beccaelizabeth's blog

Username:	Password:
Forgot your password?	Remember Me

Nope, still can't sleep. angry.
Spoilers again.
It wasn't a Torchwood story, it was a story that happened partly to Torchwood. ( Read more... )

Three in the morning, must be time for more Torchwood
Children of Earth spoilers, though what I'm talking about is the episode they didn't write.
My writer brain cannot leave this be. It kept worrying at the threads until it found a pattern that fits.
Rewrite time.
( Read more... )

Torchwood is about Jack Harkness, a man with so much life he's giving it away, a man who plunges into love with a man who already betrayed him because he can see the worth in him. He faces down demons and lets them try to drink that down, and it destroys them because it is their antithesis.

Torchwood is about Owen Harper, a man who thought he wanted to die until it actually happened, stripped of all his favourite things yet going around talking suicides into realising they only need one reason to keep living, fighting death with his bare hands and showing everyone you can fight and win. And then, at the end, finding how it can also be alright, if you did good enough.

And Torchwood is about ( Read more... )

Immortality, unaging, and getting people pregnant
So that was actually interesting and full of Facts.

Like: For maximum chance of fertilisation a guy should keep his sperms in working order by ejaculating once every three days. No less. And no more.

... so we have one clue why Jack doesn't have bazillions of mini-Jacks ...

Except that would apply only if Jack's sperm age and die at the usual rate. Old sperm clog up the pipes, apparently. And new ones aren't made fast enough if he's, er, more active. Unless he has super healing that applies in that area.

... so we have to ask, does he age at a uniform rate? Is every cell stuck at a particular point in time? Is every cell ageing really really slowly? Do some processes work faster than others?
... okay, we don't have to ask. In fact it may be saner not to...

But the other interesting thing is that sperm has to age to be able to fertilise. There's this process, capacitation, where they go from being young healthy swimmy sperm to being stripped down ready to deliver, but once they do that they die. So it's like sperm scale ageing. If his cells don't age at all, they can't do that.

... and Highlander Immortals have one explanation there.
Immortal women, not ageing a day, wouldn't have their fertile day. Easy explanation.
Immortal men? Well they keep making some sorts of body fluid, so probably they keep making that. But do they work the same?

And how is DW time-rewindy Immortality working on a cellular level?

... er, you know how in episode 1 the blood flowed back in?
... is blood the only body fluid that does that?
... I kind of wish I hadn't wondered that...

I realise I just spent longer thinking about Jack's sperm than ~~any sane person~~ canon writers would ever bother with, because on TV fertility depends on we-say-so.

And I learned all this from a documentary where they got actors to pretend to be sperm and run up staircases and stuff.

But it was interesting.

(PS my remaining claims to sanity are not very convincing - my first thought about the 3 day rule was to mention it to ask_aboutcoffee for next time ask_captainjack gets broody.)
(*facepalm*)

Am watching The Great Sperm Race on More 4
where they show you the journey of a sperm to an egg by scaling it up to human size.
It is lolarious
"Imagine you were a sperm! It's fun for a man, but what do the sperm feel like!"
... apparently it involves a 200 mile long water slide.
... you know that bit in Bill & Ted where they go on the water slides?
The bit where the sperms was waiting around in the epididymis doing crochet was amusing too.

It's like skience, but kind of stoned.

Oh, and they made the, er, gherkin building grow bigger bigger bigger to be full of sperms.

clearly this is EDUCATIONAL.

More TW CofE
Yes, I know. But 5 eps would usually be 5 weeks of thinkings.

I have thought of an answer to one of my puzzlements. ( Read more... )

Original? Not necessarily of the good.
In fanfic we take the clues and run with them, weave them together, fill them out, explore them thoroughly.
Some shows I watch it seems like they take the clues already given and go 'psych!', throw them out, and give you a new set. Repeatedly. For years.
Things that are awesome plot hooks when we get hold of them are just... ignored in source texts.
Sometimes it's like they want to make OCs that look like who they're already working with.
Some series seem to dislike their nature as episodic fiction. They seem to want to be a series of stand alones with the same actors. Continuity is treated as a bad word.
But that means everything is beginnings, because you throw in a new thing, and another new thing, and another, and never follow through.
Seems like some shows only get to ends when they've decided to get rid of someone, and never really follow through on middles. And often those ends are a self contained story to the point you're not sure it's about the same people.
I think some of the advice about original and TV series that a viewer can jump on and catch up with and not pinning down too much backstory but letting it evolve through the writing can and has been taken too far. You can't let continuity block all your possibilities, but you can't just keep throwing new stuff at the board and hoping it sticks.

The most successful long running TV and radio shows are soaps, depending on continuity that goes back, in some cases, generations.

Do we get that in F&SF? Character development and evolving threads?

... less than I'd like.

Finding my happy place
My head is good again.
And in my head:

Ianto, Owen, purple sheets, and a very big window.

My happy place has a great view.

How about you?

Pssst
TW CoE Spoilers, yet much more fun:
http://ask-aboutcoffee.livejournal.com/36837.html

ETA: Five hours, 39 comment pages when viewed linear flat. *boggles*
And all the players :-)

... I has been friending them as sort of a vote. Askverse>canon.

And yet more Torchwood CoE 5
Spoiler cuts are weird, like having a conversation with both hands over your mouth. ( Read more... )

Plot bunny (of Denial? Not really.)
Torchwood spoilers. and old Doctor Who ones. ( Read more... )

Oddly, I am having trouble sleeping
I am also having trouble with my script. The one I've been working on all summer.
I find right now I need to write about True things. I need to write about how people stand up together and it matters. I need to write about making a difference.
Everything I've written for the last couple of months is about stating the problem, setting up all the bad things. Then later stories go on to fight it. Since my model was Blakes 7 I was having depressed thoughts about how much success they have.
Sod that.
It's useless as a pilot episode anyway. A pilot needs to start as it means to go on. It needs to set the pattern. They need to do the kind of things I intend to have them do every week from then on. How they got into this much trouble in the first place is not the story. I need to show them from the moment they try and get out of it.
I've been working on the wrong episode. For months.
And I'm going to make damn sure that all the good qualities of being human count for something, however much the bad things fight.

Torchwood Children of Earth Day five
There are times spoiler protection just isn't... look, you probably want to be spoiled, okay? ( Read more... )

I'm not buying this on DVD. I doubt I'm watching it again. If I could cancel the Hub ticket I think I would.

Torchwood Children of Earth thus far - SPOILERS first 4 episodes
I rewatched all 4 episodes this afternoon - I'd been planning to all week, get the full experience at once - ( Read more... )

Computer
Spent whole afternoon on phone to tech support
apparently need both new battery and new memory
have no malware, but it spend veryveryverylong figuring that out.

Other computer boots up intermittently and crashes at random.
Needs to go back to shop.

AND MY EMAIL ISN'T WORKING AT ALL. Seriously, the webmail won't give me a window. The other thing won't send out however many times I type my password in.

Mum has my phone and I cannot text anyone.

Comms fail.

Interesting dreams
I dreamed of the Doctor, the Master, and Martha.
Things went horribly wrong and all three regenerated, because the Doctor shared.
When they woke up, two were female, one was male, and you couldn't tell which was who because they were all in those one size orange space suits with the lids off.

There is no combination of that as isn't interestings.

Also, was thinking as I woke up, while the Doctor regenerating into a woman would rule for story structure reasons, it's also an interesting story to have a Time Lord regenerate to the other gender and absolutely not be able to get along with it. As long as it is not the Doctor. Possibly Romana, deciding women is better.

Torchwood: Children of Earth: Day Two
:-D

and also !

and :-D

( Read more... )

Must wait until tomorrow again. :-(
... I'm rapidly sold on this 'five nights a week' bit, even if it did mean me seeing messy fake human insides on Holby City which I usually try to avoid.
Waiting a whole week for the next one? Would not be as fun.
More tomorrow! :-)