sundries

[rm]

- Doing work, eating a chicken and cheese tamale, listening to Glenn Miller (yes, really. yes, I'm _that_ nerd. yes, I desperately want to update my swing dance skills now (although I'm not interested in that whole flashy trick thing, in part because I don't want to be the girl and in part because that is not even remotely a fashion in which I'm interested in becoming airborne)). For values of having to do work this would only be better if I could manage it with my feet up on the desk at the same time.

- Things I must do prior to Sicily: get sandals that hide my toes. Remember to pack shoes that aren't sandals for the climbing that fortress thing. Get Euros. Figure out about 800 gluten-related issues. Clean all my fencing gear.

- Watched the beginning of Doctor Who's second season last night.

The Christmas episode was really good in terms of moral issues and wow the new Prime Minister who was so cool so fucked that shit up. I thought the "six words" thing was about as chilling as anything I've ever seen on the show. This Doctor may seem more light-hearted but he also feels a lot more dangerous. That Christmas tree of death was about the stupidest shit I've ever seen though.

Question: Alex. I've seen a ton of fics where he and Jack had something going on briefly at one point. Is that later canon or did a whole bunch of people decide dark hair, good suits and efficiency was somehow Jack's type?

Meanwhile, New Earth upset me despite having the biggest world building hole ever (if these people were grown in vats and then immediately locked in these tanks to have diseases, how the hell did they have language?) Also the Face of Boe thing went nowhere, and if I was watching the episode without the knowledge I already have, I'd be like "what the hell?" and not in a good way. Cat nuns are creepy. And the scene at the end at the party where Cassandra gets told she is beautiful? That was amazing and made me cry. That said, having compassion for Cassandra wasn't really on my list of things to do last night.

- Question of the Day. If it can't kill you is it still a delicacy?. Personally, I think that goes way beyond fish.

Comments

[laufeyette.livejournal.com]

Question: Alex. I've seen a ton of fics where he and Jack had something going on briefly at one point. Is that later cannon or did a whole bunch of people decide dark hair, good suits and efficiency was somehow Jack's type?

I can't think of any connection between Jack and the Alex from Christmas Invasion, but there is another Alex - the head of Torchwood in 1999. Maybe that is who the fics are referring to?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Ah, that would make a lot more sense. I've never been in a TV fandom before. Hell I've never been in a fandom that's so non-linear both in terms of info and when we get info. It's got me spinning in circles.

Oh, Japan . .

[(Anonymous)]

The fugu article was very interesting, but unfortunately all I could think of was the fat that "Matsumura Fishworks" is an old-school Simpsons reference and I was sure part of it had to be a hoax.

Also, yay new Doc!!

I'm almost starting to get irritated with how often the new episodes mention Torchwood in this overly in-jokey "THIS IS OUR SPINOFF THAT GOES ON AT 9/10 CENTRAL HEE HEE" sort of way, but I imagine this is not as much of a problem when you watch the episodes one at a time, instead of in crazy marathon chunks like I do. :)

Re: Oh, Japan . .

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

And apparently, I didn't sign in.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

One of the cat nuns had some kind of throwaway line about how the grown test subject people had somehow psychically picked up language. I agree that it's silly but at least they noticed it and attempted a vague explanation.

MATRON CASP
And speech! How can it even have a vocabulary?

SISTER JATT
Sister Corvin's written a thesis on the migration of sentience. She calls it 'The Echo of Life'. It's well worth a read.

The Face of Boe in that episode doesn't do much. He's just there to set up the fact that he's got a prophecy for the Doctor, which will pay off later.

There's a lot of debate about whether Harriet Jones was right or wrong. I think she's awesome but that she was wrong in that case. There's also a lot of debate about whether the Doctor had the right to interfere. (I think he did, since his interference is almost always related to interspecies disputes, and it would suck if he gave humans special treatment when they did crappy things to other species.)

This Doctor may seem more light-hearted but he also feels a lot more dangerous.

Totally. You hear complains sometimes that he's too fluffy, but I actually think he's darker than Eccleston. He just varies a lot more and goes to extremes in both dark and light directions.

I'll be curious to hear what you think of the next one, "Tooth and Claw." There's a lot of fan debate around it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh, I remember that dialog exchange, but it blew by so fast, I didn't quite get it. I suppose I should give them props for that -- so often they don't even try (Torchwood plot holes: a very long game on the part of the writers or the realization that no one really cares as long as the pretty keeps coming?)

I think Harriet Jones was wrong in that case, BUT, I think as an Earth politician she did what she had to do. She has no reason to trust the Doctor truly, not in a way she can justify to others, and I think its interesting that if she hadn't done what she'd done her citizens would have called her fitness into question, and then by doing what she did, the Doctor made sure that happened anyway. There was no win for her there, and the Doctor's anger aside, I think he was going through the motions of what was necessary as well.

Eccleston's Doctor is a man still in pain. This one feels like a guy with nothing left to lose, which is always a lot more dangerous. Wounded animals are pretty predictable within a certain set of values; this goes beyond that.

[n-decisive.livejournal.com]

I love Glenn Miller.

My take on sushi with potentially lethal fish is that it's the culinary equivalent of Russian roulette.

[dskasak.livejournal.com]

Season Two has "Torchwood" as its theme, so I'm curious to see how you react to future episodes. You've already seen "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit," but there's no real follow-through on those episodes until the current season's "Planet Of The Ood."

Nine seemed to have more outward contempt for humanity and its decisions, which ties nicely into your wounded-animal description of him. While I'm not a creator of fanfic, my own take on Nine is that his own regeneration was due to the Time War. He didn't participate in it; his only-once-seen predecessor, Eight, did. The things that Eight saw and did, such as wiping out his own people, caused enough mental and physical stress that a regeneration was necessary. In the very first episode, "Rose," there's a picture of Nine on the deck of the Titanic, wearing clothing similar to Eight, leading me to believe that he fled the field of battle after transforming, fell to Earth during 1912, then left that to come to present-day London and meet Rose. The italics indicate my own theory, and not established canon.

Ten can be heartless and vindictive and arrogant. The fact that he disguises it with a youthful appearance and pop-culture references makes his actions all that much more jarring and hurtful. I agree that Harriet Jones was set up, but she had to defend her own people, an action that should have made sense to the Doctor, though his petulant comment showed he was upset by either the defiance or lack of deference. Season Three is a bit of a transition for his overall attitude, but I'll stop babbling on that for now.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit" shouldn't be so awesome but TOTALLY is. It's the first thing that made me at all tempted to get into this show, and I think the dialogue in it is just so fine, but largely because Tennant can actually make lines like that work. Because really, they shouldn't.

[iterum.livejournal.com]

Nine SEEMS more dangerously bad-boy on the surface, and I think of his murderous hostility in "Dalek" -- but contrast it with how the Daleks called his bluff re: destroying Earth in "The Parting of the Ways." Despite Ten's considerably stronger affection for humanity, in the same situation, I'm not sure he would have been bluffing.

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

This one feels like a guy with nothing left to lose

Yes. And yes, the six words thing was something I found very chilling, almost like your brain throws on the brakes and says, "What the friggiity-frig? I thought the Doctor was all curls and teeth and happy go lucky?" And of course the downfall of Harriet Jones is a prelude to more bad coming. I really liked her character, I like that she's yet another woman in Who canon that is perfectly capable of making incredibly hard decisions and sticking by them, for better or worse. *And* yes, I also think she was wrong, but what she did was necessary and logical.

re: cat nuns
As an old school Whovian, I really really want the cat nuns to connect to the critters in Survival (the last Old World Doctor episode). I like the nuns, but - yeah. Creepy. Not sure why, but creepy.

There are a lot of holes in this episode, too many for me to say I really truly like it. Are you watching the Doctor Who Confidentials? You don't *need* to, but I'm curious what you think, if you are. (They definitely changed my feelings about Cassandra, for example - in a good way.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

What are the Confidentials?

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

Apparently each episode of the new Who has had a mini documentary kind of thing filmed for it - interviews with the actors, or some are David Tennant's video diaries.

I know Netflix has them.

[awe-struck.livejournal.com]

found this on another post. My daughter is an asperger child. Many blame it on diet. any way, thought you might find this helpful. http://www.triumphdining.com/

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I thought the "six words" thing was about as chilling as anything I've ever seen on the show.

Yes. The stuff of nightmares. (The dream/nightmare aspects of the new DW, as a rule, are one of the reasons I consistently love it even when it's got plot holes the size of Turkmenistan.)

It just occurred to me reading this post that New Earth is a retelling of the LeGuin story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

The story has its fair share of plot discrepancy as well, largely because it's an argument against utilitarianism, so tries to show utilitarianism in its purest form, and I don't think there's really a pure form of utilitarianism: there are a lot of real-life situations in which an action to save a larger group of people may inflict pain on a smaller group by happenstance, but not any I can think of in which the suffering itself will save the larger group of people.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I don't want to spoil, but I'm going to be very interested in what you think of the connections between those six words in Christmas Invasion and the S3 finale...