring! I will watch it tomorrow. If I like it, then I will recommend it to my husband. Thank you for letting me know!

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@blenkinsopthebrave I wish I didn’t feel this way, but I do. I was really hoping for something closer to that first season.

Is the darkness supposed to mask the fact that the Next Generation actors are aging? If so, that’s too bad. After all, they are aging. Given the scarcity of light, I hope none of them have cataracts.

The flashback scene between Picard and Riker was odd. Almost like they used a combination of makeup and de-aging CGI to make them look younger … and didn’t succeed.

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Today is sunny and bright! We have more snow on the ground this morning than I have seen in a while (probably since 2018, which is confirmed in my snowfall photos from that year). I’m guessing that we got between 20 and 30 centimetres total. It’s the first time I can remember an 11-hour snowfall, which is how long this lasted. Fortunately the wind was minimal, and the power stayed on!

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Dental and eye exams are not covered by the provincial health care system in Nova Scotia. (Canada’s system is funded federally, but administered by the provinces. So each province has a different health care system.) Fortunately we have private insurance through my husband’s employer, and it covers dental work and much of what is not covered by the province. So we are very lucky in that way.

@janetteb I hope that your husband’s toothache can be resolved soon. @dentarthurdent I hope that your kidney stones pass uneventfully. The pain seems to be different for different people. My mother-in-law said she preferred childbirth to kidney stones … so that tells you how painful hers were.

After a largely snow-less winter, we are seeing snow in March. Today will probably bring us our biggest accumulation, thanks to a nor’easter sweeping through. Happy I don’t have to work today!

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Well, Picard, husband and I have given up. Season 3 starting out engagingly enough, and we were looking forward to something closer to Season 1’s beautifully rendered story. The all-but-missing theme music, which I felt they ruined last season, should have been a clue.

Starting with the second episode, things got predictable, to the point where by the third episode we knew what was going to happen long before it happened. The heaping helping of fan service might be great for those who watched the original series (which I did not), but it quickly grew tiresome for us.

We don’t even feel like finishing out this season … which is frustrating. Season 1 remains one of my favorite television-viewing experiences. They gave an inspiring fresh take on an old character. But, at least for me, that ended with Season 1. All that followed has felt less than inspiring. Almost like all the good ideas were used up in Season 1, and now what?

At the time, the ending to Season 1 was so satisfying that we both agreed, “You know, they could end it right here.” Now it seems they should have.

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@dentarthurdent Oh gosh, your head injury sounds scary! Keep tabs on it. Something that seems minor can develop into something serious.

I didn’t realize that Jodie Whittaker chose not to watch any of her Doctor Who predecessors. I often felt she was channeling David Tennant’s Doctor (which would have made sense, since they worked together in Broadchurch).

@thane16 Your weather sounds wild! I’m glad it was only a spectacle for you, though it sounds like others suffered more than a spectacle.

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@dentarthurdent Glad to hear that you’re making out OK with the storm!

You mentioned the Weeping Angels episode in the Flux story arc. That’s what I meant earlier about feeling like I was being set up for something good, only to have the payoff fall completely flat. You are absolutely right about that being a good episode. I like your assessment of Chibnall being “carried away so often by a temptation to turn it up to 11.” That’s my impression, as well. I guess the question is, was that his inclination, or was he being pressured by others to do that? Dunno.

I think Jodie Whittaker has the capability of portaying the Doctor with more depth. I’ve seen her do it in other roles. So I have always attributed the character traits she deployed as overcompensating for lack of depth in the writing. But, again … dunno.

And, “Asylum of the Daleks” is one of my all-time favourite episodes!

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@thane16 You make a good point, via your dad, about whether the Flux arc would have been better with more episodes. I think there’s something to be said for that. It all felt a bit rushed, hence the need for lots of exposition to tie everything together. I just find that very unsatisfying. But, the fact that your mom shed a tear (probably more than one) at the end for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor will make me re-evaluate that, and maybe re-watch it.

I did find Yasmin (Yaz) to be the best-developed of the 13th Doctor’s companions. In retrospect, I think it would have been better to have her be the only companion, and develop her that way from the get-go. Whittaker’s Doctor simply had too many companions, leaving none in the trio much room to grow. And then, kicking Graham and Ryan out, only to replace the two of them with Dan, didn’t make much sense to me. (Especially when Dan was rather unceremoniously dropped off, with Graham abruptly showing up out of nowhere.) But that may have been due more to contractual/time issues for the various actors that couldn’t be avoided. There was a lot of clutter that, in the end, didn’t serve the series well.

@janetteb You have explained so much of what I found lacking, and did it far better than I. Some of it, I can’t really articulate. I just know it left me feeling flat. Same with my husband, who I think gave up watching even before you did. He is the longtime Doctor Who fan in our family, and I think he found much of the trashing of Doctor Who lore to be unnecessary. Almost like Chibnall was going to make his mark, just for the sake of making his mark, rather than creating a good story and telling it well.

I also agree with you about Sacha Dhawa as the Master. I never suspended my disbelief with him to the point that I found him to be a worthy adversary. He seemed to be chewing up the scenery in a rather predictable way. And maybe that’s because of the way his Master was written, much closer to John Simm’s Master than Michelle Gomez’s Missy. It was just too over-the-top for my tastes. Again, that seems to go back to the writing.

@dentarthurdent Wishing you a safe outcome from Gabrielle. I watch the WildEarth safariLIVE drives (twice daily live streams), plus the Djuma and Africam fixed streaming webcams, and they have been receiving excessive rainfall this past week. It was good for the waterholes and vegetation (and, as a result, the wildlife), but not good for the villages and towns that are suffering with flooding and landslides. We need water … but not that much, all at once. It saddens me to think of what the people are having to deal with.

And yes, “Eve of the Daleks” was the bottle story set in the storage warehouse. @janetteb you mentioned charm. That episode carried the charm I found missing through most of Chibnall’s tenure. And yet, Chibnall wrote that one. How he could hit all the right notes there, and miss them in so many other episodes, baffles me. It really does.

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@thane16 Son of Puro, welcome back! How good to see you again. I can’t elaborate on what @janetteb wrote, but I admit that I lost hope in Chibnall’s writing. I found myself being set up for something promising, then disappointed in its denouement. The only exception, that I can recall, was the “Eve of the Daleks” New Year’s special, which was a delightful surprise. Humor, suspense and a little timey-wimey … all the things I expect from Doctor Who.

The whole “Timeless Child/Flux” arcs left me feeling little of that. There was far too much exposition, and not enough character development to make me care what happened to the Doctor or her companions. And then, after the 2022 New Year’s special, the last two specials left me feeling underwhelmed. Bottom line, for me: Jodie Whittaker never got her moment as the Doctor. I attribute that to the writing.

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Very cool (possible) interior. Thanks for posting this, @blenkinsopthebrave!

@janetteb I enjoyed your analysis of the various post-gap TARDIS interiors. I liked Eccleston’s/Tennant’s TARDIS. It had the look of a potbelly stove for the central console, and the rest of it was rather mysterious … shadowy, yet glowing.

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@winston I’m so sorry to learn of the death of your big brother. It’s very understandable that you are feeling down. We have such a shared history with our siblings, one like no other. You will heal on your own time … however long you need.

As others have noted, we are at that age when death will be a more constant companion than it once was. Hard to accept, but here we are.

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@blenkinsopthebrave Wow, that trailer is amazing! Gah, if only Doctor Who were not limited to be limited to Disney (in Canada). I just do not want to sign up for another streaming service.

I was a fan of the Doctor/Donna pairing because it went in such a different direction from Rose and Martha, both of whom were on opposite sides of the romance coin. I liked it that the Doctor and Donna were friends, nothing more, and that was established from the get-go. And yet they had a wonderful chemistry built on friendship.

I would love to see RTD fix the decision to erase Donna’s memories, something that gutted me at the time. She had lived such a remarkable life, achieved so much, only to have her memories of that obliterated. I found it heartbreaking.

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@winston Yes, you have been having serious storms in your neck of the woods. Miraculously, we have been spared them here. Once again we seem to have been saved by being on the “warm” side of the Gulf Stream. Sometimes it doesn’t work in our favor (droughts, etc.), but this latest round of storms and the “Polar Vortex” passed us by. (By the way: Where do people come up with these meteorological terms? “Polar Vortex” sounds like something dreadful unleashed upon the world in a Marvel Comics plot. “Atmospheric River” is another new one. Maybe not new to meteorologists, but the media are newly latched onto it. Makes it hard to keep up with what is actually happening in the weather.)

@thane16 and all, Happy New Year! May this one be better than the last. Though it seems like I keep saying that, then feeling we went in the other direction. @winston I too like your New Year’s Resolution, and I will do everything I can to make it mine!

And yes, many thanks to @craig for keeping this place going for us!

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@thane16 Was that Roadkill? I thought it started well, but didn’t quite come together. What became of the investigation into the journalist’s death? Was it an accident, or was she run down deliberately? I guess we’ll never know.

But, if nothing else, it was worth it to see Helen McCrory in her final role. She was magnificent, as always.

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