@nerys @whohar @janetteb

the anniversary is there to keep the show in the eye-line.

it is about Billie/David which was always on the cards, surely?

New Earth has Billie/David possessed by Cassandra. Hmmm. Camp.

it’s one or two fingers yer face for the average online Who presence who doesn’t like women Doctors/RTD/or indeed the entire show.…[Read more]

@whohar Thanks for that clarification!

So, refresh my memory: Was “New Earth” the first episode in David Tennant’s first season as Doctor Who? As I recall, after Christopher Eccleston’s regeneration, Tennant made his first full-length appearance in the Christmas special, and then onward and upward.

@janetteb, I’m with you. I was not overly…[Read more]

@whohar I thought also that the anniversary of the screening of New Earth is hardly celebration worthy so here must be something more going on. I would be very happy if it is an announcement regarding more lost episodes.

I don’t recall New Earth being a particularly good episode but then I was not a fan of most of that series.

cheers

Janette

@whohar Are you referring to these (“The Nightmare Begins” and “Devil’s Planet”), or to two additional lost episodes that have been found?

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/doctor-who-lost-episodes-9.7131796

@whohar  @ps1l0v3y0u  @dentarthurdent    Thank you all for the congratulations and although I had nothing to do with it, I will accept. The wee boy is home now and everyone is settling into their new life. This is my 3rd grandchild but 1st grandson.

With every new grandchild born I get stronger and fight harder to make this world a kinder, cle…[Read more]

@nerys   @whohar

@ps1l0v3y0u Avon was definitely a criminal, and a computer genius – I believe he hacked the Federation banking system of millions of credits. They were all criminals except Blake, who was a dissident.

The Liberator was absolutely *not* a problem. It was a product of advanced alien tech. How many of the spaceships on Doctor Who a…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent @janetteb @whohar

I am thinking ORAC. Don’t remember the others. Future AI will surely be inanity we’ve got used to or think cool for some reason. How long have people been saying ‘ooh no it’s coming for you… SO clever and snarky’ and I say ‘for them maybe’ and ‘why do you think that? Oh you spent a lot of money didn’t you? Cui b…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u Which ‘rubbish’ computer do you mean? Zen, Orac or Slave? Probably the most interesting one was Orac, with the sarcastic temperament. Zen (shades of Hal from 2001) was taciturn. Slave was painfully obsequious.

@whohar @janetteb As for a reboot, I do hope it is a ‘re-imagining’ along the lines of Battlestar Galactica 2. (Which…[Read more]

@whohar And who would play Servalan? That’s key. I’d go with Ruth Wilson (who’d also make a great Doc btw)

Excellent suggestions.

Reading the article I have hopes that if they do get funding etc they will do a good job. It won’t, can’t should not be the same but as you say the reboot of DR Who kept the important elements while giving it a cont…[Read more]

@whohar @dentarthurdent

Female Blake? Cyborg Avon? Canine Servalan??

I definitely recommend Trojan Horse Liberator… actually a Von Neumann machine, with brain wipe reverse isomorphic controls. Your dystopia has nothing on mine.

…. riffing on that, a Galactic ‘Pleuribus’ crisis, even? Canine Servalan develops disturbing (for the Telegraph)…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent @whohar

I must have seen virtually all of B7 in the first run. I remember the everybody dies finale. At the time I assumed, whatever Michael Grade might say, that tv sci fi was going to look a bit rubbish compared with Hollywood. And obviously the writing was pretty consistent and good. Wouldn’t have known who Chris Boucher was…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u @whohar (Delurking suddenly) I’m on the fence about a reboot of Blakes 7. And I say that as a past addict. I used to get dirty looks from my boss when I shot out the door at 4-30, I couldn’t muster the courage to point out it was only on Thursdays and it was so I could get home in time to catch a B7 re-run (first time for me) at 5.30.…[Read more]

@whohar

You get the impression of people jockeying for position… but actually he’s making a general point that money doesn’t necessarily make shows better, and there isn’t as much anyway anymore!

‘Something went wrong.’ Really with Who and from a writing point of view, that’s only true of the season ends. The ratings are another issue, and it’…[Read more]

@thane16 Aaron Copland owes much to Charles Ives. It’s the whole “standing on the shoulders of giants” foundation and progression that is art. Copland’s music (the more programmatic pieces, anyway … not so much the avant garde ones from later in his career) do give a sweeping sense of Americana. Maybe it’s that sense of nostalgia that appeals to…[Read more]

Ooops that was @whohar too. And @ps1l0v3y0u @JanetteB glad you’re spared, this time. The heat wave is impressively awful though.

I remember in the 80s with weeks of heat at C37+ & school letting us out at 11:45 with arvos at friend’s pools or a cheeky sneak into the back of cool movie theatres.

The kettle story is a great one. I had similar exp…[Read more]

@thane16 @nerys @mudlark @whohar @whisht

Much (though far from all) my knowledge of Classical comes via the prism of Prog. Mind you first time I heard Tapiola by Sibelius it was a ‘building a library’ program… basically a Head of David like 1/2 hour wall of sound interspersed with two terribly educated gents asking each other… ‘which one do yo…[Read more]

@PS @whohar

ooh yes, I’m a Brahms fan. And I also like him because he understood the significance of technique (you mentioned this too, Whohar & its application to written structures) & that the pre-Romantic tradition of tight, organised, quite rules-driven composition needed to be understood before moving into an area where breaking rules c…[Read more]

@whohar @thane16

Howard Goodall (of multiple tv theme contributions) presented an interesting program a decade or more ago called ‘The Story of Music’, about the Western Classical Tradition. Not sure if it’s still in circulation.

However, I found I parted company with his narrative after Beethoven. Not because I don’t like Romantic Classic…[Read more]

@mudlark. Good to hear from you but sorry to hear about your friend, (and the health issues. I hope they are all in hand.) Your story about the kettle made me smile. Back in 1983 my friend and I, newly arrived in London, bought a kettle. We had no idea of how to attach the plug. In Australia appliances always came with plugs attached. We were…[Read more]

@whohar (I’ve DMed you too).

honestly, one of the best books on the Romantic style of music (ie 19th century) & its relationship with the social & political climate of its time, is Leon Plantinga’s [Yale] Romantic Music: A History of Musical Style… the chapter on Brahms is revealing. It can be borrowed.

The other is Jan Swafford, Brahms, A B…[Read more]