But on a more cheerful note, back to regenerations. I was just thinking of the Romana regeneration in old Who. Very silly, but it showed that the rules can be “tweaked” at the whim of the show-runner. A good writer thrives on getting out of narrative dead ends. Innovation is driven by necessity, as shown by the very concept of regeneration in the…[Read more]

@thane16  syzygy    AI ‘knows’ a lot of stuff, but doesn’t actually understand any of it.    Youtube keeps feeding Mrs D videos of ‘divers exploring the Titanic’ and the like (never mind that any diver at 4000m would end up flat) where it’s obvious the AI doesn’t have a clue how a wrench works, for example.  Or the ‘cruise liner in a hurri…[Read more]

@thane16

Female authored ‘speculative’ fiction, even May or LeGuin, does seem to be qualitatively different. How would they have written Bayta Darrel? Better than Isaac I’m sure. Though Issac is himself qualitively different to Samuel Butler say. Then you remember Azimov is as much removed from us as he was from Erewhon.

Scifi I like: Star Trek…[Read more]

@thane16  Thank you for asking.  I had new x-rays and everything is healing properly so that is good news. I also got a new purple cast, yay. It will come off Oct. 20th thank goodness.My arm hurts a bit and the cast is heavy and irritating but”  thems the breaks”.

We did do a few quarts of stewed tomatoes and some pint jars of juice so the mi…[Read more]

@thane16

Thank you!

I did actually copy the entire ‘Editorial’! With my humbly submitted commentary. You know my regrettable opinion of the Beeb. Though I do LIKE the Beeb… but…

I still haven’t tackled more than 10 mins of Apples’ ‘Foundation’. I must sound like a curmudgeon, but this IS a very grown up story. They fatally misjudged the t…[Read more]

@thane16   Thank you for asking. I will admit that I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I was just getting used to having a knee that was never going to be the same, the “new normal” and even talked about getting back on my bike and then…. Well always keep a tidy work area.

The mister is very helpful again. No good meds for home but I…[Read more]

@thane16   I only wish we had a mango yellow phone! Our kitchen was burnt orange and avocado green, appliances and all. Ah the colours of the 70s. My Mom also loved red and black in the living room.

Sorry for taking so long to reply but I broke my arm last Monday and it was my right arm. I am of course right handed so all is harder. It has t…[Read more]

@thane16 @dentarthurdent

instrumental verse…

The Beatles did it with Yer Blues, unintentionally: maybe the engineer failed to plug in the vocal lead for the last verse or something (you can just hear Lennon on the background).

Starless by Crimson has a 3 verse ‘1st movement’. Sonata and through-composed are the two default positions for Crims…[Read more]

@winston Your experience with ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ was similar to mine with ‘Pulse’ (which just happened to incorporate the whole of DSOTM as the second half, although the musical arrangements were different in many places).

In fact I’ve noticed there are many different versions of tracks on the Net, some official, some bootleg from various…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u  @dentarthurdent  @thane16     I was about 14 yrs old when my bestie called me on the phone(avocado green and attached to the wall) to announce the purchase of a new album. I went over to her house where we holed up in the basement bent over her portable record player and heard Dark side of the Moon for the 1st time. The 1st time of h…[Read more]

@thane16 @dentarthurdent

Sorry, made a mess of that last post… half measures really won’t do. But perhaps an in depth discussion of PF belongs here.

Richard Wright was probably the most original of the five core players and wrote off-beat pop songs with Syd Barrett. He tried to continue in the same vein after Syd left but encountered much res…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent @thane16

Floyd! It’s difficult to talk about them without sounding like an obsessive. I really know nothing about their later post Walters incarnation. I know Gilmour was a friend of Jackie Leven, who I greatly admire.

I’m bewildered by their struggles after Syd Barrett ‘imploded.’ There was a huge struggle over what they were go…[Read more]

@thane16   Morricone’s ‘Jill’s Theme’ is haunting, I have it on my MP3 player (sung by Edda dell’Orso, as in the movie).    I also have a version with a theremin taking the ‘sung’ part, and in the mid-upper ranges it sounds eerily like a human voice.

As musical scores go, I thought Murray Gold’s score called ‘The Shepherd’s Boy’ was one of the…[Read more]

@Thane16 @ps1l0v3y0u That beginning, with no music, just a creaky windpump, is very effective. And Morricone’s score, particularly Jill’s Theme which is a haunting piece of music.
I watched it recently and managed to follow all the plot threads (for the first time). Not that it’s complicated, just that Leone leaves the audience to join up the…[Read more]

@nerys    I think Donna is feisty , mouthy ,loud and angry and I love her. She reminds me of one of my sisters, my aunt and my mom , slightly scary and liable to run all over me but there is nobody better to have in your corner when the going gets tough. The Doctor Donna will fight for what is right and for the underdog. I think she is a great c…[Read more]

@thane16

The beginning of Once Upon a Time in The West is astonishing. I still remember the first time I saw it… WHAT???

But it had been brewing since A Few Dollars More. Love Morricone’s scores.

Touch of Evil has another outrageous opening shot. Also the opening sequence of Goodfellas. What shall I watch tonight? Oh dear ain’t got the last…[Read more]

How have I missed this thread and its brilliant observations? Bravo to all for an engaging month-long (and hopefully longer) discussion!

The “resolution” for Donna through her daughter was, as others have noted, clunky. Yet I must admit that I was one of those who was furious with RTD for abandoning Donna without any memory of her adventures wit…[Read more]

@thane16 @dentarthurdent @whohar @winston @nerys

The Doctor Lies

The Soufflé is not the Soufflé, the Soufflé is the Recipe

Planet of Hats here I come

Just Some Bloke??!

Mark Gatiss made a rather downbeat interview recently, rather different to the ‘all is not over shtick’ issuing from the usual armchairs. He points out the BBC’s stance n…[Read more]

@thane16 Hmmm … I thought it was clear from my review that I enjoyed “The Reality War” … but maybe I didn’t express that clearly enough. The only part I disliked was the chunk of exposition we got in the middle, which really slowed down the momentum.

Or maybe you’re reading back to @winston‘s observation that I had been on a journey. That’s…[Read more]

@thane16 I think @miapatrick‘s suggestion about Billie Piper being the Tardis is intriguing. Same as with The Moment. We never really got a satisfying resolution to that. She was there one moment, gone the next (in Billie Piper form, anyway). It could be that another reunion between her and Tennant Doc is an idea that’s percolating.