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Chris Chiswell may be cool, but he's no Doctor Who! :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdOjF2sYbBI
when fluids get weird
You may have noticed a few changes to the blog this week, most notably the departure of my esteemed co-bloggers who came on board in 2008. Basically, co-blogger Diandra reluctantly informed me this week that she can no longer blog for the cocktail party because she needs to focus more on her p...
This reminds me a lot of the Discovery Institute's "A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism" (perhaps we can get a rebuttal letter signed by over 200 economists named Steve) and a similar letter drafted a few years ago to make it appear as if there was real scientific dissent to the consensus on anthropogenic global warming. Methinks I've seen this theatre before!
The Remarkable Spectacle of the Repeal-and-Replace the Affordable Care Act Crowd...
Andrew Sabl: >Two hundred economists (and nothin’ on): A few days ago, Politico Pulse (can’t find a permalink, but here’s where The Weekly Standard’s blog reprinted the story) published an item saying: >>House Republicans open the health reform repeal debate today with an ace up their sleeves: a ...
Alan Grayson called Poltico "a rag that they use to wrap fish with in his office." (To which I replied "Remind me not to buy fish from Representative Grayson; I like to eat food that's been treated properly.")
Why Friends Don't Let Friends Read the Politico
Tim Fernholz on Mike Allen: >TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect: I was at the same deep-background briefing where Allen had his "mindmeld"... I don't think he's got it right.... Allen references a part of the conversation that concerned the Deficit Commission.... The official believed that th...
though in "Terror of the Autons" the two of them appear to have little prior acquaintance, something which has probably been retconned since
I didn't get that impression. I got more the impression that they hadn't interacted in a while. I believe the Time Lord told the Doctor that "an old acquaintence" (or something like that) was around making trouble. But more importantly, in TotA, the Doctor casually remarked that vanity (or one of those related vices, maybe pride?) was "always the Master's weakness" and likewise the Master casually remarked that "curiosity was always the Doctor's weakness". To me that suggests that they already knew each other pretty well.
Scarcely Bears Thinking About
Doctor Who: The Big Bang Review by Tom Dickinson The Big Bang is one of the most thrilling, most enchanting, and most exciting Doctor Who stories I've ever experienced in any medium. But it's also one of the most deeply flawed, primarily because it gets too bogged down in its own impressive co...
To be fair to Moffat, in the DWC, he did say that he intentionally left The Silence unresolved as that will be the overarching theme for next season.
Get Me To The Church On Time
Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang Review by Frank Collins I'm not sure that experience of working on Spielberg's version of Tin Tin has rubbed off on Moffat that well. The Pandorica Opens more or less amounts to a gene-splicing of the Devil's Tower sequences of Close Encounters an...
Since Amy was able to bring Rory back, bring her family back, bring the Doctor and Tardis back, and essentially bring the whole universe back, how soon before she remembers the Weeping Angels?
The Doctor and Amy's Excellent Adventure
Stuart Ian Burns watches Doctor Who: The Big Bang Raggedy Doctor, raggedy final episode. I’ve been watching lots of productions of Hamlet lately and concurrently reading scraps of literary criticism, volumes of words devoted to whether he’s really mad, she was in on the murder of his Dad and od...
was it an evil killer or a poor, frightened wretch? Even the Doctor didn’t seem to be able to make up his mind
While I can sympathize with your frustration, I actually think that this seeming contradiction worked. Since the creature was (in my estimation) a metaphor for the inner demons that many people with mental illness constantly fight, it was only proper that its true character be mysterious. A savage, remorseless killer which turns out to be blind and scared; an invisible creature which can be seen only by a madman or in the reflection of a mirror that reveals one's true nature; a frightened invalid whom you don't want to hurt, yet are compelled to battle against. It seemed appropriate to me.
A pile of good things and bad things
Vincent and the Doctor Review by Paul Kirkley Vincent and the Doctor. The clue’s in the title. There’s no ambiguity about who gets top billing here - and it’s not the fella with the bow tie and the bandy legs. In the current Doctor Who Magazine, Richard Curtis admits he’s had a Vincent van Go...
KaBh said:
"What I liked about this episode is how Van Gogh's genius was shown to be separate from his madness. Too often, genius is depicted as a product of madness, but I didn't get this here."
I completely agree, though I did find it interesting that the episode seemed to suggest that Vincent's synesthesia was a contributing factor to his genius. What makes this particularly interesting is that I can't find any confiration that Van Gogh actually was a synesthete; perhaps this was Curtis exercising artistic license.
This Week, on a Very Special Doctor Who...
Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor Review by Tom Dickinson Amy's character makes less sense to me every week. By now what little understanding I had of her has been thrown out the window: her arc, to the extent that she had one, was sucked into the crack along with Rory. Amy was originally ru...
Plus, at least it wasn't John Denver's Starry Night.
Did you mean Don McLean's Vincent?
I really liked this episode. It worked on so many levels. And Tony Curran was outstanding!
"Deze review is geboren uit wanhoop. Ik heb bijna mijn eigen oren afgesneden probeert te schrijven. Hier is dan zeven uur van mijn leven ..."
"Hello, and tonight’s Middle Row will concern itself with a single artistic achievement, this week’s Doctor Who, Vincent and the Doctor, which we’ll discuss with Behind The Sofa reviewer Stuart Ian Burns. In it, the timelord as currently played by on television by Matt Smith meets the Dutch imp...
Continuing on Londonjustin's point, I think the metal masks were time and budget saving props. On Confidential, they showed just how painstaking and time consuming it was to the actors with their scaly rubber faces. It would be quite a project to do that for every Silurian soldier. Or they could just give them all metal masks to conceal the human faces underneath.
You Know The Drill
Doctor Who: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood Review by: Neil Perryman It was very clichéd. It was very routine. Running up and down corridors and silly monsters - Chris Chibnall, Open Air, 1986 A common complaint regarding this lacklustre two-parter is that we've seen it all before. Silurians wake u...
Do you know what else The Girl in the Café, Love Actually, and Vincent and the Doctor have in common? Bill Nighy! I have high expectations now. :-)
I have to say that I liked this story despite its many flaws. The way that Amy so quickly changed from somebody who was willing to kill both herself and her unborn child out of grief for Rory, to somebody with at best a subconscious, vague recollection of him really drove home for me that the crack is no mere trifling problem. I'm now convinced that the ending of Amy's Choice was specifically written to provide contrast for when she (almost) completely forgets him at the end of the very next story.
The story probably needed more than two episodes to iron out most of its problems. But then Chibnall would have found a way to introduce new ones. :-)
@mattbrtley
"The scene where Mo and Elliot (who was criminally underused) reject Ambrose for killing Alaya was just rubbish. They'd both been kidnapped and experimented on - why on earth would they adopt the moral high ground with Ambrose?"
Given the kind of behavior that people with Stockholm Syndrome exhibit, I found their reactions to be quite plausible--not just in Whoniverse, but in the real world as well.
Malohkeh Myrka Mystery
Stuart Ian Burns spits Doctor Who: Cold Blood Companion deaths on the television version of Doctor Who are comparatively rare. Adric and Katarina is about the shape of it, and probably Sara Kingdom. In the spin-off Whoniverse it’s a veritable bloodbath, from C’rizz through to Roz Forrester wit...
And here I thought that the Boy Scouts only became an immoral organization after they banned gays and atheists. It seems the seeds for their eventual corruption were planted early (or maybe it's just a coincidence, but for the time being I'm going with Evil Seed).
Scout's honor: Founder of Boy Scouts executed a POW
First Tiger Woods, and now this. Role models are dropping like flies. Lord Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, may have illegally executed a prisoner of war--according to documents sold at auction this week. The papers indicate that Lord Powell, then colonel in the British Army, ordered...
LOL! It's not enough to simply say lies, they have to have through and through dishonest coverage.
Fox News: A totally legitmate news outlet
One fake news show spots another. Jon Stewart catches Sean Hannity's producer trying to pass off footage of Glenn Beck's 70,000 teabagger march as Michelle Bachmann's 10,000 teabagger Superbowl of Freedom: The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cSean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest...
I've played around with the Leggo Turing machine. It's lots of fun.
Your story reminds me of when I was in college and one of my friends was talking about a graduate school he really wanted to attend. When somebody asked him "You applied?"
He responded "No, theoretical."
sex and war and genius
So, the good news is that I turned in the manuscript for The Damn Book last week. The bad news is that I've been pretty much brain dead ever since after months of feverish writing. So instead of blogging this weekend as originally planned, I napped and indulged in DVD marathons. My bad. I ...
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