Mostly Doctor Who
Well, posted another chapter, more or less, of 'The Ivory Merchants'. I say 'more or less', because it's about half of what I wanted to put into Chapter Five; I'm getting impatient to have those who are going to go, go, and be on their way to meet the Elephants. But there's a lot of talking and setting up to be done first, about half of which I managed to get done and posted, but about half of which is still needing to be actually written. :( So, one more talky chapter before I can get to action. Bother!
In other news, I've been continuing on the Great Doctor Who Catch-up, and am now well into Amy Pond, and not very impressed with the scriptwriters (or overall concept makers? how much say do the scriptwriters actually have?).
I got very fed up with the David Tennant-era Doctor, who thought shouting and brow-beating was the best way to convince any problem at all to go away, and also fed up with the repeated, very transparent, teenaged boy fantasies of simultaneously saving the world and having every woman you meet fall in love with you. Catherine Tate's arrival and heavily stressed refusal to do that made me think I wasn't the only one who had noticed there was a total overdose of the Irresistibleness delusion -- that someone in the management team had said "give us a break,will you?"
But what the scriptwriters did to her in the end was despicable.
Utterly brilliant woman, sacrifices her life to save the universes, and they rip her mind and (newly-found, fragile) self-esteem away and throw her back where they found her. Also it didn't go unnoticed by this reviewer that almost the only other strong woman/woman who doesn't fall at the Doctor's feet, i.e.the admirable Harriet Jones, having had her political career viciously sabotaged in a typical young-male-backstabs-older-female-colleague ploy, some seasons back, was in that finale episode, the only named character who was killed and stayed dead. As I recall (vaguely) that finale ended with congratulations on nobody dying, by which they evidently meant "nobody much" (as well as Harriet, there was a group death of about fifteen unnamed persons). So pah-double-humbug!
And now we have the infantile Amy Pond -- infantile not in the sense of being stupid, but in the sense that the scriptwriters have gone to great pains to present her (though a woman on the verge of marriage) as an infant, first showing her as eight years old, then as wandering the universe in a nightie and slippers, all big eyes and naive wonder, like Alice in Wonderland, with frequent back-trips and references to the eight-years-old scenario, then in another so-help-me nightie, being menaced by pseudo-vampires in Venice.
Okay, okay, the most recent episode I've watched ('Amy's Choice') does deal with these issues to some extent, to the extent of specifically pointing out via the Doctor's alter ego that he is old and cold, uses young women (and all "companions") and then dumps them (yes, Donna Noble), has a pathetically obvious barrage of tricks to appear "lovable" and is ... ewwww... a bit creepy with young-Amy-in-a-nightie. To some extent. But those same scriptwriters have now declared Amy-in-a-nightie to be the most brilliant woman in the universe, the one it's all about. What happened to Donna Noble? I swear that the scriptwriters were saying almost exactly the same thing about her, just a couple of weeks ago. (And I don't think much of the tortured-loner-hero-wanders-the-world-doing-good-with-huge-angst cliche either; spare me! Teenaged-boy fantasies rule.)
Splutter, splutter, splutter, splutter.
On the other hand, having seen these means I can now read cheerfully all those wonderful fics and crossovers which are set in Ninth and Tenth Doctor time, and those are wonderful! Case in point: by intriKate, 'That Blackbird Grief' a story which made me, as crabby and cynical as I am, want to go back and watch all of Doctors Nine and Ten again, and is a wonderful, wonderful story anyway. (Did I say "wonderful" more than once? Will somebody please hand that woman a thesaurus?)
In other news, I've been continuing on the Great Doctor Who Catch-up, and am now well into Amy Pond, and not very impressed with the scriptwriters (or overall concept makers? how much say do the scriptwriters actually have?).
I got very fed up with the David Tennant-era Doctor, who thought shouting and brow-beating was the best way to convince any problem at all to go away, and also fed up with the repeated, very transparent, teenaged boy fantasies of simultaneously saving the world and having every woman you meet fall in love with you. Catherine Tate's arrival and heavily stressed refusal to do that made me think I wasn't the only one who had noticed there was a total overdose of the Irresistibleness delusion -- that someone in the management team had said "give us a break,will you?"
But what the scriptwriters did to her in the end was despicable.
Utterly brilliant woman, sacrifices her life to save the universes, and they rip her mind and (newly-found, fragile) self-esteem away and throw her back where they found her. Also it didn't go unnoticed by this reviewer that almost the only other strong woman/woman who doesn't fall at the Doctor's feet, i.e.the admirable Harriet Jones, having had her political career viciously sabotaged in a typical young-male-backstabs-older-female-colleague ploy, some seasons back, was in that finale episode, the only named character who was killed and stayed dead. As I recall (vaguely) that finale ended with congratulations on nobody dying, by which they evidently meant "nobody much" (as well as Harriet, there was a group death of about fifteen unnamed persons). So pah-double-humbug!
And now we have the infantile Amy Pond -- infantile not in the sense of being stupid, but in the sense that the scriptwriters have gone to great pains to present her (though a woman on the verge of marriage) as an infant, first showing her as eight years old, then as wandering the universe in a nightie and slippers, all big eyes and naive wonder, like Alice in Wonderland, with frequent back-trips and references to the eight-years-old scenario, then in another so-help-me nightie, being menaced by pseudo-vampires in Venice.
Okay, okay, the most recent episode I've watched ('Amy's Choice') does deal with these issues to some extent, to the extent of specifically pointing out via the Doctor's alter ego that he is old and cold, uses young women (and all "companions") and then dumps them (yes, Donna Noble), has a pathetically obvious barrage of tricks to appear "lovable" and is ... ewwww... a bit creepy with young-Amy-in-a-nightie. To some extent. But those same scriptwriters have now declared Amy-in-a-nightie to be the most brilliant woman in the universe, the one it's all about. What happened to Donna Noble? I swear that the scriptwriters were saying almost exactly the same thing about her, just a couple of weeks ago. (And I don't think much of the tortured-loner-hero-wanders-the-world-doing-good-with-huge-angst cliche either; spare me! Teenaged-boy fantasies rule.)
Splutter, splutter, splutter, splutter.
On the other hand, having seen these means I can now read cheerfully all those wonderful fics and crossovers which are set in Ninth and Tenth Doctor time, and those are wonderful! Case in point: by intriKate, 'That Blackbird Grief' a story which made me, as crabby and cynical as I am, want to go back and watch all of Doctors Nine and Ten again, and is a wonderful, wonderful story anyway. (Did I say "wonderful" more than once? Will somebody please hand that woman a thesaurus?)