Comments | strange_complex: Being on top of things

strange_complex

Being on top of things

Jul 09, 2006 21:43

Woot! I have prepared two classes' worth of stuff for the summer school today. That plus the fact that there isn't a class on Wednesday morning means I now don't need to do any more work on it (other than teach the actual classes, natch) until Wednesday itself, when I shall begin preparing Thursday's class. And there are only three classes this ( Read more... )

leeds, purcell, countertenors, interior decor, work, reviews, summer school, academia, concerts, warwick, shopping, oxford, ten, doctor who, moving house, mum

Comments 13

swisstone July 10 2006, 05:59:48 UTC

We saw that production of The Faerie Queen in Brighton, and it was pretty good. I think they rearranged the order of some of the songs.

strange_complex July 10 2006, 09:43:27 UTC

I don't in all honesty know the work as a whole well enough to spot changes in order, but I suppose that, since there isn't a continuous narrative anyway, that's justifiable if it helps to create a better production. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, and will be looking out for more work by the same group.

megamole July 10 2006, 07:34:53 UTC

a countertenor I hadn't heard before called Timothy Travers-Smith, who had a lot of fun playing at being an inmate of a lunatic asylum in drag

That's actually our default setting... the rest is the artifice.

strange_complex July 10 2006, 09:43:59 UTC

*grin*

aletharch July 10 2006, 07:57:27 UTC

I thought the final episode did a good job of tying up hanging threads, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried! I'm looking forward to the next series more, now, with a clean slate to develop Tennant's Doctor on.

I had a fairly hefty lump in my throat, too. That was a brilliant, wrenching ending, although it was classically unsubtle Russell T. Davies to suddenly switch to comedy in the closing seconds. As much as I like Catherine Tate as an actress, I feel it's a little bit of a cheat to have a series-ending cliffhanger that says "Oooh look what famous person we're going to have in the next episode!"

Roll on Christmas!

strange_complex July 10 2006, 09:46:44 UTC

Ack, but I guess it wouldn't quite feel like Doctor Who if there wasn't a cliff-hanger of some kind. And I think it really would have felt cloying if it had just ended with the Doctor wiping away his tears. Instead, we were left assured that life will go on for him - sad in itself, but not sentimentalising.

aletharch July 10 2006, 11:25:43 UTC

Oh, I agree with you: it needed to end on a cliffhanger to shift the mood away from overwhelming grief. But a better cliffhanger would have been, in my opinion, the Black Dalek re-appearing in near-future Earth but being found in a dilapidated state by Adam, who's still grousing about the Doctor leaving him behind. "Don't do anything," says Adam. "I know the Doctor, and I know he'll come and fight you just like he did the other Dalek." "DOC-TOR??? THE DOC-TOR????" croaks the Dalek. "Yeah, he abandoned me here, the scumbag." Adam opens his head up, the Dalek scans his brain, and they realise they have a common enemy.

And then Adam starts repairing it, foreshadowing that he'll become Davros just like we all thought he would.

That's my idea of a successful end-of-series cliffhanger. The one we got was good (especially Tennant's reaction), but it's a near-complete non sequitur if the viewer doesn't know who Catherine Tate is, knowledge which cannot be acquired by watching Who. It's an exophoric reference that kind of breaks the fourth ( ... )

aletharch July 10 2006, 11:26:53 UTC

It is also miserably apparent that I need to practise my html skills.

Thread 10

gillywoo July 10 2006, 12:58:29 UTC

Doctor Who was good this week.