solarbird

People, it looks like Big Finish have indeed scored Tom Baker. There are going to be new Fourth Doctor adventures as of next year! With Leela as the Companion in the first set of them, and Romana I coming in for the second set!

I told Dara this last night, and watched her eyes get huge and her face light up. She then informed me that we need ALL OF THESE–given that Leela is her favorite Classic Who Companion and all! That set is due out in January 2012, so WOO! Yule present, baby!

So for those of you who like Scarf Doctor, GO TO. Hell, you should check out Big Finish if you haven’t already, because they do excellent work with the other Doctor adventures they offer as well–full cast plays with excellent sound effects and music. They have several productions in particular of stories that had been scripted for the TV show but never got produced, and so they call those “Lost Stories”. Great fun!

• Finally saw The King’s Speech, since spazzkat got it via Netflix. That was a very satisfying film, and I’m not at all surprised that it’s spawned so much fanfic across my various Friends lists and such. Everyone in that film did an amazing job, and I have much increased respect for Mr. Colin Firth now. Also, mad love for the scene where the speech therapist’s wife comes home and discovers the King and Queen in her dining room. :D

• Also, as of today, finally saw Source Code with solarbird. Mad, mad props to mamishka for recommending that! It’s a nice, tight little SF flick, and if you like alternate-reality type plots, try to catch this before it vanishes entirely. If you’re local to Seattle, it’s still playing at the Meridian 16 downtown, and it’s running at the Crest as well.

• I have finally found a way I might actually read more comic books: the Dark Horse comics app for the iPad. I installed this on the grounds that a couple weekends back, Dark Horse had a sale of all its digital versions of Serenity and Firefly comics. Since I didn’t have Shepherd’s Tale yet, I thought what the hey, I’d buy ‘em all. The iPad is definitely more suited to digital comics reading than the iPhone, that’s for sure, although the iPhone does actually talk to this app as well.

  Also on the iPad, I have a shiny new app called TunePal, recommended to me by Marilyn, one of the fiddle players who attends the weekly session solarbird and I have been going to. Those of you who know the Shazam app will find the way this works familiar; it basically identifies songs. But in this case, it identifies traditional Irish tunes! You can play them at the app on an actual instrument, or, it’ll identify ‘em if you’re playing them in iTunes as well. Then it goes out and hits up a big ol’ database and yoinks back several guesses as to what it thinks you just played it. It’ll show you sheet music for its guesses, and it’ll play the sheet music for you as well. And, you can add tunes out of the database manually by searching for them as well. You can’t import your own tunes, which is my only complaint about the app, but it’s otherwise very, very cool. Any of my fellow music geeks out there who are interested in trad tunes, you should be checking this out.

• Speaking of the iPhone, my coworker Joe pointed me at my new favorite iPhone game: Tiny Wings. You play a birdie with, of course, tiny tiny wings, and the object of the game is to get the birdie to fly as far as possible by tapping. It’s super-cute and only 99 cents, so check it out.

• FOLKLIFE! Well, that deserves a whole separate post, but I’m noting it here anyway.

• And while I am still technically on book buying hiatus, I’ve picked up a few freebies. And I will unrepentantly, UNREPENTANTLY I TELL YOU, break hiatus wide open to buy seanan_mcguire/Mira Grant’s Deadline this week. Because GIMME. Seriously.

• My friend ravyngyngvar is sending me a Blu-Ray of a-ha’s last concert in Oslo! Thank you, Yngvar!

• I am sorely behind on Doctor Who posts, and will shortly be doing a catchup post. It’s an indicator of how much I’ve not been paying attention to the net lately that I totally missed that BBC America did NOT air the second half of the two-parter on Saturday, to wit, bah. I did not however give enough of a damn about this to actually try to find and download the episode; it’ll air next week as far as I know, and I can wait that long. Especially given that we’re about to have the mid-season hiatus anyway. Just nobody spoil me, mmkay, those of you who’ve already caved and downloaded the ep anyway?

• And because it’s always worth saying, mmmmm blackberries of my marketboys mmmmmm.

Massive, MASSIVE spoilers for seasons 5 and 6 lie beyond the fold. Do not clickie if you are not caught up on Matt Smith’s Doctor episodes!

My theory is this:

River Song is Amy and Rory’s Schroedinger’s baby.

AND she’s the one who shoots the Doctor in this season’s opener.

Which is why she is in PRISON!

I had been suspecting she’s in fact fated to shoot the Doctor ever since she was reluctant to answer his question about who she killed. And the Schroedinger’s baby thing, if she were in fact conceived in the TARDIS, might tie in to River’s obvious comfort with time travel, not to mention seeming to know the TARDIS controls in some ways better than the Doctor does!

I will now accept arguments for and against. As well as more tea. Because zzzzzzz.

Random thoughts and reactions, in no particular order:

Still not a fan of that oversaturated color look.

It occurred to me only after the episode aired that much was made over the whole “bringing Doctor Who to America” thing–and yet, this seems to have meant making this story a “bangy bangy shooty shooty” story and I’m not really sure I approve of that in Doctor Who. I appreciate the attempt to reach out to American audiences, but please, Mr. Moffat, don’t go too far in that direction and lose the feel of story that made us American fans start watching it to begin with.

That said, goddamn River Song is awesome in a firefight. And I’ll be sad if further appearances of an accordingly younger River means she winds up losing some of that edge.

Did anybody else besides me think Amy had a bit of a Scully look going on when she went into the creepy former orphanage along with Canton? And also, CREEPY ORPHANAGE FULL OF SILENTS okay yeah that was creepy, it’s official. Creepy wackjob of a caretaker, too.

Watching the episode on BBC America with commercial interruption makes the whole thing feel a bit disjointed to begin with, but the very nature of this story seemed to aggravate this. More than once through the course of the episode we were all wondering if we missed something. Now, I’m pretty sure we didn’t miss any actual content–at least, I THINK we didn’t miss any, and I really hope that BBC America isn’t sacrificing content anymore to wedge commercials in there–and that the rushed nature of the plot was intentional. But then, it still felt way too rushed to me. And I say this as someone who came into the fandom with the new show to begin with, and who was quite accustomed to the RTD pacing of plots. I really, REALLY hope things get less frenetic as we get into the rest of the season.

I liked Rory’s uncertainty as to whether Amy was calling out for him or the Doctor, but I really hope we don’t make this an ongoing theme. We’ve had Amy have to reassure Rory that it’s actually him she loves a couple times now. A couple times is fine, but let’s not make it an ongoing thing. Let’s let Rory get secure in the love he’s won. He’ll be more awesome a character for it.

Relatedly, though, the conversation between Amy and the Doctor about her apparent pregnancy and then sudden lack thereof–whole lot of intriguing there.

Especially given that crunchy little scene with the little girl apparently REGENERATING WTF?!? at the end. Oh man, the theories that can arise in my brain from that. Toying with the idea that if that was in fact Amy and Rory’s child, did the TARDIS tinker around with her DNA? Did she pop out a baby Time Lord? And what the hell happened that Amy was apparently pregnant and then suddenly not?

Don’t look away from the fold, so you can be sure to remember the spoilers!

First things first, the oversaturation thing–that’s a stylistic decision I’ve been seeing more of lately, and while I’ve been neutral to it so far, I don’t care for it in the context of Doctor Who. I hope this isn’t going to be a hallmark of the season as a whole. I certainly don’t mind Steven Moffat experimenting, because often that way does lie greatness. But in this particular instance, it just makes the cinematography look like it got washed through in Photoshop.

But overall that’s a fairly minor nitpick and not terribly relevant to the important stuff, which is of course the plot.

Moffat really does love him some wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey, and that’s very, very much in play here. Generally I approve of this, although with this episode, there were times I felt Moffat was being a bit too clever for his own good. It didn’t quite ring true for me that Amy and Rory would have such an initially hard time grasping the idea that an older Doctor might have recruited his younger self along with them–because after all, these ARE the same Amy and Rory who went through “The Pandorica Opens” and “The Big Bang” at the tail end of last season, which had much larger ramifications with the entire existence of time and space.

One might argue that Amy in particular was distraught over the shock of seeing the Doctor apparently killed, but still, didn’t quite work for me. Which of course is the other big quibble I have with this storyline–the OHNOEZ THE DOCTOR HAS BEEN SHOT DED scenario. Sure, it’s horrifying to Amy and Rory and River, but c’mon, it ain’t like there’s any actual real danger here that the Doctor is going to be permanently dead. So there’s absolutely no suspense involved, just the question of “okay how are they going to resolve this?”

(I say this fully cognizant that as a 42-year-old woman, I am not the core target audience for this show. Children may well have watched this episode and been quite, quite aghast at the Doctor’s evident death! I’m just sayin’, though, didn’t quite work for me. Made it one of those “Steven, you’re being too clever for your own good” things for my viewing tastes.)

Here’s some of the smaller things that did work for me, though, in no particular order:

• Amy and Rory having some at-home time; it’s apparently been a bit since their last jaunt with the Doctor, and they’ve had a chance to be at-home, normal married-type people. Which is kind of cool, actually, the idea that they can have a bit of time to themselves before their next adventure with the Doctor.
• Relatedly, the Doctor slipping them little secret HIYA! signals in various movies and things. Hee.
• The guards at River’s prison, who apparently have absolutely no idea how to actually keep her there. “She’s doing it again, sir! She’s PACKING!”
• Mark Sheppard’s role in the story, even if he’ll forever be mostly Badger to me, thanks to Firefly! His character was awesome.

And for bigger things, let’s talk River. I am liking these further clarifications of the ongoing relationship between her and the Doctor–although, is this the first time that it’s been specifically called out that they are moving in opposite directions from each other? Previously, I’d had no indication that they weren’t encountering each other in anything but seemingly random order. I kind of like the “opposite directions” idea, even if it does seem a bit too structured for the way the Doctor moves through time. Dramatically, it has a bit more appeal, I suppose. I did like that at this particular encounter they’re both clearly familiar with one another enough to synchronize their diaries. Very nice touch, that.

And oh, the expression on River’s face as she finally fessed up to Rory that she knows a day is coming when the Doctor will have no idea who she is.

All of this of course raises the question that we should eventually start seeing the Doctor encountering significantly younger iterations of River, presumably less competent, more innocent, until he eventually gets to the point where from her perspective, it’s the very first time they’ve met. One wonders how far this arc of theirs will go and whether it will eventually extend into whatever time the Twelth Doctor will have on-camera… or whether it will finish playing out during Eleventh Doctor episodes. It’s an interesting call just because so far, the actress who plays River hasn’t looked particularly different in any of her appearances, and I wonder how much younger they can make her look.

And, of course, we have some new and intriguing aliens! I’m aware of the tie-back to “The Lodger”, but now of course that episode’s got more sinister ramifications after what we’ve seen here. Sinister overall, even, despite the fact that the scene in the ladies’ room in the White House, when the alien attacked the Random Passerby Woman, made me think “OHNOEZ A DEMENTOR!” And despite the fact that “aliens you stop remembering as soon as you look away from them” plays for me mostly as a variation on the theme we’ve seen with the Weeping Angels: i.e., aliens it’s dangerous to look away from. Again, Moffat being a bit too clever for his own good, or perhaps not quite clever enough.

I really did rather like the creepiness of them, though, despite my quibbles. And I’m very curious about the speech the alien gave to Amy about how she must tell the Doctor what he must know and what he must never know. And how this is all going to play into the Silence.

All in all decently entertaining–nothing that’s blowing me away, mostly because of the non-existent shock value of OHNOEZ THE DOCTOR IS DED! My favorite line: “I’m being extremely clever up here and there’s no one standing around looking impressed. What’s the point in having you all?”

Those of you who follow Twitter and Facebook as closely as I do already know this, but for those of you who don’t: the news just broke that Elisabeth Sladen, the actress who played Sarah Jane Smith in the classic Doctor Who series, the new series, and The Sarah Jane Adventures has passed away. And my heart breaks for her to hear that it was, yet again, due to cancer.

As many of you know I came officially into the Doctor Who fandom courtesy of the new show. But I can say with authority that Sarah Jane is one of the first Companions from the classic series that I very, very much liked, and I particularly liked her with Tom Baker in her run of episodes with him. Genesis of the Daleks, shown me by spazzkat in my marathon introduction to classic-series Dalek episodes, stands out for me as a shining example of a classic series episode.

Her appearance with David Tennant in the episode “School Reunion” remains one of my favorites of the new show as well, in no small part due to the scene where she finally is reunited with the Tenth Doctor. But her scenes with Rose as well are gold.

The official Doctor Who site has a confirmation and statements from several Doctor Who luminaries here. And I’m seeing confirmations all over Twitter, notably from Paul Cornell and from the gentlemen of the Doctor Who Podcast. It is a sad, sad day for Doctor Who fandom.

RIP, Sarah Jane. You will be sorely missed.

Talk to me about your favorite Sarah Jane moments, people? Let’s remember her together.

(And for those of you reading this on LJ or DW, I don’t have an exactly mood-appropriate Doctor Who icon, so I’ll have to make do with a Dalek with tea. ‘Cause yeah, I think tea would be good.)

In brief, here’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks:

• Saw and enjoyed both Tron: Legacy and Tangled. Both were quite pretty, and while T: L had less plot than one might have liked, it actually had more plot and emotional weight to it than the first one did. And I say this as a fan of the first one, which I rewatched during this downtime, too! As for Tangled, I liked it more than I expected it would, given my prior fear that it’d screw up my favorite fairy tale. It was Disney by the numbers, but then, Disney does do awfully catchy numbers.
• Did Longest Night with solarbird, in which we did what seems to be becoming my yearly tradition of rewatching The Lord of the Rings. We are sure you’ve noticed by now that the sun did, in fact, come back up.
• Speaking of Solstice, and Christmas by extension, I didn’t really want much loot this year thanks to having gotten the Awesome Guitar of Awesomeness. But a few lovely bits of loot were had nonetheless! Most notably, Dara gave me a really clever little capo that lets you capo individual strings and therefore simulate different tunings. I also got Peter Jackson’s King Kong on Blu-Ray from mamishka, Matt Smith’s just-concluded series of Doctor Who from spazzkat, a B&N ebook card from jennygriffee, a lovely hardbound copy of a Norwegian graphic novel from ravyngyngvar, and the obligatory pile of stocking stuffer candy.
• The Thursday before Christmas, Dara and I went downtown and spent a lovely afternoon at Ummelina, the spa on 4th. We did their two-person Pacific Rim package, and mmmm relaxing. This was redeeming the gift card I got Dara back in April for her birthday, since we’d decided that “while I am on vacation” was an excellent time to do so. After the spa, I did a lightning-quick raid on the marketboys, catching them JUST as they were closing up shop and surprising them by my arrival. They looked pleased to see me! Or at least pleased to sell me literally last-minute raspberries. ;)
• Christmas Day itself was fairly quiet. Dara and I went back downtown for the aforementioned viewing of Tangled, and afterwards had Chinese at a place downtown we hadn’t tried before. We didn’t care for the place much, but they were awfully overworked that night so we couldn’t quite hold it against them. And the food, while mediocre, was revived by Dara later for two more meals’ worth of nomming. So it was a win in the end.
• Have been doing a lot of trying to fill out all the achievements on Plants Vs. Zombies, as well as trying to play through the new levels in Angry Birds. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
• The high point of Christmas Day was definitely the Doctor Who Christmas Special, and big kudos to BBC America for having actually broadcast it in a timely fashion and uncut, as I previously posted!
• Also as previously posted, Dara and I had an almost impromptu totally blottoed viewing of “Spock’s Brain”!
• Also watched a lot of MST3K as I was seriously in the mood. Bought one of the DVD box sets we hadn’t owned before and watched all of those, as well as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (PERFECT followup to “Spock’s Brain”) and Hercules Against the Moon Men via YouTube, streamed over the Blu-Ray player. (Which worked amazingly well, I might add, and way better than playing those same videos over any of the computers in the house would have done. Even given that it’s on the exact same network!)
• Some light reading was done, and way less writing or editing than should have been (read: none to speak of).
• Caught a cold, which was NOT so fun. But really, it didn’t change much of what I was doing anyway, except while I was shaking it off, I was doing the same things with added blankets, Nyquil, and sneezing. George was very, very happy to occupy my lap the whole time regardless.
• And last night, we finished off the year with a lovely visit from Jenny as well as llachglin, kathrynt, and their children, for consumption of homemade pizza, some more boozahol and snacks, and playing of Rock Band 3. Jenny stayed overnight with us so she wouldn’t have to drive all the way back to Issaquah with a bunch of drunk New Year’s Eve partiers out on icy roads, and we got up to have tasty breakfast cooked by Paul. A great way to finish off the old year, and start a new one, indeed.

So yeah. Feeling ready and rested if not tanned, and rather looking forward to getting back into the swing of normal things on Monday. Bring it on, 2011!

If you are a writer, may your muse give you a present of the best possible words for the stories you want to tell.

And if like me you are a fan of Time Lords, may you enjoy the Doctor Who Christmas special airing tonight! Thank you, BBC America, for airing the new special here in the States in a timely fashion–and uncut as well! :D

solarbird and I are going out tonight to see Tangled at Pacific Place and then we’ll be looking for somewhere nice to have Chinese food for dinner! After that, we are totally all over the Doctor Who.

Enjoy your holiday, all!

And suffice to say, yeah, I’m down with the new guy. He’ll do. ;)

I’m always going to miss Tennant, who I daresay will always be My Doctor(TM), but I’m happy to see Matt Smith starting to get his bearings with the role. In the first couple of episodes, it’s the Murkworks consensus that he’s still channeling a bit too much Tennant. When he’s not chanelling Tennant, he’s apparently channeling Two, a.k.a. Shemp Doctor in our house; solarbird and spazzkat, as the original Classic Who fans in the house, are better at picking that out than I am. But I can kind of see it as well. As of the most recent episode, though, there are moments when Smith seems to finally meld both of these influences into something new and therefore his own.

Companion-wise, I like Amy Pond pretty well so far too. Yeah, she’s pretty much still in the mode of clever, beautiful young woman we’ve had established as the Standard Companion with New Who. But on the other hand, she’s starting to show the sorts of cleverness that seem best on display in the episodes Moffat previously wrote. And she’s got the best Companion backstory, hands down, ever.

I think too that the most recent episode, fourth one they’ve aired so far, is the first one to really feel like the season’s truly underway and not just hitting all the usual notes of “okay we’re introducing a new Doctor AND a new Companion and oh hey let’s get the obligatory Dalek episode out of the way”. mamishka and jennygriffee have been joining us for Doctor viewing the last couple of weeks, and I mentioned to everyone that with this week’s episode, one of the things I really enjoyed was the simple fact that the Weeping Angels are the most effective monster that the new show has ever introduced. And this episode? A worthy followup indeed to “Blink”.

Which of course leads me to mentioning River Song. No real surprise that she’s back too since her introduction was also in a Moffat episode–but we were also all in strong, strong agreement that the handling of her return was excellent, and as is very fitting in a show featuring time travel, continuing the delightfully screwed up timeline of meetings between her and the Doctor.

Yeah. I think our favorite Time Lord’s in good hands indeed.

Picked up in print from the Norwescon dealers’ room:

• The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, and The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks. The former is a graphic novel adaptation of a section of the latter. I’d already listened to an audio copy of the latter but didn’t have a print copy, so picking one up was required!
• Dawn of the Dreadfuls, by Steve Hockensmith. This is a prequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, basically setting up how the Bennett sisters became such infamous zombie slayers! Okay, yeah, I couldn’t resist.
• Chicks Dig Time Lords, by assorted folks. This is the essay collection I wanted, billing itself as being all about Doctor Who, by the women who love it. Pretty much required reading for me!
• The Mystery of Grace, by Charles de Lint. Urban fantasy. Because apparently I still need more Charles de Lint in my life!

And, yoinked in ebook form down from Barnes and Noble:

• Dead Matter, by antonstrout. Book 3 of the Simon Canderous series. Urban fantasy.
• Embers, by Laura Bickle. Urban fantasy. Bonus points for the heroine on the cover actually having a head!
• Compromised and Revealed, by Kate Noble. Historical romance. Bought on the strength of the smartbitches review of the forthcoming The Summer of You, and which I will also be buying as soon as B&N has it on their ebook store.
• Master of None, by Sonya Bateman. Urban fantasy. Heard some nice buzz about this one and have to frankly admit that I was drawn to it because the guy on the cover kind of looks like Sawyer on Lost. (Mmm, Sawyer!)
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks. SF/Horror/Humor. Bought in ebook form, and this time NOT as a replacement for the print copy, just because this book is that awesome.

This brings the total for 2010 up to 104. And it’ll be going up to 107 as soon as Barnes and Noble lets me buy jimbutcher‘s Changes, Ann Aguirre’s Hell Fire, and the aforementioned Kate Noble!

And as soon as I buy the brand new Amelia Peabody, A River in the Sky, it’ll be 108. There is, indeed, a new Amelia Peabody. Y’all may remember I have expressed some disappointment in Ms. Peters’ last few efforts, but this one? This involves the Ark of the Covenant. As an Indiana Jones fangirl, I think I’m morally obligated to check this one out. Plus, I did engage in the handy “Get a free sample” B&N ebook feature, and it started out strong enough that okay, yeah, I’ll be buying this too!

Meanwhile, spazzkat, solarbird, mamishka and I did a lovely doubleheader of this week’s Castle and the brand new Eleventh Doctor tonight. Picoreviews: speaking of Indy, as an Indy fangirl, I am now solidly in favor of Nathan Fillion playing Indy if they ever pry the part away from Harrison. He just looked too adorable in the fedora. ;) And, Eleven? Yeah. He’s a keeper. Brand new icons will be required. And I’ll be posting more in depth about the new Doctor tomorrow, I think!