I am watching Planet of the Daleks.
... is it more fun if you're drunk?
( Read more... )
I'm bored. I'm going to go hang up the laundry.

No it hasn't finished yet. Laundry is still more interesting.


Okay. Laundry is hung up. Bed isn't made yet. Will see if I finish this story first.

( Read more... )
And now it's time for sermon the third. So that's (a) feel the fear and do it anyway (b) ... I've forgotten, it was clearly important... oh, yeah, 'human feelings' and not turning into Daleks, and (c) Don't glamourise war. Don't make it sound thrilling and exciting.

And suddenly it all makes sense! It's like modernism, where it being crap and offputting is on purpose. It was six parts of how boring war really is! With added boredom! Because it's not glam at all.

And yaay Jo, refuse the marriage proposal from the idiot you've just met!
... how often does that happen?

Yep, that's definite mauve rockets there.

And what a surprise, the Daleks come back to their ship. And there's running! And spitting plants! And... why do they even bother?

And Jo wants to go home.


The End

Yaaay!

The good thing about Planet of the Daleks is: It's in a box set with Frontier in Space.

Also it has color.

And purple suits.

I tidied all the things for sale into larger boxes, which of course they fill too in defiance of all natural laws, like the anti-TARDIS. Then I went looking for more, which involved crawling under the bed.
... I really really need to vacuum down there. REally. I've heard of dust bunnies, but these were dust civilisations.
... actually I hope they weren't cause I squished them with the antibacterial wipes. Which turned out to be run out or dried up. Useless things.
One vacuum cleaner doesn't suck and the other doesn't do anything at all when I press the on switch. Hopefully the suck problem will be fixed with the new cleaner bag, but I will have to wait for my cleaner to figure out how.

So. Anyway. I did all that while listening to Doctor Who.
I think the main plot wasn't entirely engrossing.

It was okay, it was just we started out with knowing things that the characters then spent a very long time discovering and rediscovering. Unless there was supposed to be some misdirection and my brain is just too well trained and jumped to the correct plot without data. Which I can also believe.
Also they kept on repeating things that I already knew. It's like they expect people to listen to the episodes seperately and not all at once and not have previous episodes memorised. WEird.
;-)

But mostly my distraction was because it wasn't sufficiently about Charley.
This is the last one about Charley. How will they work it all out? That was the only bit I particularly wanted to hear.

And that part was good. Twisty and fully explaining. :-)

But the ending leaves one with a logic problem, a bit like that one with the two doors and one of them always lies. Except we don't know if she always lies. ( Read more... )
It makes sense, it's just you can't collapse it into making one or the other side of sense.

:-)


The only bit that gave me pause about if they'd resolved it really was ( Read more... )

Add that to the rather great last speech Charley made to the Doctor and I think I like the degree of resolution rather a lot.



I'm still missing a whole middle bit of Charley's adventures. I started out with her and 6, and her just meeting 8, and I've been catching up. Now I want to listen to all the rest so I know the whole story.


The other fun thing about the Big Finish stories is they kind of make it impossible to know the whole story. There's going to be more filled in, sometimes in gaps you hadn't previously considered to be gaps. And it's all as close to canon as any of it gets. Playing fanfic with actors. Is win.

So I bought and read the three latest Doctor Who books, one per day.
The Taking of Chelsea 426, Autonomy, and The Krillitane Storm.
... I'm kind of bored.
This is probably just my brain being unhelpful. They seemed like reasonable stories. Had all the right parts and stuff.
... almost all. No companion. The Doctor roaming around being marvelous on his lonesome. Hmmm.
No, I'm pretty sure I'm just not in the mood.
Possibly not in the mood for much of anything lately.
But Doctor Who books are just not exciting.

It is possible, just barely, that there is such a thing as Too Much Doctor Who.
And having been almost mono fanish lately trying to absorb, er, pretty much all 45 years of canon in manageable pieces including the audios, well, I just might have discovered how much is Too Much.

I'm having an ongoing attack of What's It All About Really When You Get Right Down To It Anyway, and apparently it's not all about The Doctor. Who knew?

I don't like the short stories much really. They hardly get started and then they're done.
I also dislike stories that have Mary Shelley just write down something she saw. I've seen a bunch of them. There are other authors that get the same thing written about them, but few I've seen such a variety about. It always hits me as a 'womens can't do thinking stuff up' reaction. Probably not reasonable, but *shrugs*

The one with the comic was mostly made of *facepalm*.
And it didn't help that the download went onto my MP3 player with one section randomly misplaced so I heard the end before the middle.

The one with Fitz was amusing. A bit.

The one with Benny was most amusing when she was summarising things at the start. "*ahem* shook hands" :-)

I like all the bits about "isomorphic symbiosis". TARDIS symbiosis is cool.

And now I have a headache despite the painkillers.

Bit blah really. :-(

There were some neat lines though.

I think I bought the wrong set. I want to listen more 8th Doctor but I've heard all the ones I've got.

You know when you have a thought and it's a perfectly logical thought and once you think it you can't actually unthink it or think of any reason for not thinking it and yet you vaguely wish you hadn't thought it?

The things I googled to research this thought include 'temperature testicles sperm production' and 'Time Lord body temperature'.

... speculations about what Time Lords have in their trousers are not helpful, and yet...

( Read more... )

Brains. Clearly need more better things to do.

I still really like that skull design.
The new CGI effects add a sense of scale. But they're a bit charmless.
Nyssa randomly running around with less clothes on doesn't last very long yet is somehow the most memorable bit. ( Read more... )

It is still easier to take characters seriously if they're not bird brains.

I am trying to watch Mawdryn Undead.
I forgot how much mucking around with the settings this takes before it stops being a stripy mess on my big TV. Why stripy? Like it forgot bits of the picture.
So, anyway, watching.
Tried it without the CGI effects.
... swirly blue green whirly thingy of DOooooOooom!!
... I cannot watch the people because the swirly thing is eating my eyes. Also, looks like a migraine.
So I put the CGI FX on and can watch the story.
That is, until I can no longer ignore the Black Guardian.
I try and watch them be all dramatic and eeeeevil, which is hard enough at the best of times because Actors are Acting real loud.
But.
He has a bird on his head. On his head there is a bird. Bird. Head. Head bird.
I have to pause and LOl.
Previously I have watched it only on mini download vision, where it's more of a splodgy black blur.
On the big TV? Big Bird!
... oh dear, now I'm seeing the Black Guardian wearing a decapitated yellow Big Bird. I'm going to be utterly unable to take this trilogy even a little seriously, aren't I?
:-)
( Read more... )

So that was fun.

:-D

and there's two more! Loves box sets.



The DVD extras have a little new feature that attempts to sort the timeline.
Brigadier, first wife divorced before he was a teacher, mention of Kate and Gordon, Wiki says that's daughter and grandson? Oh from Downtime... I completely forgot I have that! It's in the folder with the Doctor Who unit from university.
The bit that made me stop and LOL is that Mike Yates went into politics in the south, with specific mention of meeting him in Brighton. I know there's lots of politics that happens in Brighton, but that's not the first thing I think of. Huh, Wiki says one of the New Adventures, "Happy Endings", had him end up living with a man. Cool.
So then the Brigadier met Doris again. Whole backstory bit. "We met at a concert at the Royal Pavilion."
And their home together is "Liberty Hall". Aw, cute!
Heh, I think he just mentioned every Big Finish adventure he's been in... including Malebolgia.

So that scoops together all the stuff he's been in that isn't the main Doctor Who series and puts it in an in-character interview on a DVD?
... canon is a complex concept for Doctor Who.

I think it did quite well making it all seem perfectly plausible.

You know that solution at the end of last season that involved *absolutely everyone* phoning the Doctor?
You know how that means now everyone on Earth has his phone number?
... I changed my number just to avoid one man, imagine what he'd have to deal with if the whole planet could prank call him.

So any solution that relies on 'contact the Doctor' gets just a teensy tiny harder.

Also how do timey-wimey messages work?
... at the speed of plot, obviously.



Which fic was it I read after Ghost Machine as had the TARDIS navigate by stars made of screams?
TARDIS arriving at events that would have had a big impact on time, TARDIS can see the big ripples.
Stuff that resolves without the Doctor wouldn't TARDIS bait?



Character stuff is always more interesting than tech stuff.
But tech shapes character.
I'm in the middle of a CJCherryh re-read right now, and the tech that makes babies in tanks and pours tape in their heads shapes character rather direct. But the spaceship stuff with variable travel and communication time and limited resources from fixed supply points makes big differences too. Bujold plays with similar tech, tank babies and fixed point FTL, and comes up with a variety of civilisations from it.

The DW 'verse has so many sorts of tech, and so few limits, it's a bit hard for them to shape anything.



Ooh, phone numbers: Found an article
the number, and almost any number you’ll ever see in a TV drama or hear in a radio drama, is fake.

It’s part of a range of numbers reserved by OfCom (the media and telecommunications regulator) for ‘drama purposes’.

In fact if you ever see 07700 followed by a 9 you can be pretty certain it’s a fake number for drama purposes only.

In fact anything from 07700 900000 to 07700 900999 will not work if you try to call it – so if you’re ever out and are asked for your number by someone you don’t want to give it to – you have 1000 to choose from and still have it look like a local number.

I knew TV did fake numbers but hadn't thought what range they use lately.
US is all 555.

I just realised some connections between existing Doctor Who and these new Torchwood eps. Stuff I should have noticed before. ( Read more... )

You know that thing where you've studied and studied and now you have a deadline that's suddenly a week closer than it was when you sat down and decided to devote a week to working on this project and what you basically have is a book full of highlighter and a blank page?
I have that thing. ( Read more... )

Full Circle & State of Decay:
Death by television is sad.
Adric is... well I don't usually hate him all that much, but today my opinion is Adric is a selfish charmless whiny brat who is apparently under the impression he's adorable. *shudders*
Also, Adric is apparently inherently dodgy. Leering older men declaring they'll have him = LOLs. Also *facepalm*
Vampire makeup is cool. Er, for a specialised value of cool. I like the shiny red gold and the big shapes. I'm not subtle.
The urge to write a Buffy xover ... Time Lords is secretly vampire slayers, and it only got mentioned this once? fun though.
Romana is cool. Well, Romana should be cool. Getting mind controlled and being a sacrifice and stuff is less cool.

My head hurts and I feel sick and this has been true for approximately five hours.
On the other hand I have found how to slow my brain down enough for old TV: Have a headache.
Insufficient spare function for homework = perfect brain for slowness of story.

I bought the new three Doctor Who books :-)
I bought all three at once, brought them home, then decided to read them one at a time, with gaps in between for Serious Studyings.
... er, yeah, that worked about as well as usual...

Judgement of the Judoon ( Read more... )

The Slitheen Excursion ( Read more... )

Prisoner of the Daleks ( Read more... )
So this was my favourite of the three, and it goes up there with my fav new series books.

ETA: Also, speaking of intertextual references, one of the characters grew up on Gauda Prime [p47]. Apparently it's a rough planet. :-)


Now I have run out of books again.
Why do they release books in threes anyways? If they put them out in ones with longer intervals I wouldn't have to have my own willpower! I never have willpower! I've ate all the biscuits again even though I knew they'd give me a headache! And I sleeped so late today I didn't go out at all cause everywhere was All Done by the time I had breakfast! Willpower is just not my strong point.

Oh well. There's always more audios.
... there's a theoretical possibility I'll actually listen to all the audios too.
But they keep making them so that's okay.

I'm definitely not looking forward to when they've made all the new 10th Doctor stuff there ever will be. Don't like that idea at all.

that was a very big desert.
you could tell.
although, sadly, there is a certain sameyness about deserts that combines with extensive use of computer FX and leaves me with a pervasive feeling of photoshop no matter what I know really happened.

It isn't helped by the way I felt like the story went 'Look! A desert!' and then sort of hung around there for a while and came home.

I felt like, having seen the trailer, I'd seen the episode, and I don't usually get that feeling.

Admittedly it doesn't help that I've been studying Hamlet this week - the gear change is immense - but I felt this story could have done with a bit more character, and conflict between opposing goals, and tension, and people doing things.

( Read more... )

I may like it more later.

I'm sure if it was somewhere in the middle of a series I'd not mind it at all, think it had some interesting characters, lots of women and black people, shiny monsters, all the good ingredients.

But sitting there on its own it didn't have enough of the character moments I love TV for, the continuing characters, to keep me properly involved.

The Maltese Penguin is Silly.
I approve.

I meant to listen to one part of this and go to sleep.
*looks at clock*
... willpower fail.

I like how this one starts out completely mad and full of stuff that couldn't ever work, and then the Doctor goes around saying how it's completely mad and full of stuff that couldn't ever work, and then by the end it All Makes Sense.
... for values of sense that accept time and space travel via tinfoil.
... this is a very Doctor Who value of sense...

ANYways... Daleks quoting Shakespeare. Win.


The CD says 'Dalek Empire Part Four' down the edge. Presumably that means there's at least three more bits of Dalek Empire. Just when I think I've got the hang of Big Finish story order... *sigh*

That adventure was fun, had much blowing things up, and was very story arc-y.

Now I want to listen to the next one but it's bad enough I'm still awake at 0130.