a new year...
welly welly well...
it's 2006.
what can i say really? i'm not going to recap 2005...there's no point, really. there's a lot i could say, but in the end none of it will be anything more than monday morning quarterbacking and 20/20 hindsight, neither of which will do anything constructive.
so here i am once more...
christmas was decent. i can't complain. new years eve i got out of work early but just, ran out and got some last minute stuff for the soiree we had, and waitied for anthony (work pc tech) and his wife jen to come over, as well as morathi's old co-worker jen. the second jen didn't make it...migrane...but anthony and jen made it, and we hung out, played gamecube games, ate lots of appetizers (cocktain franks in pastry...yum!) and drank lots of vodka spiked punch, screwdrivers, and margarita wine coolers. by 20 minutes to midnight most of us were crashing hard, and anthony (who did not drink) drove jen home. i crashed out not long afterward.
sunday i slept in, and we had coffee and cornbread for brekkies. watched the doctor who lost in time boxed set...3 dvd's of the remaining episodes from 12 stories which were partially destroyed. it was depressing, in that the stories are lost partially, but also fun. lunch was burgers, broken up by having to drive foxfirebitch to the store for notecards. dinner, with foxfirebitch passed out tired, was beef rice-a-roni. yum. finally went to bed around midnight, only to get right back up because i couldn't sleep due to a nasty headache which still lingers. popped some tylenol and played some crystal chronicles, went back to bed around 2 am.
this morning i made pancakes for brekkies, and have been listening to opeth's lamentations dvd rather than watch it.
in 2 weeks i'm going to be taking advantage of borders' buy 3 get 1 free dvd sale and get some more doctor who dvd's...probably the visitation, seeds of death, the leisure hive and either the ark in space or horror at fang rick.
was thinking of getting dream theater tickets for their dvd shoot show at radio city music hall on 1 april 06, but apparently it's sold out. wowsers.
saturday i got a call from home that i'd gotten a package from my friend andy, for whom i've done dozens of cover sets for shows he'd recorded. when i got home, i opened the box, and it was a small binder full of dvd-r discs...the entirety of his recorded shows archive...28 dvd-r filled with shows. insanity. i was very shocked, and touched. lots to enjoy.
and now i'm downloading happy the man live at xm radio, which i shall certainly enjoy.
watched the christmas invasion, the special holiday episode of doctor who that aired on the 25th of december. yes, it was filled with plot holes. yes, there were some serious logic gaps. but it entertained, and i was easily able to put away my critical eye for 60 minutes to enjoy watching it. yes, i watch the older stuff more than i do the newer seasons. but i am not one of those fans who feels the new series has nothing to add tot he show's history, or that it is doctor who in name only. plenty of older serials had serious plot holes. lots of the older serials had serious logic gaps. and there's not a person on the earth that can convince me that doctor who is the pinnacle of scripted television. it's a great, entertaining show that once had pretensions towards being an educational programme (that was the intitial plan...that it'd be an edutainment type trogramme...see the first serial where they go back to the time of the cavemen for an example). but it was the intoduction of some moving pepperpots, and four little sylables, that changed the show, and pop culture. i am speaking of course of EX-TER-MI-NATE and the daleks. if it weren't for them, i'd bet doctor who would have lasted a season, two at the most, and none of us would be the wiser. instead terry nation ensured that the show would live on for 20+ years in its initial configuration...and then again for a movie in 1996 and the new series starting in 2005. without the daleks we'd never have the cybermen of kit pedler (who i prefer to the daleks, to be honest...i love the early cyberman stories, including tomb of the cybermen, which i think rocks hard)...robert holmes' sontarans (who were at their best in the time warriors, their first storyline)...the awesome horror years produced by phillip hinchcliffe (like the brain of morbius, pyramids of mars, et al)...the dark, mysterious final sylvester mccoy season, with awesome stories like battlefield, ghost light, and the curse of fenric...and so much more.
yes, doctor who, even in its more entertainment-based seasons, had lots of historical stuff going on. but...in the end, the show was about entertaining the masses. nothing more, nothing less. it is what it ended up being. and to think otherwise...to think that the new series 1 and now forthcoming series 2, are somehow perverting what the classic series was, is faulty logic at best. the classic series remains. it will always be what it is, and nothing the new series does will change that. i look at 'series one' as the eccleston series is called...and i see one excellent historical in 'the unquiet dead,' which i thought was very well done. i see a great 2 part dalek story in bad wolf/the parting of the ways. i see, in the long game, a story i enjoyed far more than the masses apparently did.
were there shortcomings? absolutely. i think the first new season focused too much on rose. i think it showed a too-ineffectual doctor. i think the return of the autons in the first story was weak and disappointing. i think the character of adam mitchell lacked sufficient developent, and a great chance to develop a future villain was missed. and i think the slitheen were played too much for humour where they could have been the first of a new lot of new doctor who villains to challenge a new doctor. the same may end up being said of the sycorax, sadly...i think they might have had potential. i just hope there's more out there, and that they decide to take vengeance on the planet that destroyed one of their cruisers. imagine something like the dalek invasion of earth with 21st century FX and capabilities, played out over 3 45 minute episodes. such potential...
i see the chance, with season two, to take more risks...to be darker. the audience is being reconstituted. doctor who has shown that there is an audience for something other than and and dec or strictly come dancing or corrie. i understand the temptation to play it safe and maintain the audience, but now, i think, is the time to open things up. tennant is supposedly contracted for at least 26 episodes (2 seasons). take advantage of it. create long story arcs. show today's audience what the old time fans know...that doctor who is one of the most engrossing, story oriented shows ever. wobbly sets be damned.
rant over.
wow.
that was cathartic.
heh.
back to opeth, the pierogis in the oven, and the bottle of vodka.
gods i love long weekends.