So my day went out with a bang. I came home to find everyone packing up the Christmas stuff, which is kind of sad that the season has come to another end, but also means that we're moving onto another year. The Queen said to remember that she placed the hooks we got this year in a bag that went with everything else in all the boxes (which is why I write it down here because I will definitely forget in the next 11 months), and those plastic tubs are packed very tight. We are blessed.
We got everything put away in its place without a hitch, and settled into our newly emptied living room for fish fingers and custard and an episode of Doctor Who (Gridlock, this time, in our second pass through the new series) before I had to run off to my weekly rehearsal at church. The day rounded off with the Queen and I making bread before passing out for the night.
Overall, it was a very simple evening, but those are good to have every once in awhile.
Oh, and fish fingers and custard (or rather, fish stick and pudding on this side of the pond) is a bit of an acquired taste and not for everyone. The idea is that you dip the fish sticks in the pudding like it is dipping sauce. If you just said "Ew", you clearly never tried it. It is surprisingly good.
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Doctor Who
I realized I have yet to say anything about the series we've been collectively watching for over a year now. (EDIT: I found I actually posted about it back in January, but hey, I've slept since then. This is a different post than that one.) I introduce it that way, because I remembered watching Doctor Who on PBS Saturday nights when I was younger, and I discovered the 2005 revived series on Netflix, and I talked everyone into sitting down to watch it to see how it would go. I knew nothing about the revival until I found it on Netflix. I figured if everyone would have a chance of getting into the series, starting with today's version would be it.
Well, the princesses and the Queen completely loved it. We ripped through the 5 seasons that were on Netflix at the time, watched the DVDs for the first half of series 6, and then watched the second half of series 6 weekly as they came out. But what to do after we had gotten all caught up with the series as it stood? After all, we learned that the 2005 Doctor was the ninth incarnation. I watched Doctors 3-6 when I was growing up.
Well, Doctor Who started in 1963, so the logical conclusion was for me to get ahold of every existing episode of Doctor Who and we started at episode 1. I had not seen most of the first Doctor episodes and none of the second, so I was honestly really looking forward to this. We watched An Unearthly Child last July or August, I believe, and we've been steadily plugging along ever since. Series 7 finally started for Doctor number 11, and we've reached the end of the classic series' season 20 with the fifth Doctor in our other watching. That's right. We've been watching Doctor Who steadily for over a year now, and we've yet to repeat an episode. I'm thoroughly enjoying though, since I saw any of these episodes only once when I was young, so I'm getting a lot more out of them now. Once we finish them all, I'll feel free to watch whichever whenever, but for now, I'm patiently watching with everyone else. I'm really chomping at the bit for Doctors 7 & 8 which I've also never seen.
The plan for our TV series watching is to watch all of Doctor Who all the way through to whichever episode is the most recent so the Queen and Princesses can rewatch the new series (which they like far more than the classic, anyway) in the context of the adventures of the 8 Doctors that came before it. Many of those episodes will take on entirely new meanings when you know what came before. The episode entitled 'Dalek', for example, I noted had a completely different meaning for me than the girls. After all, I knew the Daleks before we started. I knew who they were to the Doctor. I knew how he reacted to them. The girls had never seen a Dalek before (I'm so sorry - don't judge me). To them, this was just another story. So watching that episode, in particular, in the context of 7 Doctors worth of Dalek stories (the 8th Doctor only had one on-screen story, and that did not involve the Daleks) will mean something different. The Master also makes an appearance in the new series, and the girls didn't know him either. Well, they do now.
Anyway, once we finish with Doctor Who in its entirety, we will move on to Star Trek, which they also have not seen. The plan there is to watch 38 specific episodes of the original series, movies 2, 3, 4, and 6 and the all of the Next Generation along with its movies. I never got much into the other series, but they're all on Netflix if the girls feel the need.
I am happy they like Doctor Who so much, though. I enjoyed it thoroughly growing up, and often pretended that our tire gauge was a sonic screwdriver. It looked just like the third and fourth Doctor's version of it. They play Doctor Who with their Barbies. At least one Ken doll is the Doctor and the others play the various companions. Oh, and they love the Daleks. Go figure.
Well, the princesses and the Queen completely loved it. We ripped through the 5 seasons that were on Netflix at the time, watched the DVDs for the first half of series 6, and then watched the second half of series 6 weekly as they came out. But what to do after we had gotten all caught up with the series as it stood? After all, we learned that the 2005 Doctor was the ninth incarnation. I watched Doctors 3-6 when I was growing up.
Well, Doctor Who started in 1963, so the logical conclusion was for me to get ahold of every existing episode of Doctor Who and we started at episode 1. I had not seen most of the first Doctor episodes and none of the second, so I was honestly really looking forward to this. We watched An Unearthly Child last July or August, I believe, and we've been steadily plugging along ever since. Series 7 finally started for Doctor number 11, and we've reached the end of the classic series' season 20 with the fifth Doctor in our other watching. That's right. We've been watching Doctor Who steadily for over a year now, and we've yet to repeat an episode. I'm thoroughly enjoying though, since I saw any of these episodes only once when I was young, so I'm getting a lot more out of them now. Once we finish them all, I'll feel free to watch whichever whenever, but for now, I'm patiently watching with everyone else. I'm really chomping at the bit for Doctors 7 & 8 which I've also never seen.
The plan for our TV series watching is to watch all of Doctor Who all the way through to whichever episode is the most recent so the Queen and Princesses can rewatch the new series (which they like far more than the classic, anyway) in the context of the adventures of the 8 Doctors that came before it. Many of those episodes will take on entirely new meanings when you know what came before. The episode entitled 'Dalek', for example, I noted had a completely different meaning for me than the girls. After all, I knew the Daleks before we started. I knew who they were to the Doctor. I knew how he reacted to them. The girls had never seen a Dalek before (I'm so sorry - don't judge me). To them, this was just another story. So watching that episode, in particular, in the context of 7 Doctors worth of Dalek stories (the 8th Doctor only had one on-screen story, and that did not involve the Daleks) will mean something different. The Master also makes an appearance in the new series, and the girls didn't know him either. Well, they do now.
Anyway, once we finish with Doctor Who in its entirety, we will move on to Star Trek, which they also have not seen. The plan there is to watch 38 specific episodes of the original series, movies 2, 3, 4, and 6 and the all of the Next Generation along with its movies. I never got much into the other series, but they're all on Netflix if the girls feel the need.
I am happy they like Doctor Who so much, though. I enjoyed it thoroughly growing up, and often pretended that our tire gauge was a sonic screwdriver. It looked just like the third and fourth Doctor's version of it. They play Doctor Who with their Barbies. At least one Ken doll is the Doctor and the others play the various companions. Oh, and they love the Daleks. Go figure.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
My Only Problem With The New Doctor Who
I love Doctor Who. I watched the show when I was growing up and fell in love with the concept of the Timelord going about universe in his antiquated time machine called the Tardis. Through reruns on our local station in Oklahoma, I saw most of the fourth doctor twice and everything from the third doctor through the sixth. We also taped most of those onto VHS and rewatched them, so I know a lot of Doctor Who. At the end of the sixth Doctor, OETA stopped running Doctor Who for awhile. I never saw any of the seventh Doctor and I also missed the movie in 1996. In fact, I was completely absent from the Doctor Who scene until last year, when I found the new Doctor Who episodes (from the series revival in 2005) on Netflix and decided to introduce my family to it.
We immediately loved it. We burned through all 5 series along with the specials on Netflix and got the first half of series 6 and watched it all before the second half ran late last year. Once we got through the new series, I took everyone back to the beginning and we've been watching all of the classic episodes beginning with the first Doctor (many of the first and second Doctor episodes I had never seen either). In fact, we only recently reached the classic season 10, which is where my parents' VHS records begin.
The two series are quite different. The original was written as long serial stories, and while they have clever plots and such, many of them move very slowly through the story. The new series keeps the action moving constantly, probably in order to cater to the faster paced MTV generation who can't sit still while the Doctor waxes philosophical. I still enjoy the originals and still find them engrossing in many ways, and the new one, with its superior special effects, speedier pacing, and long story arcs that tie multiple stories together serves the give the original a run for its money while acknowledging it as part of its history.
To put the two series into a sort of perspective on where we are, timewise: we just completed series 6 on the new series. The classic series ran for 26 seasons and the end of the 6th season saw the regeneration of the 2nd Doctor into the third. So while we're going into the 3rd series of the 3rd actor to play the Doctor in the new series, the classic had just started into its 1st season of its 3rd Doctor. Overall, the series is on its 11th Doctor, and the character acknowledges himself as such. This character also acknowledges bow ties and fezes as cool, so you can take that with a grain of salt.
However, there is one point in the new series that the original rarely had a problem with. We're dealing with a time traveler. This is someone who can go anywhere and anytime, and his only (personally imposed) limitation is not to cross his own time stream (though he has had occasion to break this rule). He does also meet other races, such as the Daleks, who also possess the technology to travel through time, and it is with the Daleks, among some other races, that the major breakdown occurs. In the original series, these guys were really the only offenders where the Doctor managed to always meet the Daleks (regardless of when he met them) after his previous adventure with them. While it seems reasonable for this to happen occasionally, you are dealing with meeting a race either before or after you met them before. You meet them multiple times that chances of always coming across them after the last time you met them seems more and more unlikely, yet it always happened that way.
The new series takes this one fault and multiplies it a hundredfold. In the new series, the Doctor has met exactly one character out of order, and that is just their individual plot to do so. EVERYONE ELSE has met the Doctor in his personal chronology, no matter what year he meets them, and there are races he runs into across many different times. But no matter when he meets them, they always know about the last adventure or conversation. This apexed, as it were, when all the Doctor's enemies banded together and in around 100AD (who knows why that date, but ok), they catch him. This means that all of those races would have to have a) possessed time travel and b) communicated together to meet at the same time and place. These races would have different present times, so having them all communicate and then meet at a time in their far distant pasts seems bizarre.
The point where this idea hit rock bottom was when the Doctor desired to visit Brigadier (ret.) Lethbridge Stewart, who is considered a companion of the third Doctor (along with the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th) despite having never traveled with him in the Tardis. The Doctor calls the place where he is staying and is informed that he died 3 months prior. Granted, actor Nicolas Courtney had actually died a few months prior to this episode, but within the "Whoniverse," the Doctor can simply set the controls back three months and visit his friend prior to his death.
I understand the need for continuity, but the point of bending time would be to create a sort of discontinuity. The one story that makes the most sense in context is River Song's who manages to meet the Doctor completely out of order to the point that he knows her future and she knows his...well, some parts of her know his, depending on which point in her life they meet.
Don't get me wrong, now. I love the show, and I'll keep watching it. Just felt like talking about that one thing.
We immediately loved it. We burned through all 5 series along with the specials on Netflix and got the first half of series 6 and watched it all before the second half ran late last year. Once we got through the new series, I took everyone back to the beginning and we've been watching all of the classic episodes beginning with the first Doctor (many of the first and second Doctor episodes I had never seen either). In fact, we only recently reached the classic season 10, which is where my parents' VHS records begin.
The two series are quite different. The original was written as long serial stories, and while they have clever plots and such, many of them move very slowly through the story. The new series keeps the action moving constantly, probably in order to cater to the faster paced MTV generation who can't sit still while the Doctor waxes philosophical. I still enjoy the originals and still find them engrossing in many ways, and the new one, with its superior special effects, speedier pacing, and long story arcs that tie multiple stories together serves the give the original a run for its money while acknowledging it as part of its history.
To put the two series into a sort of perspective on where we are, timewise: we just completed series 6 on the new series. The classic series ran for 26 seasons and the end of the 6th season saw the regeneration of the 2nd Doctor into the third. So while we're going into the 3rd series of the 3rd actor to play the Doctor in the new series, the classic had just started into its 1st season of its 3rd Doctor. Overall, the series is on its 11th Doctor, and the character acknowledges himself as such. This character also acknowledges bow ties and fezes as cool, so you can take that with a grain of salt.
However, there is one point in the new series that the original rarely had a problem with. We're dealing with a time traveler. This is someone who can go anywhere and anytime, and his only (personally imposed) limitation is not to cross his own time stream (though he has had occasion to break this rule). He does also meet other races, such as the Daleks, who also possess the technology to travel through time, and it is with the Daleks, among some other races, that the major breakdown occurs. In the original series, these guys were really the only offenders where the Doctor managed to always meet the Daleks (regardless of when he met them) after his previous adventure with them. While it seems reasonable for this to happen occasionally, you are dealing with meeting a race either before or after you met them before. You meet them multiple times that chances of always coming across them after the last time you met them seems more and more unlikely, yet it always happened that way.
The new series takes this one fault and multiplies it a hundredfold. In the new series, the Doctor has met exactly one character out of order, and that is just their individual plot to do so. EVERYONE ELSE has met the Doctor in his personal chronology, no matter what year he meets them, and there are races he runs into across many different times. But no matter when he meets them, they always know about the last adventure or conversation. This apexed, as it were, when all the Doctor's enemies banded together and in around 100AD (who knows why that date, but ok), they catch him. This means that all of those races would have to have a) possessed time travel and b) communicated together to meet at the same time and place. These races would have different present times, so having them all communicate and then meet at a time in their far distant pasts seems bizarre.
The point where this idea hit rock bottom was when the Doctor desired to visit Brigadier (ret.) Lethbridge Stewart, who is considered a companion of the third Doctor (along with the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th) despite having never traveled with him in the Tardis. The Doctor calls the place where he is staying and is informed that he died 3 months prior. Granted, actor Nicolas Courtney had actually died a few months prior to this episode, but within the "Whoniverse," the Doctor can simply set the controls back three months and visit his friend prior to his death.
I understand the need for continuity, but the point of bending time would be to create a sort of discontinuity. The one story that makes the most sense in context is River Song's who manages to meet the Doctor completely out of order to the point that he knows her future and she knows his...well, some parts of her know his, depending on which point in her life they meet.
Don't get me wrong, now. I love the show, and I'll keep watching it. Just felt like talking about that one thing.
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