Book update + Doctor Who: The Unicorn and the Wasp

[deaka]

In between assignments I've been reading The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers, originally published in 1928. The detectoring side of it is quite decent, but wow, the casual sexism. I've read a few of Sayer's other novels, but none of those were as bad as this one - possibly because they had fewer female characters. In this

Comments

[gabri_jade]

The chauvinism is to be expected given the time period, but what annoys me is the narrative intent in setting up a female character to appear distrustful and guilty because she's not conforming to societal pressure that she has to be attractive to be valuable. Good thing we have progress in this day and age, huh. *coughs*

I can only sigh at the sad truth of all of this.

Thanks to the help of someone else on my flist, I discovered that Doctor Who does air here, on the Sci-Fi channel. And tonight when I watched something else on that channel, I saw a commercial for a new episode of Doctor Who on May 30. I thought that perhaps I would try to watch it, since several people on my flist adore it so. The difficulty is that when all of you post about it, I read and am completely baffled. Is there a primer anywhere where I might be able to get at least a basic grasp of what this show is about? :p

I think it is not the most practical thing that I'm so often up when you get on. It's nearly 4 AM for me. :p

[archaeologist_d]

I've been a Dr. Who for decades. I must admit that I haven't seen the recent (this season) episodes because I've been so busy but they are on my DVR so I'll be getting to them slowly. Oh, I better watch the one with Agatha Christie. I love her books

[deaka]

It was a good episode, and the writer is quite clearly a Christie fan. There are references to her books scattered throughout - I think I missed half of them, because it's been quite a while since I last read one of her books.

It's amazing how much of a history there is to the show. Kind of boggling to try to take it all in, but at the same time it's pretty interesting to watch a show with such a weight of backstory behind it. Even if half the time the writers themselves don't seem to pay all that much attention to it...

[archaeologist_d]

Yes, the history of the series is amazing. I think I've seen all the episodes up to this year and most of the movies. I really liked the silly one that they did for Comic relief - "Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death" It was brilliant. Unfortunately, it's only on VHS. :(

[lotusflower85]

Donna is fast becoming my favourite companion :D I agree with you that she seems more of a match for the Doctor, which I think is partly owing to the fact that Rose and Martha were quite young and in awe of him, whereas with Donna it is very much a 'mates' vibe, with more of a give and take friendship than what he had with the other two.

I loved the charades - David Tennant and Catherine Tate really play off each other well in those kind of scenes - although they are constantly giving Donna impractical shoes to run in. It's a bit hard to concentrate on the jeopardy when she's jogging along with difficulty in heels :D

[deaka]

Donna is fast becoming my favourite companion :D I agree with you that she seems more of a match for the Doctor, which I think is partly owing to the fact that Rose and Martha were quite young and in awe of him, whereas with Donna it is very much a 'mates' vibe, with more of a give and take friendship than what he had with the other two.

Absolutely, and I might be reading too much into the show, but I think that the Doctor has learned from what happened with Rose and Martha, and is trying to make an effort not to repeat any of that - because both Martha and Rose ended up a bit traumatised, even if it wasn't directly his fault in either case. And then Donna's just... Donna, and is awesome. ;)

I didn't even notice about Donna's shoes, but you're right. You'd think she'd have learned to stick with joggers or something, because they inevitably seem to be running away from or towards something.