I took my folks and girlfriend to see the new Star Trek movie, Into Darkness, on Saturday evening. It's certainly an enjoyable movie - virtually non-stop action the whole way through - but with some decent twists to keep the audience engaged on a more than visceral level. It was just as full of eye-scorching lens flare as the first, but it felt as though they'd toned down somewhat on the humour.
This new, young Kirk is puzzling. At times, he's as whiny as one of the crew from the TV series Star Trek: Enterprise, and some of his bickering exchanges with Spock made me wonder how he's ever going to become the bold, heroic Kirk of the original Star Trek... but that's kinda the point, I guess: he isn't.
A couple of things struck me in the negative column. First and foremost is the scale of the USS Enterprise. Considering the size of its shuttle bay, and the shuttles within, there's just no way it could accommodate an 'engine room' of the size it seems to have - it would take up the rest of the ship and more. Then, it appears to be positioned between the shuttle bay at the rear and the dish-thing at the front, meaning that people - such as John Harrison in this movie - are paraded through the engine room to get them, for example, to the brig. I'm also a little dubious about a ship like the Enterprise being capable to flying in-atmosphere. Weird enough that Star Fleet's shipyard was on Earth in the first movie, this one has the Enterprise 'hiding' in the ocean right at the start... so, not only does it fly in an alien planet's atmosphere, but it parks itself underwater, then flies itself out again before leaving the atmosphere. Given the construction of the ship, I'd agree with Scottie, that hiding underwater was ridiculous. There's also a massive deus ex machina that cheapens the protagonists' success, and connects this movie to Abrams' original in a way that was unnecessary (given a decent story which, for the most part, this had) and made things far too convenient.
In the plus column (kinda) it's continuing the traditions of Kirk getting the crap kicked out of him at every opportunity, Spock being pretty handy in a fist-fight, and Uhura doing a bit more than connecting phone calls.
Then, in the 'I'm not quite sure' column, it didn't so much reference one of the original Star Trek movies as lift scenes and dialogue, almost verbatim, just switching a few characters around.
On balance, though, I really liked it... It'll be interesting to see if Abrams continues with Trek while also working on Star Wars (wouldn't it be cool to have the series releasing one movie every alternate year? Though that would probably leave Abrams exhausted after a couple of each).
Yesterday, I spent the first half of the day at the MCM London Comic Con (nee The London Expo) at ExCel. It gets bigger each time I go... and yet it's never quite big enough. Attendance was far higher than I'd expected for a Sunday, so the place was almost unbearably crowded at times (despite another hall being opened up as an additional lunch area, people still flooded the main drag), even though there were still more people (Cosplayer, in the main) larking about in front of the ExCeL centre. Supposedly, for future events, they're basically going to occupy the entire centre, with the front and back entrances to the building being the entrances to the show (where you buy tickets or present your pre-booked tickets), and all the halls open from the start. This would put it on a par with Memorabilia, at which I've never had to queue - or wait - for entrance, even when buying tickets on the day.
On the retail front, it was very good... and yet also disappointing. I managed to nab a videogame-related statuette that I've been coveting for years, and one third-party transforming robot toy. Beast Hunters was certainly in evidence (on one stand, anyway), but the prices weren't great (£16 for a deluxe!), and the range was much reduced. Since I expect the toy range to turn up in the shops any day now, I wasn't tempted to get anything that was available there... though my decision may have been different if they'd had the one particular character I was keen to get my hands on.
I also got a bunch of t-shirts and a mug from Genki Gear, and the old friend who'd accompanied me got me an Optimus Prime t-shirt - basically a red t-shirt with a depiction of the Autobot leader's chest - for my birthday.
One thing that's getting rather weird is the cross-pollination between Collectormania, Memorabilia and the MCM Comic Cons, specifically in the 'star guests'. The former was always rather random, including stars from TV, movies, sports... and glamour modelling. This now seems to be bleeding into the MCM Comic Cons. Consider that title - Comic Con - and decide for yourself how appropriate or fitting that is.
Monday 27 May 2013
Saturday 25 May 2013
About Things
Another mostly random stream-of-consciousness post, which could be excruciatingly dull or slightly entertaining... Hmm... Let's see where this goes.
Starting with work... My current assignment ends in about two weeks, and I'm still in two minds about it all. On the one hand, it feels too soon (I keep picturing David Tennant's excruciating "I don't want to go..." from his final Doctor Who appearance (yeah, I know, till the special later this year...) but it's unlikely I'll start spewing out regeneration energy and become a different person on that day. Well, not a physically different person. For a while, at least, I'll be a gentleman of leisure, able to do whatever I want, whenever I want... as long as I have money enough to cover it. Once the novelty of not having to get up for work wears off, I'll likely be hit by a wave of apathy, and I'm not sure how that'll work now that I'm dating. I'm hoping it'll be possible to just put it aside and get on with things, the way it's been when she and I spend a weekend together (certain other blog projects have been far more productive - almost regularly so - while the two of us sit around working on our separate things for a few hours a day).
I'm also hoping that the period of 'rest' will not be indefinite. I've finally heard back from a new agency, recommended to me by a friend. Took almost two weeks, which just ain't impressive, but apparently their clients offer quite stupidly high day rates, which can only be a good thing. If I can get the next job lined up quickly, I'll have less to worry about.
I've had the sense that my current employers really are keen to hang on to me, and that I may have shot myself in the foot somewhat. In pointing out that more of my time is spent on things other than my regular monthly title, it has become less likely that anyone would think to employ a separate body (or me, specifically) to work on these 'other' projects. Hey ho.
There have been lots of discussions about how things are going to work (or, more often, how they're really just not going to work) when the maternity-leaver returns, and it sounds as though a whole new system will be created to take certain company politics into account. Elsewhere, there are discussions about the myriad other ways the situation could be fixed but, naturally, the higher-ups just don't want to know. They're too busy with their knee-jerk reactions.
It's this kind of thing - and the hopeless lack of organisational skills exhibited by some folks in other departments - that leaves me feeling that I'll be glad to get out of there. It'll have been almost a full five months on this run, with only a couple of half-day holidays to deal with the ants in my flat. It's been mostly fun, and I rather like the people I'm working with... but some of their office-inappropriate conversations have been getting on my nerves a little...
Still, it seems that my concerns about being unable to return to office work for an extended period were unfounded.
It occurs to me that I could probably add to my last post about Doctor Who by writing a little bit about this series in general and, perhaps, the finale. It's true to say it's had it's ups and downs. Clara's introductory episode (the proper one, 'The Bells of St John') was a bit random and a bit clichéd... or at least unoriginal. It seemed to be setting up something big, connected to the Christmas special which preceded it. If that's the case, even the series finale didn't really explore it thoroughly... It's almost as if we're in for another two-series arc, like 'The Girl Who Waited'. That's no bad thing, and I'd welcome Richard E. Grant returning as the disembodied villain for a third (fourth?) time... but I am beginning to feel that Moffat is stretching his arcs to the point where they're barely curved, and filling in each series with gradually patchier standalone stories.
They haven't been terrible, though... still nothing to rival the majority of RTD's run and, as always, my major complaint is that they need more time to develop the stories and get the most out of the characters and situations. I honestly think that, at this point in the series, it should switch format so we have two or three stories per year, each of three to five episodes.
That said, certain specific episodes from this series probably wouldn't benefit from such treatment. 'The Rings of Akhaten' harked back to the David Tennant era, not least because of the Doctor's grand oration toward the end, and his 'self-sacrifice' seemed like a direct lift from Torchwood's series 1 finale. 'Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS', meanwhile, was a tight story, that would just have become flabby if it had been extended.
'Cold War', hopefully heralding the return of the Ice Warriors, was similarly tight - not to say claustrophobic - but it might have been interesting to explore the Grand Marshall in a little more detail (perhaps explaining his relationship with the Doctor, since it was clearly intimated they knew each other... was this a reference to Classic Who?), not to mention the terrestrial Cold War politics... and also the vague similarity to The Thing, in that the 'monster' was brought aboard the submarine encased in ice.
'The Crimson Horror' desperately needed another hour or two to fully explore what was happening, from the mysterious Mr. Sweet' to the strange, almost Stepfordesque gated community of Sweetville. There was potential for cliff hangers aplenty, but the single episode format didn't allow for such luxuries.
Neil Gaiman's second episode, 'Nightmare in Silver' could have squeezed in far more tension with another hour, since the newly-upgraded Cybermen didn't really get to do very much... Though I'd imagine they'll return soon enough.
The finale left me a little nonplussed. Certain bits I liked, certain bits didn't make a whole lot of sense. Tying it all in with Classic Who was pretty cute, especially with this being the 50th Anniversary year but, ultimately, it was another finale where Moffat teased a lot, and delivered surprisingly little. One of these days, he's going to have to start properly answering some of the questions he opens up... but I can live with not knowing the Doctor's actual name...
And John Hurt's appearance? Well... I was speechless for all of about three seconds, then said - out loud - "You're shitting me". If the captions are to be believed (and one never knows with Moffat), this is an amazing coup, and I can't wait to see more. Weird thing is, it seems to pin Moffat down and force him into an explanation of something important, though we don't yet know what that important thing is. Some have theorised that it's to do with the Time War that 'destroyed' Gallifrey... but, to me, that seems unlikely since those events, we are given to believe, occurred before Ecclestones' turn as the Doctor... but this is a show about Time Travel, so anything's possible.
In other news, I had a rather bonkers dream last night, which started out in a large, sprawling shopping centre which seemed to have been built in a rather hilly area without first levelling the terrain. The main drag through the shopping centre twisted and turned, went up and down small hills... Reaching the centre point and looking back the way I'd come, it almost looked like the sort of landscape that occurs in the more contemporary Japanese RPGs like the increasingly inaccurately named Final Fantasy series or Xenoblade (particularly the field on Bionis' leg). It appeared that I was there to meet my girlfriend, and I had a rather uncomfortable time trying to separate myself from a guy who'd started talking to me along the way... ending up claiming that I'd walked past where I'd intended to go, just so I could walk the opposite way for a few minutes, thereby getting away from him.
And when I met up with my girlfriend, we were accosted by a comically Italian older gentleman, who claimed to have been under some enchantment which my girlfriend had broken. He believed, therefore, that this was evidence of further fairy tale shenanigens. When my girlfriend started talking about her 'burnt-out wreck' of an ex, it began to seem that I'd been sidelined, and it slowly dawned on me that she was talking about a very recent ex-... like, only ex- for a few moments... as in me.
When I queried this with her, she confessed to feeling that it was over between us - I don't remember the specifics, but it all sounded pretty reasonable - so I hugged her, wished her well... and half-jokingly threatened to do her harm if she ever referred to me as a 'burnt-out wreck' again.
Which brings us to this very weekend... which is pretty busy. Well, comparatively busy. While I'm just going to be doing personal stuff for most of today, I'm taking my girlfriend and folks to see the new Star Trek movie tonight, then going to the London Expo (MCM Comic Con London) with an old mate tomorrow, and probably to a concert on Monday. This could be another of those weekends that actually feels like a proper holiday...
...But we shall see...
Starting with work... My current assignment ends in about two weeks, and I'm still in two minds about it all. On the one hand, it feels too soon (I keep picturing David Tennant's excruciating "I don't want to go..." from his final Doctor Who appearance (yeah, I know, till the special later this year...) but it's unlikely I'll start spewing out regeneration energy and become a different person on that day. Well, not a physically different person. For a while, at least, I'll be a gentleman of leisure, able to do whatever I want, whenever I want... as long as I have money enough to cover it. Once the novelty of not having to get up for work wears off, I'll likely be hit by a wave of apathy, and I'm not sure how that'll work now that I'm dating. I'm hoping it'll be possible to just put it aside and get on with things, the way it's been when she and I spend a weekend together (certain other blog projects have been far more productive - almost regularly so - while the two of us sit around working on our separate things for a few hours a day).
I'm also hoping that the period of 'rest' will not be indefinite. I've finally heard back from a new agency, recommended to me by a friend. Took almost two weeks, which just ain't impressive, but apparently their clients offer quite stupidly high day rates, which can only be a good thing. If I can get the next job lined up quickly, I'll have less to worry about.
I've had the sense that my current employers really are keen to hang on to me, and that I may have shot myself in the foot somewhat. In pointing out that more of my time is spent on things other than my regular monthly title, it has become less likely that anyone would think to employ a separate body (or me, specifically) to work on these 'other' projects. Hey ho.
There have been lots of discussions about how things are going to work (or, more often, how they're really just not going to work) when the maternity-leaver returns, and it sounds as though a whole new system will be created to take certain company politics into account. Elsewhere, there are discussions about the myriad other ways the situation could be fixed but, naturally, the higher-ups just don't want to know. They're too busy with their knee-jerk reactions.
It's this kind of thing - and the hopeless lack of organisational skills exhibited by some folks in other departments - that leaves me feeling that I'll be glad to get out of there. It'll have been almost a full five months on this run, with only a couple of half-day holidays to deal with the ants in my flat. It's been mostly fun, and I rather like the people I'm working with... but some of their office-inappropriate conversations have been getting on my nerves a little...
Still, it seems that my concerns about being unable to return to office work for an extended period were unfounded.
It occurs to me that I could probably add to my last post about Doctor Who by writing a little bit about this series in general and, perhaps, the finale. It's true to say it's had it's ups and downs. Clara's introductory episode (the proper one, 'The Bells of St John') was a bit random and a bit clichéd... or at least unoriginal. It seemed to be setting up something big, connected to the Christmas special which preceded it. If that's the case, even the series finale didn't really explore it thoroughly... It's almost as if we're in for another two-series arc, like 'The Girl Who Waited'. That's no bad thing, and I'd welcome Richard E. Grant returning as the disembodied villain for a third (fourth?) time... but I am beginning to feel that Moffat is stretching his arcs to the point where they're barely curved, and filling in each series with gradually patchier standalone stories.
They haven't been terrible, though... still nothing to rival the majority of RTD's run and, as always, my major complaint is that they need more time to develop the stories and get the most out of the characters and situations. I honestly think that, at this point in the series, it should switch format so we have two or three stories per year, each of three to five episodes.
That said, certain specific episodes from this series probably wouldn't benefit from such treatment. 'The Rings of Akhaten' harked back to the David Tennant era, not least because of the Doctor's grand oration toward the end, and his 'self-sacrifice' seemed like a direct lift from Torchwood's series 1 finale. 'Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS', meanwhile, was a tight story, that would just have become flabby if it had been extended.
'Cold War', hopefully heralding the return of the Ice Warriors, was similarly tight - not to say claustrophobic - but it might have been interesting to explore the Grand Marshall in a little more detail (perhaps explaining his relationship with the Doctor, since it was clearly intimated they knew each other... was this a reference to Classic Who?), not to mention the terrestrial Cold War politics... and also the vague similarity to The Thing, in that the 'monster' was brought aboard the submarine encased in ice.
'The Crimson Horror' desperately needed another hour or two to fully explore what was happening, from the mysterious Mr. Sweet' to the strange, almost Stepfordesque gated community of Sweetville. There was potential for cliff hangers aplenty, but the single episode format didn't allow for such luxuries.
Neil Gaiman's second episode, 'Nightmare in Silver' could have squeezed in far more tension with another hour, since the newly-upgraded Cybermen didn't really get to do very much... Though I'd imagine they'll return soon enough.
The finale left me a little nonplussed. Certain bits I liked, certain bits didn't make a whole lot of sense. Tying it all in with Classic Who was pretty cute, especially with this being the 50th Anniversary year but, ultimately, it was another finale where Moffat teased a lot, and delivered surprisingly little. One of these days, he's going to have to start properly answering some of the questions he opens up... but I can live with not knowing the Doctor's actual name...
And John Hurt's appearance? Well... I was speechless for all of about three seconds, then said - out loud - "You're shitting me". If the captions are to be believed (and one never knows with Moffat), this is an amazing coup, and I can't wait to see more. Weird thing is, it seems to pin Moffat down and force him into an explanation of something important, though we don't yet know what that important thing is. Some have theorised that it's to do with the Time War that 'destroyed' Gallifrey... but, to me, that seems unlikely since those events, we are given to believe, occurred before Ecclestones' turn as the Doctor... but this is a show about Time Travel, so anything's possible.
In other news, I had a rather bonkers dream last night, which started out in a large, sprawling shopping centre which seemed to have been built in a rather hilly area without first levelling the terrain. The main drag through the shopping centre twisted and turned, went up and down small hills... Reaching the centre point and looking back the way I'd come, it almost looked like the sort of landscape that occurs in the more contemporary Japanese RPGs like the increasingly inaccurately named Final Fantasy series or Xenoblade (particularly the field on Bionis' leg). It appeared that I was there to meet my girlfriend, and I had a rather uncomfortable time trying to separate myself from a guy who'd started talking to me along the way... ending up claiming that I'd walked past where I'd intended to go, just so I could walk the opposite way for a few minutes, thereby getting away from him.
And when I met up with my girlfriend, we were accosted by a comically Italian older gentleman, who claimed to have been under some enchantment which my girlfriend had broken. He believed, therefore, that this was evidence of further fairy tale shenanigens. When my girlfriend started talking about her 'burnt-out wreck' of an ex, it began to seem that I'd been sidelined, and it slowly dawned on me that she was talking about a very recent ex-... like, only ex- for a few moments... as in me.
When I queried this with her, she confessed to feeling that it was over between us - I don't remember the specifics, but it all sounded pretty reasonable - so I hugged her, wished her well... and half-jokingly threatened to do her harm if she ever referred to me as a 'burnt-out wreck' again.
Which brings us to this very weekend... which is pretty busy. Well, comparatively busy. While I'm just going to be doing personal stuff for most of today, I'm taking my girlfriend and folks to see the new Star Trek movie tonight, then going to the London Expo (MCM Comic Con London) with an old mate tomorrow, and probably to a concert on Monday. This could be another of those weekends that actually feels like a proper holiday...
...But we shall see...
Wednesday 22 May 2013
The Name of the Showrunner
OK, so you know I'm going to be writing something about last weekend's Doctor Who series finale, 'The Name of the Doctor' - that much is a foregone conclusion - and hopefully it'll be spoiler-free, because no-one likes spoilers, and lots of people dislike references to River Song...
And the reason it should be spoiler-free is that it's not actually about the final episode of the seventh series of this rebooted Who. Yeah. Bet you didn't see that one coming. It is a twist of which Steven Moffat would be proud.
First of all, before I get started, I'd like to direct your attention to an article called 'The Central Problem with Steven Moffat's Doctor Who'. Read that, inwardly digest, and consider the expressed opinion carefully.
Done that? Good. Because it's my opinion that the writer of the article has got it all the wrong way round.
It's true to say that Doctor Who has been many things over the years, and each showrunner has put their own mark on the show. Partly this has been the result of 'political' machinations, behind the scenes at the BBC (viewers have often complained about it being too violent or horrific over the years, so I've found the reboot episodes written by Mark Gatiss especially piquant because he's a huge fan of Horror as a genre and brings an almost Hammer-like flavour to his stories), but mostly it has been the writers' vision of who the Doctor is that has shaped the show. This has been no less true of the RTD and Moffat years.
Russell T. Davies brought the show back, eight years ago, because he was a fan. To him, the Doctor was the centre of the show, the reason for the show. His love of the Doctor is what fuelled every series, eclipsed all other themes, and this was brought sharply into focus when Christopher Ecclestone departed the show and made way for David Tennant.
Over the years, I've posted quite a bit on my feelings toward Tennant's Doctor, and the actor himself. The long and the short of it is that I really didn't like either. To put that in perspective, I didn't dislike David Tennant before his turn as the Doctor. The year before RTD resurrected Doctor Who, he turned up in a brilliantly quirky bit of British TV called Blackpool, in which he played a policeman sent to investigate the dodgy dealings of a local entrepreneur. He showed more dramatic range in that - even when not singing - than he has in almost anything since... But his portrayal of the Doctor could be where it started to go wrong.
That having been said, if it's true, then it's the fault of the writers and directors as much as it is the actor's... and I'm sure I've complained about the quality of writing and directing on the show during the RTD/DT era. The stories frequently didn't make any sense, the Doctor was too heavily idolised and, when you consider the purists' complaints about the change in the nature of the Doctor's relationships with his companions, I cannot fathom how some people believe this started with Moffat (Amy Pond pouncing on him the night before her wedding), when it was clear that the relationship between Tennant's Doctor and Rose Tyler was much more than platonic long before their little chat in Bad Wolf Bay.
Tennant's Doctor was mercurial - that, sure enough, is the nature of the Doctor, and has always been. The problem, for me, was that his range ran from Smarmy through Broody to Shouty, and his Smarmy phases tended to go that little bit too far (let us not forget several references to the Doctor and the Virgin Queen). That's not to say his other phases didn't... but the Smarmy phases just didn't suit the Doctor, and often just weren't appropriate for what RTD always called a kids' show. Part of the issue there is that the show never really was "a kids' show", it just so happened to be a show that kids enjoyed. Also, the disturbing sexual references didn't stop when the Doctor wasn't around - Love & Monsters concluded with a none-too-subtle hint at the goings-on between a man and the paving slab into which his girlfriend was transferred when the Abzorbaloff (a creature created in a Blue Peter competition to create a Doctor Who monster) was defeated.
The RTD/DT era is where Doctor Who got 'sexed up', there can be no question of that. While Captain Jack Harkness, the pansexual, time-travelling conman, was introduced while Ecclestone played the Doctor, the character came into his own alongside Tennant, moreso than in his offshoot series, Torchwood. I don't know about anyone else, but I was rather left with the impression that Rose Tyler became the Doctor's travelling sexual outlet, and it was that more than anything else that coloured his treatment of subsequent companions. Consider how catty things became when Rose met Sarah Jane Smith.
After Rose came Martha Jones, a character with huge potential - a medical doctor herself, here was someone with the smarts to deal with the Doctor at something approaching his own level. Sadly, RTD and the other writers decided that she came along that little bit too soon after Rose's forced departure, and so she was left forever pining - because, obviously, she loved the Doctor... everyone loves the Doctor - while the Doctor kept her at arms length. Some have said that the whole point of the Martha Jones arc was that the Doctor was grieving and didn't really want another companion... and yet he gleefully invited Martha along at the first opportunity. There was something very deliberate in his teasing in the opening episode of the third series.
And the hero worship didn't diminish in the face of the Doctor's palpable scorn. Despite episode after episode of ill treatment and disinterest, Martha ended up 'walking the Earth', spreading the Doctor's legend so that, at a key moment in the Master's plot, the outpouring of positive energy, of belief in that legend of the wonderful man who saves the world, time and time again, and never asks to be thanked, somehow transforms a pint-sized, shrivelled CGI caricature of David Tennant back into the full-sized version, his arms outstretched like some kind of floating Jesus-figure, ready to take on John Simm's pantomimic Master.
Does that remind anyone else of Tinkerbell's death and resurrection in Peter Pan?
But that's not the worst of it... Anyone remember that Easter special that was a thinly veiled rip-off of Pitch Black featuring a London bus and lacking any sense of payoff? Lee Evans played a scientist? The one that got dragged off, repeatedly chanting "I love you!" at the Doctor (Tennant at least had the good grace to look uncomfortable at this). It struck me almost immediately that Evans' character looked - and behaved - remarkably like an interpretation of Russell T. Davies, finally confessing, after however many episodes where no opportunity was missed to remind the audience how "wonderful" the Doctor is, that the show had degenerated into little more than a wank-fest of Doctor-worship. Now consider Tennant's final episode where, having been killed not by the Master, but by one of the many humans who loved him, he travelled space and time burning bridges - not only between the Doctor and his companions, but between RTD and the series he helped bring back to our screens - before the most execrable regeneration scene in the history of the show (and, yes, I'm including that one with Sylvester McCoy in a curly blond wig).
So... 'The Central Problem with Steven Moffat's Doctor Who' is that it's all about the Doctor?
Of course it isn't. If Steven Moffat has a great sin in his running of Doctor Who, it's that he's made it all about the assistants. The Doctor becomes our means of solving their mystery.
Think about it, his first two series were focussed wholly on 'The Girl Who Waited' - literally everything that happened had some connection to Amy Pond, from the crack in her wall and her mysterious disappearing family, to the forging of River Song - Amy's daughter - into a weapon against the Doctor. Next up, we've had Clara Oswald, 'The Impossible Girl', somehow appearing at points in time where she meets and, more importantly, somehow saves the Doctor.
Moffat brought Time Travel to the fore, too - not least in that Christmas special where he was playing the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future to an embittered Scrooge-like figure living with the regret of a love not lost, but in permanent cold storage. Virtually every previous series treated time travel - and the TARDIS - as nothing more than a means of getting from one story to the next. Under Moffat, the TARDIS has become a character in its own right, just as important as the Doctor, despite there being nothing new in the suggestion that, if the TARDIS almost never takes our heroes where they want to go, it always gets them where they need to be.
And the idea that it is Moffat who has been focussing on how the Doctor affects the universe and the people around him is clearly absurd, because that very theme was stated quite openly and clearly (not to mention quite repetitively) in the RTD/DT era. That theme may have been central till the very end of 'The Girl Who Waited' arc, but it's been a core part of Doctor Who since the very beginning - maybe not visibly in the TV show, but certainly in the minds of the fans. The whole responsibility/consequence debate is neatly summarised in a few lines from Tom Baker's Doctor in 'Genesis of the Daleks':
Addendum #1 7/6/13: Also, let us not forget that RTD dealt - very effectively, I thought - with the impact on those left behind when someone goes gallivanting around the universe, in his very first series. As Christopher Ecclestone's Doctor took Rose back and forward in time, to distant worlds and to Victorian Cardiff, we saw Mickey's heartbreak and recovery, a direct and very personal effect the Doctor had on the people around him. Caught up in the adventure, Rose barely realised what was happening to her friends and family and, when she found out, she had become so detached from that life that she found it quite hard to genuinely care.
In my opinion, all of this is probably a reaction to the many, many years of Doctor Who where the time traveller just kept on moving, picking up companions, saving worlds... It's all very well for a sci-fi TV show to carry on this way, but viewers will tend to wonder "what happened next?" or "what would have happened if the Doctor wasn't there", and so stories about the consequences of his actions, or the effect of his death or disappearance have become popular fodder for today's writers, many of whom grew up watching the show.
And the idea that it's a problem for the Doctor to be the absolute centre of his universe is just plain daft... Everyone is the centre of their own universe, we all affect our worlds around us every day, to greater or lesser degrees. The show is called 'Doctor Who', it's always been 'about' the Doctor. In any TV show, the protagonist(s) will be the central character(s), particularly if they are the titular character. Any cutbacks in screentime for characters other than the eponymous hero are more likely due to the requirements of the 45-minute 'American hour' format of the show, when it previously had a full sixty minutes per episode and, often, more than one episode per story.
There are plenty of valid reasons to complain about the Moffat era... though I'd quibble such complaints as 'wafer thin characters' and 'one-dimensional women', because the requirements of the episodic TV format are such that one cannot give each and every character a full backstory. I have discussed at length with my girlfriend that the relationship between Amy Pond and Rory Williams was not skimped, as such, but we only learned what we needed to learn to enable us to extrapolate the rest. In my opinion, the only point on which he failed was when we learned - quite suddenly - that they were going through divorce proceedings. One the one hand, it seemed contrived, something forced to allow a particular plot element to unfold... On the other hand, it was a reasonably able demonstration of a very real and very sad fact that some couples just don't communicate. Rory thought Amy didn't love him as much as he loved her. Amy thought she was shielding Rory from her grief at having lost the only child she would ever have. If Moffat had stated that early on, within the context of the story, its impact would have been lost, so he just had them arguing - arbitrarily, on one level, because that's how some relationships do degenerate - until they finally got to a point where the necessary information exploded out of them.
There's another significant difference between Moffat and RTD's handling of characters. Moffat doesn't feel the need to spoon-feed characterisation to his audience. We're not told who's good and who's bad (Moffat actually seems to prefer working within the grey areas) and, more importantly, we're not told who to like. We get to read between the lines (both as in dialogue and behaviour) and make up our own minds. He doesn't even ask us to like or trust his protagonist.
Davies, meanwhile, often seemed to have little idea of which of his concepts could stand as stories in their own right (most recently demonstrated in Miracle Day, with the historical 'alien parasite plot', the 45 Club and the Soulless getting a few minutes apiece), so episodes often got crammed with so much 'story' that there wasn't a story anymore, just a sequence of character scenes, action set-pieces, and one-liners. Again on the subject of Miracle Day, surely it's more than a little worrying if the writer and star have to introduce each episode, telling the audience how high the stakes are, and how emotionally charged the episode is.
The cleverness of Moffat's Doctor can be a bit grating... sometimes it's almost as if he's playing dumb or not paying attention at the beginning of a story just so the plot can actually happen before he saves the day in the nick of time. Sometimes, with varying degrees of success, this is presented as the Doctor misreading a situation ('Hide' was a rather jarring example of this, with its Silent Hill-style twisted 'monster'-that-wasn't).
Addendum #2 7/6/13: Moffat also doesn't shy away from grandiose displays of emotion that somehow just don't work... Such as the conversation between Amy and Rory, in 'The Angels Take Manhatten', just before they leap from the top of a building to escape the Weeping Angels. There, certainly, a greater exploration of their relationship in the show might have helped... but the show isn't called 'Amy and Rory Pond'.
But, ultimately, my main complaint with Doctor Who under the leadership of Steven Moffat is that the 45-minute 'American hour' format just isn't enough to do any of the stories justice. What started, all those many years ago, as an episodic drama evolved into a show where a single story might span four or five episodes (an entire series in its later years before the reboot). Then some of these 'wafer thin' characters could be fleshed out more than is strictly necessary for the telling of the story, and there wouldn't be such frequent need for deus ex machinae.
But Moffat isn't attempting to turn the Doctor into any kind of god, quasi- or otherwise... if anything, he's trying to demonstrate his flaws and mistakes in ways that Davies occasionally seemed to want to, but never really focussed on to the same degree, perhaps because it would have made his Doctor somewhat less "wonderful". And while the Davies era was stuffed full of tertiary characters who almost invariably loved the Doctor, Moffat's gives us far more who openly express doubts about him. Moffat/Smith's Doctor is mercurial in the same way as many of the earlier regenerations (particularly the version played by Tom Baker, for many the quintessential Doctor). He references his earlier selves in a way that Davies version never did, which brings Moffat's run a sense of consistency that Davies' lacked.
That said, consistency isn't always Moffat's strong point - witness the peculiar behaviour changes in the Weeping Angels... and he actually created them!
I would never describe myself as a Moffat Apologist (I actually detest Sherlock for the most part, but then I grew up with Jeremy Brett's interpretation of Holmes, and feel that no-one will ever compare to him, and that the period setting is important)... I am simply a fan of Science Fiction generally, and specifically a fan of Doctor Who. I started watching it in the Tom Baker years, catching a few reruns of the William Hartnell (snore), Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee years once in a while. I've liked all of them to some degree (though the production values in the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy years took a real nosedive... and I damn near gave up on the reboot during the Tennant years, with Donna Noble almost making up for Rose Tyler and Martha Jones) because I like the show and the ideas it explores. I also rather admire Moffat's 'sleight of hand' because it rewards those who actually pay attention to what they're watching.
Addendum #3 7/6/13: I would also argue that Moffat has gone to great lengths to rein in the 'sexing up' of the show. Sure, there has been some snogging... and it has been unnecessary... but Matt Smith's Doctor has outright stated that he is not interested in his assistant(s) in that way. Tennant's Doctor only became that way with Donna, having been quite curt with his denials with Martha.
Also, on the subject of time travel being the way to escape from escape-proof prisons, I have this to say: Isaac Asimov - 'Gimmicks Three'. (Look it up. It's in a collection called 'Earth Is Room Enough').
And the reason it should be spoiler-free is that it's not actually about the final episode of the seventh series of this rebooted Who. Yeah. Bet you didn't see that one coming. It is a twist of which Steven Moffat would be proud.
First of all, before I get started, I'd like to direct your attention to an article called 'The Central Problem with Steven Moffat's Doctor Who'. Read that, inwardly digest, and consider the expressed opinion carefully.
Done that? Good. Because it's my opinion that the writer of the article has got it all the wrong way round.
It's true to say that Doctor Who has been many things over the years, and each showrunner has put their own mark on the show. Partly this has been the result of 'political' machinations, behind the scenes at the BBC (viewers have often complained about it being too violent or horrific over the years, so I've found the reboot episodes written by Mark Gatiss especially piquant because he's a huge fan of Horror as a genre and brings an almost Hammer-like flavour to his stories), but mostly it has been the writers' vision of who the Doctor is that has shaped the show. This has been no less true of the RTD and Moffat years.
Russell T. Davies brought the show back, eight years ago, because he was a fan. To him, the Doctor was the centre of the show, the reason for the show. His love of the Doctor is what fuelled every series, eclipsed all other themes, and this was brought sharply into focus when Christopher Ecclestone departed the show and made way for David Tennant.
Over the years, I've posted quite a bit on my feelings toward Tennant's Doctor, and the actor himself. The long and the short of it is that I really didn't like either. To put that in perspective, I didn't dislike David Tennant before his turn as the Doctor. The year before RTD resurrected Doctor Who, he turned up in a brilliantly quirky bit of British TV called Blackpool, in which he played a policeman sent to investigate the dodgy dealings of a local entrepreneur. He showed more dramatic range in that - even when not singing - than he has in almost anything since... But his portrayal of the Doctor could be where it started to go wrong.
That having been said, if it's true, then it's the fault of the writers and directors as much as it is the actor's... and I'm sure I've complained about the quality of writing and directing on the show during the RTD/DT era. The stories frequently didn't make any sense, the Doctor was too heavily idolised and, when you consider the purists' complaints about the change in the nature of the Doctor's relationships with his companions, I cannot fathom how some people believe this started with Moffat (Amy Pond pouncing on him the night before her wedding), when it was clear that the relationship between Tennant's Doctor and Rose Tyler was much more than platonic long before their little chat in Bad Wolf Bay.
Tennant's Doctor was mercurial - that, sure enough, is the nature of the Doctor, and has always been. The problem, for me, was that his range ran from Smarmy through Broody to Shouty, and his Smarmy phases tended to go that little bit too far (let us not forget several references to the Doctor and the Virgin Queen). That's not to say his other phases didn't... but the Smarmy phases just didn't suit the Doctor, and often just weren't appropriate for what RTD always called a kids' show. Part of the issue there is that the show never really was "a kids' show", it just so happened to be a show that kids enjoyed. Also, the disturbing sexual references didn't stop when the Doctor wasn't around - Love & Monsters concluded with a none-too-subtle hint at the goings-on between a man and the paving slab into which his girlfriend was transferred when the Abzorbaloff (a creature created in a Blue Peter competition to create a Doctor Who monster) was defeated.
The RTD/DT era is where Doctor Who got 'sexed up', there can be no question of that. While Captain Jack Harkness, the pansexual, time-travelling conman, was introduced while Ecclestone played the Doctor, the character came into his own alongside Tennant, moreso than in his offshoot series, Torchwood. I don't know about anyone else, but I was rather left with the impression that Rose Tyler became the Doctor's travelling sexual outlet, and it was that more than anything else that coloured his treatment of subsequent companions. Consider how catty things became when Rose met Sarah Jane Smith.
After Rose came Martha Jones, a character with huge potential - a medical doctor herself, here was someone with the smarts to deal with the Doctor at something approaching his own level. Sadly, RTD and the other writers decided that she came along that little bit too soon after Rose's forced departure, and so she was left forever pining - because, obviously, she loved the Doctor... everyone loves the Doctor - while the Doctor kept her at arms length. Some have said that the whole point of the Martha Jones arc was that the Doctor was grieving and didn't really want another companion... and yet he gleefully invited Martha along at the first opportunity. There was something very deliberate in his teasing in the opening episode of the third series.
And the hero worship didn't diminish in the face of the Doctor's palpable scorn. Despite episode after episode of ill treatment and disinterest, Martha ended up 'walking the Earth', spreading the Doctor's legend so that, at a key moment in the Master's plot, the outpouring of positive energy, of belief in that legend of the wonderful man who saves the world, time and time again, and never asks to be thanked, somehow transforms a pint-sized, shrivelled CGI caricature of David Tennant back into the full-sized version, his arms outstretched like some kind of floating Jesus-figure, ready to take on John Simm's pantomimic Master.
Does that remind anyone else of Tinkerbell's death and resurrection in Peter Pan?
But that's not the worst of it... Anyone remember that Easter special that was a thinly veiled rip-off of Pitch Black featuring a London bus and lacking any sense of payoff? Lee Evans played a scientist? The one that got dragged off, repeatedly chanting "I love you!" at the Doctor (Tennant at least had the good grace to look uncomfortable at this). It struck me almost immediately that Evans' character looked - and behaved - remarkably like an interpretation of Russell T. Davies, finally confessing, after however many episodes where no opportunity was missed to remind the audience how "wonderful" the Doctor is, that the show had degenerated into little more than a wank-fest of Doctor-worship. Now consider Tennant's final episode where, having been killed not by the Master, but by one of the many humans who loved him, he travelled space and time burning bridges - not only between the Doctor and his companions, but between RTD and the series he helped bring back to our screens - before the most execrable regeneration scene in the history of the show (and, yes, I'm including that one with Sylvester McCoy in a curly blond wig).
So... 'The Central Problem with Steven Moffat's Doctor Who' is that it's all about the Doctor?
Of course it isn't. If Steven Moffat has a great sin in his running of Doctor Who, it's that he's made it all about the assistants. The Doctor becomes our means of solving their mystery.
Think about it, his first two series were focussed wholly on 'The Girl Who Waited' - literally everything that happened had some connection to Amy Pond, from the crack in her wall and her mysterious disappearing family, to the forging of River Song - Amy's daughter - into a weapon against the Doctor. Next up, we've had Clara Oswald, 'The Impossible Girl', somehow appearing at points in time where she meets and, more importantly, somehow saves the Doctor.
Moffat brought Time Travel to the fore, too - not least in that Christmas special where he was playing the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future to an embittered Scrooge-like figure living with the regret of a love not lost, but in permanent cold storage. Virtually every previous series treated time travel - and the TARDIS - as nothing more than a means of getting from one story to the next. Under Moffat, the TARDIS has become a character in its own right, just as important as the Doctor, despite there being nothing new in the suggestion that, if the TARDIS almost never takes our heroes where they want to go, it always gets them where they need to be.
And the idea that it is Moffat who has been focussing on how the Doctor affects the universe and the people around him is clearly absurd, because that very theme was stated quite openly and clearly (not to mention quite repetitively) in the RTD/DT era. That theme may have been central till the very end of 'The Girl Who Waited' arc, but it's been a core part of Doctor Who since the very beginning - maybe not visibly in the TV show, but certainly in the minds of the fans. The whole responsibility/consequence debate is neatly summarised in a few lines from Tom Baker's Doctor in 'Genesis of the Daleks':
"Just touch these two strands together and the Daleks are finished. Have I that right? ...some things could be better with the Daleks. Many future worlds will become allies just because of their fear of the Daleks... the final responsibility is mine, and mine alone. Listen, if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?.. Do I have the right? Simply touch one wire against the other and that's it. The Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word Dalek... But if I kill, wipe out a whole intelligent lifeform, then I become like them. I'd be no better than the Daleks."Likewise, the debate on whether or not his actions over the years have gone too far - refer, if you will, to the rant from Davros in 'Journey's End' (reboot series 4), wherein he very clearly compares the Doctor to himself :
"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun, but this is the truth, Doctor: you take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons... behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor, you made this."...or the Christmas special, 'The Waters of Mars', where he arrogantly decides to rewrite history, thus forcing one of the people he 'saved' to force it back on its original path by killing herself. Even earlier than that, in 'The Fires of Pompeii', where he's persuaded to rescue one family from the volcano, only to later find himself - and/or the TARDIS - represented as some kind of hearth-god.
Addendum #1 7/6/13: Also, let us not forget that RTD dealt - very effectively, I thought - with the impact on those left behind when someone goes gallivanting around the universe, in his very first series. As Christopher Ecclestone's Doctor took Rose back and forward in time, to distant worlds and to Victorian Cardiff, we saw Mickey's heartbreak and recovery, a direct and very personal effect the Doctor had on the people around him. Caught up in the adventure, Rose barely realised what was happening to her friends and family and, when she found out, she had become so detached from that life that she found it quite hard to genuinely care.
And the idea that it's a problem for the Doctor to be the absolute centre of his universe is just plain daft... Everyone is the centre of their own universe, we all affect our worlds around us every day, to greater or lesser degrees. The show is called 'Doctor Who', it's always been 'about' the Doctor. In any TV show, the protagonist(s) will be the central character(s), particularly if they are the titular character. Any cutbacks in screentime for characters other than the eponymous hero are more likely due to the requirements of the 45-minute 'American hour' format of the show, when it previously had a full sixty minutes per episode and, often, more than one episode per story.
There are plenty of valid reasons to complain about the Moffat era... though I'd quibble such complaints as 'wafer thin characters' and 'one-dimensional women', because the requirements of the episodic TV format are such that one cannot give each and every character a full backstory. I have discussed at length with my girlfriend that the relationship between Amy Pond and Rory Williams was not skimped, as such, but we only learned what we needed to learn to enable us to extrapolate the rest. In my opinion, the only point on which he failed was when we learned - quite suddenly - that they were going through divorce proceedings. One the one hand, it seemed contrived, something forced to allow a particular plot element to unfold... On the other hand, it was a reasonably able demonstration of a very real and very sad fact that some couples just don't communicate. Rory thought Amy didn't love him as much as he loved her. Amy thought she was shielding Rory from her grief at having lost the only child she would ever have. If Moffat had stated that early on, within the context of the story, its impact would have been lost, so he just had them arguing - arbitrarily, on one level, because that's how some relationships do degenerate - until they finally got to a point where the necessary information exploded out of them.
There's another significant difference between Moffat and RTD's handling of characters. Moffat doesn't feel the need to spoon-feed characterisation to his audience. We're not told who's good and who's bad (Moffat actually seems to prefer working within the grey areas) and, more importantly, we're not told who to like. We get to read between the lines (both as in dialogue and behaviour) and make up our own minds. He doesn't even ask us to like or trust his protagonist.
Davies, meanwhile, often seemed to have little idea of which of his concepts could stand as stories in their own right (most recently demonstrated in Miracle Day, with the historical 'alien parasite plot', the 45 Club and the Soulless getting a few minutes apiece), so episodes often got crammed with so much 'story' that there wasn't a story anymore, just a sequence of character scenes, action set-pieces, and one-liners. Again on the subject of Miracle Day, surely it's more than a little worrying if the writer and star have to introduce each episode, telling the audience how high the stakes are, and how emotionally charged the episode is.
The cleverness of Moffat's Doctor can be a bit grating... sometimes it's almost as if he's playing dumb or not paying attention at the beginning of a story just so the plot can actually happen before he saves the day in the nick of time. Sometimes, with varying degrees of success, this is presented as the Doctor misreading a situation ('Hide' was a rather jarring example of this, with its Silent Hill-style twisted 'monster'-that-wasn't).
Addendum #2 7/6/13: Moffat also doesn't shy away from grandiose displays of emotion that somehow just don't work... Such as the conversation between Amy and Rory, in 'The Angels Take Manhatten', just before they leap from the top of a building to escape the Weeping Angels. There, certainly, a greater exploration of their relationship in the show might have helped... but the show isn't called 'Amy and Rory Pond'.
But, ultimately, my main complaint with Doctor Who under the leadership of Steven Moffat is that the 45-minute 'American hour' format just isn't enough to do any of the stories justice. What started, all those many years ago, as an episodic drama evolved into a show where a single story might span four or five episodes (an entire series in its later years before the reboot). Then some of these 'wafer thin' characters could be fleshed out more than is strictly necessary for the telling of the story, and there wouldn't be such frequent need for deus ex machinae.
But Moffat isn't attempting to turn the Doctor into any kind of god, quasi- or otherwise... if anything, he's trying to demonstrate his flaws and mistakes in ways that Davies occasionally seemed to want to, but never really focussed on to the same degree, perhaps because it would have made his Doctor somewhat less "wonderful". And while the Davies era was stuffed full of tertiary characters who almost invariably loved the Doctor, Moffat's gives us far more who openly express doubts about him. Moffat/Smith's Doctor is mercurial in the same way as many of the earlier regenerations (particularly the version played by Tom Baker, for many the quintessential Doctor). He references his earlier selves in a way that Davies version never did, which brings Moffat's run a sense of consistency that Davies' lacked.
That said, consistency isn't always Moffat's strong point - witness the peculiar behaviour changes in the Weeping Angels... and he actually created them!
I would never describe myself as a Moffat Apologist (I actually detest Sherlock for the most part, but then I grew up with Jeremy Brett's interpretation of Holmes, and feel that no-one will ever compare to him, and that the period setting is important)... I am simply a fan of Science Fiction generally, and specifically a fan of Doctor Who. I started watching it in the Tom Baker years, catching a few reruns of the William Hartnell (snore), Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee years once in a while. I've liked all of them to some degree (though the production values in the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy years took a real nosedive... and I damn near gave up on the reboot during the Tennant years, with Donna Noble almost making up for Rose Tyler and Martha Jones) because I like the show and the ideas it explores. I also rather admire Moffat's 'sleight of hand' because it rewards those who actually pay attention to what they're watching.
Addendum #3 7/6/13: I would also argue that Moffat has gone to great lengths to rein in the 'sexing up' of the show. Sure, there has been some snogging... and it has been unnecessary... but Matt Smith's Doctor has outright stated that he is not interested in his assistant(s) in that way. Tennant's Doctor only became that way with Donna, having been quite curt with his denials with Martha.
Also, on the subject of time travel being the way to escape from escape-proof prisons, I have this to say: Isaac Asimov - 'Gimmicks Three'. (Look it up. It's in a collection called 'Earth Is Room Enough').
Tuesday 21 May 2013
The Next Hot TV Idea
I confess, one of my guilty TV pleasures is the US 'drama' Body of Proof, starring Dana Delany. It's yet another of those completely ridiculous shows where a civilian (in this case, the Medical Examiner) is like some kind of labcoat-wearing crusader for justice, one wrong move from being a true vigilante in the eyes of the law, and that wrong move is only barely prevented because they're accompanied by police officers when they start investigating the crime themselves.
Which got me thinking... What if Dentists were like TV Medical Examiners?
I mean, think about it... In reality, the ME would never be allowed anywhere near interviews, let alone (grudgingly) allowed to grill the suspect themselves, or throw some important new piece of evidence in their face to break their alibi. They wouldn't accompany detectives on their investigations. They wouldn't be allowed to make sanctimonious judgements about people based on flawed assumptions.
Medical Examiners would end up in prison on charges of perverting the course of justice if they behaved they way they do on television.
So consider the humble dentist, transformed into a dental-scrubs-wearing crusader for oral health, confronting the hapless friend of a patient whose crown had fallen out, and teasing them with details about the consistency of the toffee the patient had been eating, traces of which had been found on the teeth adjoining the crowns, and how that kind of toffee is only made in a particular part of the country... where a certain friend had recently taken a holiday...
...Or how the particular pattern of enamel staining and erosion has been proven to be connected with one specific carbonated beverage, which the patient would never normally drink... but which was found in the friend's refrigerator, and two crumpled cans were found in their kitchen bin that very morning... the morning after the patient was known to have visited...
...Or how the cause of the gum disease was a splinter of wood from a toothpick given to them by their arch nemesis, to remove an embarrassing bit of food just before the patient collected an award both had been up for.
Seriously, it could work. It's no less ridiculous than the kinds of things TV MEs get up to.
House has opened up a world of possibilities... that's all I'm saying.
Weirdly, and on a somewhat maudlin note, this reminds me of an exchange of email I had some years ago, with a friend who is now deceased... We'd each done some kind of career-oriented psychometric profile and compared our results. Mine suggested someone like me might be interesting in becoming a dentist or working in law enforcement (because, y'know, of course). Hers suggested a role as a dental nurse.
"That settles it!" I enthused. "I shall become the world's first Crusading Dentist, and you shall be my assistant!"
Which got me thinking... What if Dentists were like TV Medical Examiners?
I mean, think about it... In reality, the ME would never be allowed anywhere near interviews, let alone (grudgingly) allowed to grill the suspect themselves, or throw some important new piece of evidence in their face to break their alibi. They wouldn't accompany detectives on their investigations. They wouldn't be allowed to make sanctimonious judgements about people based on flawed assumptions.
Medical Examiners would end up in prison on charges of perverting the course of justice if they behaved they way they do on television.
So consider the humble dentist, transformed into a dental-scrubs-wearing crusader for oral health, confronting the hapless friend of a patient whose crown had fallen out, and teasing them with details about the consistency of the toffee the patient had been eating, traces of which had been found on the teeth adjoining the crowns, and how that kind of toffee is only made in a particular part of the country... where a certain friend had recently taken a holiday...
...Or how the particular pattern of enamel staining and erosion has been proven to be connected with one specific carbonated beverage, which the patient would never normally drink... but which was found in the friend's refrigerator, and two crumpled cans were found in their kitchen bin that very morning... the morning after the patient was known to have visited...
...Or how the cause of the gum disease was a splinter of wood from a toothpick given to them by their arch nemesis, to remove an embarrassing bit of food just before the patient collected an award both had been up for.
Seriously, it could work. It's no less ridiculous than the kinds of things TV MEs get up to.
House has opened up a world of possibilities... that's all I'm saying.
Weirdly, and on a somewhat maudlin note, this reminds me of an exchange of email I had some years ago, with a friend who is now deceased... We'd each done some kind of career-oriented psychometric profile and compared our results. Mine suggested someone like me might be interesting in becoming a dentist or working in law enforcement (because, y'know, of course). Hers suggested a role as a dental nurse.
"That settles it!" I enthused. "I shall become the world's first Crusading Dentist, and you shall be my assistant!"
What the Taxman Giveth, the Taxman Taketh Away
So, having experience the catharsis of filing my tax return with minimal fuss, then the jubilance of receiving a nice rebate, it probably won't be a massive surprise that I have to pay some of it back.
Not back to HMRC, though... well, not exactly. My rebate was correct... this 'adjustment' is due to a shortfall in my National Insurance contributions, and that's all because of those employers of mine who didn't pay it for me.
As it turns out, it's just under a quarter of the rebate, which is a bit of a bugger. Let's face it, though, it could have been far worse... and at least this means my contributions for the year will be up to the correct level.
In other news, my current job will definitely be finishing in early June so, hopefully, I get some time to myself /with family/with my girlfriend around my birthday. It feels like a good time to be moving on, since there have been a few frustrations recently, and I'm about due for a holiday... Though there's always the chance I'll be called back. My CV is being circulated to the HR department as well as to other relevant managers, so repeat (temp) business seems like a foregone conclusion unless I get snatched up for another job elsewhere.
On that subject, and on a not very promising note, a new agency recommended to me by my former boss has not responded to my introductory email - not even to acknowledge it, let alone to arrange a meeting. I've signed up with several agencies over the years, and the only one to ever get me any work - so far - was the one that was pro-active about my application. Perhaps my expectations are way wrong, but I would tend to expect a halfway decent agency to set up an initial interview at the very least.
In other news, I'm approaching my 700th post... if all goes well (meaning 'if I complete one of my draft posts'), number seven-hundred will be something a bit special... if you're remotely interested in my opinions on Doctor Who.
Not back to HMRC, though... well, not exactly. My rebate was correct... this 'adjustment' is due to a shortfall in my National Insurance contributions, and that's all because of those employers of mine who didn't pay it for me.
As it turns out, it's just under a quarter of the rebate, which is a bit of a bugger. Let's face it, though, it could have been far worse... and at least this means my contributions for the year will be up to the correct level.
In other news, my current job will definitely be finishing in early June so, hopefully, I get some time to myself /with family/with my girlfriend around my birthday. It feels like a good time to be moving on, since there have been a few frustrations recently, and I'm about due for a holiday... Though there's always the chance I'll be called back. My CV is being circulated to the HR department as well as to other relevant managers, so repeat (temp) business seems like a foregone conclusion unless I get snatched up for another job elsewhere.
On that subject, and on a not very promising note, a new agency recommended to me by my former boss has not responded to my introductory email - not even to acknowledge it, let alone to arrange a meeting. I've signed up with several agencies over the years, and the only one to ever get me any work - so far - was the one that was pro-active about my application. Perhaps my expectations are way wrong, but I would tend to expect a halfway decent agency to set up an initial interview at the very least.
In other news, I'm approaching my 700th post... if all goes well (meaning 'if I complete one of my draft posts'), number seven-hundred will be something a bit special... if you're remotely interested in my opinions on Doctor Who.
Sunday 19 May 2013
Further Weirdness of a Strangely Familiar Kind
I've probably mentioned in past posts that I dream about being in toy shops almost as often as I walk into them in real life (perhaps moreso... difficult to judge). There's also a strange phenomenon whereby I dream about the same toy shop or shops over and over again. Such was the case recently, though the fictional toy shop in question was in a terrible state of disrepair and had far less stock than it had on my previous visit. It had two, possibly three single-sided racks/shelf units, each about three feet high, with jewellers cases on top for the 'special selections', though there wasn't a great deal in terms of quantity. That said, most of the items on show seemed to be (possibly fake) test shots of TransFormers toys, molded almost uniformly in lurid greens and pinks.
I kept browsing the same selection, poring over and over the same few displays, almost desperately trying to find something I'd consider shelling out money for, something to justify my presence in the shop. Eventually, I settled on something that looked remarkably like the recently revealed Generations Voyager class Sandstorm, but even that seemed to be broken when I went to pay for it (though what I actually remember was that a sort of fake leather seat was torn open... I can't even be sure it was actually part of the toy!).
However, rather than taking my money, they guy behind the counter took me aside and warned me that I'd been targeted by a hacker/group of hackers on eBay, as evidenced by email from a specific name or pair of names saying "I've done what you asked... see you soon." At this point, I either decided not to buy anything, or was kicked out of the shop... all I know for sure is that I left empty-handed.
Wednesday 15 May 2013
Probably Even More Odd... If Only I Could Remember...
So, just to get this out of the way... It's May, and it's bloody freezing. The rain I can understand - the nature of weather is that the conditions on and around smallish landmasses, like this sceptred isle, tend to be very variable. A few days of sun generally means a couple of weeks of rain to varying degrees. What I don't get is the sudden drop in temperature. Weird.
And, of course, with all the high winds we've been having, that tarpaulin on my roof has been rattled free of the bricks that were holding it down. I put in a call to the managing agents yesterday evening and, while it was hanging in front of my door when I left for work this morning, it was nowhere to be seen when I got home again. I can only hope that means it's been re-seated and, as far as I can tell, I'm not getting any water leaking in from the rather heavy rain currently lashing at my windows... but it's worrying nonetheless.
At least the managing agents have now got a couple of estimates on replacing the roof... though that's still no guarantee of it happening soon.
More weird dreaming last night, though I forgot all but two parts, which I wrote down - briefly - this morning. One part featured me complaining about my shoes (which happens in real life sometimes - I wish I knew how the toes got so scuffed all the time!), only for my father to set to work polishing them overnight. When I got up the next morning, they were slathered with polish... I had to get a rag and wipe them over... but, having done so, they looked almost perfect.
The other part - also featuring a 'waking up' scene, strangely - involved a banging at the door to my flat, which roused me from my bed... only to find a fully armed soldier at my door. I sense a connection to the tarpaulin...
Also this morning, I put my rubbish out on the mezzanine, ready to take down to the bins when I actually left for work and, when the time came, I found the damned thing had been torn open. Not much had spilled out, but I did need to get another bag to put the original bag in... Can that have been birds, or could it be that I have rats/mice to worry about, as well as ants? (Not that I'm worrying about ants still... much...)
I'd been intending to write a bit about this last weekend's Doctor Who, and the strange 'sequel' to The Suspicions of Mr Whicher that appeared in ITV's schedule on Sunday night. Had that been the sole content of the post, no doubt I would have named it "Who and Which(er)"... Oh, the lost comedic possibilities...
The former introduced the new style of Cybermen... Now, I quite liked the first kind of Cyberman this rebooted Who has given us, though they owed quite a substantial debt to RoboCop in their design. I would also applaud the movement coach who taught the performers how to move in those suits. However, there was something not quite right about the 'Delete!.. Delete!..' schtick (a bit too much like a sanitised version of the Daleks' 'Exterminate!'?). The new look Cybermen, created for a script by Neil Gaiman, 'Nightmare in Silver', owe a significant debt to Iron Man - they're leaner, meaner, constantly upgrading... and have large lights in their chests. I don't remember enough about the Cybermen from the original Doctor Who series, but there's clearly some cross pollination between them and Star Trek's Borg, and the way it was casually mentioned in this episode made it all the more chilling than any of the more graphic stuff that's been shown before (and don't get me started on that 'Cyberwoman' episode of Torchwood). Yet again, the story could have done with more time to help flesh things out, and the escape at the end was rather too convenient, but the episode was decent enough... Now looking forward to the grand finale of this series (at least until the Christmas special, and Matt Smith's rumoured departure).
The latter was a curious state of affairs, being wholly fictional rather than a dramatisation of further true-life events and investigations. I honestly wasn't giving it my fullest attention, but it did seem riddled with clichés. The character of Mr Whicher certainly deserves more examination, but I'm not sure this was quite the right tack to take. I might give it another chance if it turns up in the schedules again...
Meanwhile, the glorious Gillian Anderson returns to our screens in a new police drama. Yet more clichés abound, not least because this is set in Northern Ireland (signs of the 'Troubles' keep popping up) and features a kinky serial killer (seriously, how many more kinky serial killers can we get on television?)... Having been introduced to the "Jack... Draw Me Like One Of Your French Girls" meme, the posing of the victims was often in danger of making me laugh, which is clearly not the reaction the makers were going for. It's a bit po-faced... Ms Anderson plays a Detective Superintendent who mooches around at home wearing flowery pyjama bottoms, a tank top and a mud pack in the opening scene (phwoar, eh?), then later there's a gratuitous scene of her swimming in a hotel pool (wearing a swimsuit, naturally...). It's one of those dramas where you can pretty much see where it's going... it hasn't even hidden the identity of the killer, making it one of those dramas... but it might just be interesting enough to keep watching. Certainly, Gillian Anderson is surely far more interesting to watch in this kind of show than Mr Smarmy/Broody/Shouty Tennant...
And, of course, with all the high winds we've been having, that tarpaulin on my roof has been rattled free of the bricks that were holding it down. I put in a call to the managing agents yesterday evening and, while it was hanging in front of my door when I left for work this morning, it was nowhere to be seen when I got home again. I can only hope that means it's been re-seated and, as far as I can tell, I'm not getting any water leaking in from the rather heavy rain currently lashing at my windows... but it's worrying nonetheless.
At least the managing agents have now got a couple of estimates on replacing the roof... though that's still no guarantee of it happening soon.
More weird dreaming last night, though I forgot all but two parts, which I wrote down - briefly - this morning. One part featured me complaining about my shoes (which happens in real life sometimes - I wish I knew how the toes got so scuffed all the time!), only for my father to set to work polishing them overnight. When I got up the next morning, they were slathered with polish... I had to get a rag and wipe them over... but, having done so, they looked almost perfect.
The other part - also featuring a 'waking up' scene, strangely - involved a banging at the door to my flat, which roused me from my bed... only to find a fully armed soldier at my door. I sense a connection to the tarpaulin...
Also this morning, I put my rubbish out on the mezzanine, ready to take down to the bins when I actually left for work and, when the time came, I found the damned thing had been torn open. Not much had spilled out, but I did need to get another bag to put the original bag in... Can that have been birds, or could it be that I have rats/mice to worry about, as well as ants? (Not that I'm worrying about ants still... much...)
I'd been intending to write a bit about this last weekend's Doctor Who, and the strange 'sequel' to The Suspicions of Mr Whicher that appeared in ITV's schedule on Sunday night. Had that been the sole content of the post, no doubt I would have named it "Who and Which(er)"... Oh, the lost comedic possibilities...
The former introduced the new style of Cybermen... Now, I quite liked the first kind of Cyberman this rebooted Who has given us, though they owed quite a substantial debt to RoboCop in their design. I would also applaud the movement coach who taught the performers how to move in those suits. However, there was something not quite right about the 'Delete!.. Delete!..' schtick (a bit too much like a sanitised version of the Daleks' 'Exterminate!'?). The new look Cybermen, created for a script by Neil Gaiman, 'Nightmare in Silver', owe a significant debt to Iron Man - they're leaner, meaner, constantly upgrading... and have large lights in their chests. I don't remember enough about the Cybermen from the original Doctor Who series, but there's clearly some cross pollination between them and Star Trek's Borg, and the way it was casually mentioned in this episode made it all the more chilling than any of the more graphic stuff that's been shown before (and don't get me started on that 'Cyberwoman' episode of Torchwood). Yet again, the story could have done with more time to help flesh things out, and the escape at the end was rather too convenient, but the episode was decent enough... Now looking forward to the grand finale of this series (at least until the Christmas special, and Matt Smith's rumoured departure).
The latter was a curious state of affairs, being wholly fictional rather than a dramatisation of further true-life events and investigations. I honestly wasn't giving it my fullest attention, but it did seem riddled with clichés. The character of Mr Whicher certainly deserves more examination, but I'm not sure this was quite the right tack to take. I might give it another chance if it turns up in the schedules again...
Meanwhile, the glorious Gillian Anderson returns to our screens in a new police drama. Yet more clichés abound, not least because this is set in Northern Ireland (signs of the 'Troubles' keep popping up) and features a kinky serial killer (seriously, how many more kinky serial killers can we get on television?)... Having been introduced to the "Jack... Draw Me Like One Of Your French Girls" meme, the posing of the victims was often in danger of making me laugh, which is clearly not the reaction the makers were going for. It's a bit po-faced... Ms Anderson plays a Detective Superintendent who mooches around at home wearing flowery pyjama bottoms, a tank top and a mud pack in the opening scene (phwoar, eh?), then later there's a gratuitous scene of her swimming in a hotel pool (wearing a swimsuit, naturally...). It's one of those dramas where you can pretty much see where it's going... it hasn't even hidden the identity of the killer, making it one of those dramas... but it might just be interesting enough to keep watching. Certainly, Gillian Anderson is surely far more interesting to watch in this kind of show than Mr Smarmy/Broody/Shouty Tennant...
Sunday 12 May 2013
You Know Your Subconscious Is Fucking With You...
...When you've been procrastinating about your CV for over a week, then have a dream where you're looking at the completed document...
...and then forget what you'd done to perfect it when you wake up.
Seriously, brain, stoppit. Not helping.
...and then forget what you'd done to perfect it when you wake up.
Seriously, brain, stoppit. Not helping.
Saturday 11 May 2013
Things That Happened & Things That Didn't...
Beginning with the latter, I had a rather weird dream on Thursday night, which took some very clear cues from things that I'd heard about during the week. Essentially, what happened was this:
My former boss and I were pulled back in to work for the company which made us redundant a couple of years ago... though this time we were temps covering some of their full-time staff. I arrived first, and basically hung around the wrong part of the office (the old office, but slightly different) because it wasn't clear where I was supposed to be, and no-one was telling... About an hour and a half later, my former boss arrived, breezing through to the right part of the office (possibly she'd been back working there longer than me), and I followed her through to a dim, sealed-off room on one side of the office, containing a team of about a dozen 'creatives' and their computers. She took her seat, and I cast my eyes around the small, suddenly well-sunlit room with a massive window in one wall (far more accurate to the real building). There weren't any (complete, operable) machines near her, so I ended up sitting on pretty much the other side of the room.
Starting up my machine, I found the operating system messy and largely unintelligible... it was the kind of OS you tend to see in movies - a colourful mixture of MacOS and Unix/DOS, as favoured by all fictional hackers... But that wasn't all of it... I soon realised that a good portion of the difficulties I had using it was that it was set to operate in Portuguese.
The next bit may have been a lunch break or a totally different dream, but I was back outside in a semi-recognisable section of town near that old office building... There may have been a market, there may have been lots of hiding... not entirely sure.
So, the analysis: My former boss had emailed me, mentioning that one of our old colleagues, a guy employed to train the Salespeople, had been offered a job back with that company... and he'd suggested that they were considering offering her a job too. We discussed what it might actually take for her to go back, concluding that, while it was fun to discuss, almost nothing would actually convince her.
The overall situation clearly derives from Temp Anxiety, brought out by the fact that I'll be unemployed again around this time next month. The Portuguese operating system? Well, one of my former colleague was Portuguese, and we did clash over something computer-related...
In other news, work looks to be pretty busy while it lasts... One show guide done, another in progress (though I'm only dealing with the advertising on that one), yet another starting next week... plus another printed supplement and my regular digital magazine. It's still never quite so busy as my former full-time job, and a lot of the problems I've had with it are due to me becoming a little complaisant and rather too relaxed in the role. The rest tend to relate to things that were never explained to me... and they're far more frustrating. I guess, having worked there so long (basically a full year, but part-time for a lot of it), they have some reason to expect that I know how things are done... but when things don't happen because one of the full-timers assumes I'm doing it, and I'm assuming they're doing it because they haven't discussed it with me, there's clearly been a breakdown in communication.
When I got home on Friday, there was a letter from my managing agents announcing that the period of gathering quotes for replacing the roof of the flats is now over... Four companies were approached, two declined to tender (including the one who put the tarpaulin over my roof!), and the two quotes are different by something in the region of £10,000... Whichever company is chosen, I know I'll only be expected to pay a small portion of the bill (which is substantially more than it would have been when I first moved in, when the job was already years overdue), but it's still a worrying amount of money, when my income is far from certain.
On the upside, the day before, I received notification from HM Revenue and Customs that almost £600 was being refunded to me... That nicely pays for some of my recent extravagances, but it's strangely little comfort.
My former boss and I were pulled back in to work for the company which made us redundant a couple of years ago... though this time we were temps covering some of their full-time staff. I arrived first, and basically hung around the wrong part of the office (the old office, but slightly different) because it wasn't clear where I was supposed to be, and no-one was telling... About an hour and a half later, my former boss arrived, breezing through to the right part of the office (possibly she'd been back working there longer than me), and I followed her through to a dim, sealed-off room on one side of the office, containing a team of about a dozen 'creatives' and their computers. She took her seat, and I cast my eyes around the small, suddenly well-sunlit room with a massive window in one wall (far more accurate to the real building). There weren't any (complete, operable) machines near her, so I ended up sitting on pretty much the other side of the room.
Starting up my machine, I found the operating system messy and largely unintelligible... it was the kind of OS you tend to see in movies - a colourful mixture of MacOS and Unix/DOS, as favoured by all fictional hackers... But that wasn't all of it... I soon realised that a good portion of the difficulties I had using it was that it was set to operate in Portuguese.
The next bit may have been a lunch break or a totally different dream, but I was back outside in a semi-recognisable section of town near that old office building... There may have been a market, there may have been lots of hiding... not entirely sure.
So, the analysis: My former boss had emailed me, mentioning that one of our old colleagues, a guy employed to train the Salespeople, had been offered a job back with that company... and he'd suggested that they were considering offering her a job too. We discussed what it might actually take for her to go back, concluding that, while it was fun to discuss, almost nothing would actually convince her.
The overall situation clearly derives from Temp Anxiety, brought out by the fact that I'll be unemployed again around this time next month. The Portuguese operating system? Well, one of my former colleague was Portuguese, and we did clash over something computer-related...
In other news, work looks to be pretty busy while it lasts... One show guide done, another in progress (though I'm only dealing with the advertising on that one), yet another starting next week... plus another printed supplement and my regular digital magazine. It's still never quite so busy as my former full-time job, and a lot of the problems I've had with it are due to me becoming a little complaisant and rather too relaxed in the role. The rest tend to relate to things that were never explained to me... and they're far more frustrating. I guess, having worked there so long (basically a full year, but part-time for a lot of it), they have some reason to expect that I know how things are done... but when things don't happen because one of the full-timers assumes I'm doing it, and I'm assuming they're doing it because they haven't discussed it with me, there's clearly been a breakdown in communication.
When I got home on Friday, there was a letter from my managing agents announcing that the period of gathering quotes for replacing the roof of the flats is now over... Four companies were approached, two declined to tender (including the one who put the tarpaulin over my roof!), and the two quotes are different by something in the region of £10,000... Whichever company is chosen, I know I'll only be expected to pay a small portion of the bill (which is substantially more than it would have been when I first moved in, when the job was already years overdue), but it's still a worrying amount of money, when my income is far from certain.
On the upside, the day before, I received notification from HM Revenue and Customs that almost £600 was being refunded to me... That nicely pays for some of my recent extravagances, but it's strangely little comfort.
Sunday 5 May 2013
But Who's Counting..?
And so, this latest series of Doctor Who finally delivers a brilliant episode, The Crimson Horror, written by the excellent Mark Gatiss... Starting out like that one-per-series episode from the bad old days, the Doctor and his companion are nowhere to be seen, the episode seems to centre on the Victorian mixed-race detective team of Silurian Madame Vastra, human Jenny and their curious Sontaran valet, Strax. The interplay between these three is always rewarding, but Vastra and Jenny almost took a back seat to Strax's exuberance this time round.
That's not to say the other two didn't get their fair share of the limelight... Jenny got to show off her lock-pickin' and arse-kickin' (loved that catsuit, concealed under her voluminous dress!), and Vastra was in full-on Sherlock Holmes mode.
But even that wasn't what made this episode outstanding... Nor even the presence of the legendary Diana Rigg as Mrs Gillyflower, turning Clara into one of her very own set of Stepford wives (and husbands) in her walled city of Sweetville... Nor even her daughter, Rachel Stirling as Ada Gillyflower, blinded and scarred, devoting herself to the care of her 'monster', a reject from her mother's experiments...
What actually made this episode something special was that it was a complete and satisfying story, with none of the leaps in logic or dei ex machina that have plagued the series so far. I'd still complain that it was far too short (the photographic montage backstory scenes were a neat trick, but shouldn't have been necessary), since the origins of the mysterious Mr Sweet were hurriedly explained, and it was never entirely clear how much of Mrs Gillyflower's ranting was truly her, and how much the influence of her 'benefactor'.
I'm still much preferring this New Who to the later RTD-helmed series (Donna improved things somewhat... but the emotional range of DT's Doctor ran from Smarmy through Broody to Shouty, and I may never forgive his mawkish regeneration scene) but, every so often, we are offered a glimpse of how truly awesome a series it could be, if only its episodes were longer, or if each story was made of two or more episodes (each with a terrifying cliff-hanger!). Mark Gatiss is shaping up to be one of the more reliable writers, because he clearly has a passion for - and a sense of fun about - the series... and enough sense not to make the Doctor the centre of attention in every scene.
Part way through, though, I realised something particularly cool... Since The Sarah-Jane Adventures are over (and Elizabeth Sladen sorely missed), Children's TV needs a new plucky detective team... and who better than Madame Vastra's team? I mean, think about it: complex detective stories, sometimes involving aliens with superior technology, plenty of action since all three are able to wield many weapons (Vastra and Jenny preferring those that suit their period in time), and plenty of comedy from Strax proposing detailed strategies invariably involving the biggest guns and explosives in their arsenal, or getting his genders confused, or just having a silly scene, like the one he shared with Thomas Thomas, whose unerring sense of direction (I see what you did there, Gatiss!) helped Strax save the day. There would even be huge crossover potential for end-of-season stories. They might have to alter the dynamic between Vastra and Jenny for kids' telly, to make it a more ambiguous Holmes and Watson relationship but, in this day and age, even that might not be necessary.
Come on, BBC: Madame Vastra, Consulting Detective... Make it happen.
That's not to say the other two didn't get their fair share of the limelight... Jenny got to show off her lock-pickin' and arse-kickin' (loved that catsuit, concealed under her voluminous dress!), and Vastra was in full-on Sherlock Holmes mode.
But even that wasn't what made this episode outstanding... Nor even the presence of the legendary Diana Rigg as Mrs Gillyflower, turning Clara into one of her very own set of Stepford wives (and husbands) in her walled city of Sweetville... Nor even her daughter, Rachel Stirling as Ada Gillyflower, blinded and scarred, devoting herself to the care of her 'monster', a reject from her mother's experiments...
What actually made this episode something special was that it was a complete and satisfying story, with none of the leaps in logic or dei ex machina that have plagued the series so far. I'd still complain that it was far too short (the photographic montage backstory scenes were a neat trick, but shouldn't have been necessary), since the origins of the mysterious Mr Sweet were hurriedly explained, and it was never entirely clear how much of Mrs Gillyflower's ranting was truly her, and how much the influence of her 'benefactor'.
I'm still much preferring this New Who to the later RTD-helmed series (Donna improved things somewhat... but the emotional range of DT's Doctor ran from Smarmy through Broody to Shouty, and I may never forgive his mawkish regeneration scene) but, every so often, we are offered a glimpse of how truly awesome a series it could be, if only its episodes were longer, or if each story was made of two or more episodes (each with a terrifying cliff-hanger!). Mark Gatiss is shaping up to be one of the more reliable writers, because he clearly has a passion for - and a sense of fun about - the series... and enough sense not to make the Doctor the centre of attention in every scene.
Part way through, though, I realised something particularly cool... Since The Sarah-Jane Adventures are over (and Elizabeth Sladen sorely missed), Children's TV needs a new plucky detective team... and who better than Madame Vastra's team? I mean, think about it: complex detective stories, sometimes involving aliens with superior technology, plenty of action since all three are able to wield many weapons (Vastra and Jenny preferring those that suit their period in time), and plenty of comedy from Strax proposing detailed strategies invariably involving the biggest guns and explosives in their arsenal, or getting his genders confused, or just having a silly scene, like the one he shared with Thomas Thomas, whose unerring sense of direction (I see what you did there, Gatiss!) helped Strax save the day. There would even be huge crossover potential for end-of-season stories. They might have to alter the dynamic between Vastra and Jenny for kids' telly, to make it a more ambiguous Holmes and Watson relationship but, in this day and age, even that might not be necessary.
Come on, BBC: Madame Vastra, Consulting Detective... Make it happen.
Saturday 4 May 2013
Spring Dreaming
It's always fun when I have one of my completely bizarre dreams, even if they contain an element of (somewhat) believable peril. Last night, I had a curious mish-mash which involved trying to use something which was described as 'a lavatory' despite being nothing more than a metal pipework frame attached to the floor by a hinge in the corner of a room with no door... while Elijah Wood looked on from down the corridor. There was also quite a long sequence where I was apparently on the run from some shadowy organisation, with a young girl in tow. The bad guys were after the girl rather than me but, upon cornering us in a diner and finding she was happy with me, decided to just tag the both of us (strange LED-type things that actually looked like miniature electronic pomegranate seeds, and which fell off after a while, so I'm not sure if they were the tags or merely the delivery method)... and kill everyone else in the diner. My parents were among the other patrons and, just to make this dream all the more sensible, the bad guys dressed everyone up in costumes (my father was wearing a Batman mask) before killing them... in broad daylight, and in full view of the cartoon characters walking past outside. Just before I woke up, I was about to spring into action to rescue everyone... or at least prevent the murder of my parents.
I've had confirmation that my current source of work will be drying up in just over a month, when the woman I'm covering will be returning to work. On the one hand, it's upsetting... the work has (for the most part) been lots of fun and the people I've been working with are pretty cool (when they're not being hideously lazy and irresponsible, and trying to blame me for the results). The products, too, are kind of cool, considering their raison d'être. I've been able to use my skills and develop new ones... which is about the best kind of working environment you can hope for...
...But they're in the midst of great changes and, frankly, I foresee them trimming their staff quite dramatically in the coming months and years. Even if I'd ended up with a full-time job there, I wouldn't expect it to last. I've been there for most of a year, on and off, and that was enough of a surprise.
Plus, I've felt underutilised quite often, it has been rather frustrating a lot of the time (see the aforementioned abdication of responsibility), and in the last month or two there have been several occasions where my partner has assumed that I've picked up some vital bit of information either telepathically or by osmosis, and so I've 'neglected' to do something quite important. The lot of a Temp is a strange one... do well enough, and long enough, and people assume that you're part of the furniture and don't need to be told to do anything. When there are things to be done that the Temp has never before done, however, that can be a little tricky.
I'm rather hoping for a short break, and then - fingers crossed - a return to full-time gainful employment.
Which reminds me... I should have been working on my CV today...
I've had confirmation that my current source of work will be drying up in just over a month, when the woman I'm covering will be returning to work. On the one hand, it's upsetting... the work has (for the most part) been lots of fun and the people I've been working with are pretty cool (when they're not being hideously lazy and irresponsible, and trying to blame me for the results). The products, too, are kind of cool, considering their raison d'être. I've been able to use my skills and develop new ones... which is about the best kind of working environment you can hope for...
...But they're in the midst of great changes and, frankly, I foresee them trimming their staff quite dramatically in the coming months and years. Even if I'd ended up with a full-time job there, I wouldn't expect it to last. I've been there for most of a year, on and off, and that was enough of a surprise.
Plus, I've felt underutilised quite often, it has been rather frustrating a lot of the time (see the aforementioned abdication of responsibility), and in the last month or two there have been several occasions where my partner has assumed that I've picked up some vital bit of information either telepathically or by osmosis, and so I've 'neglected' to do something quite important. The lot of a Temp is a strange one... do well enough, and long enough, and people assume that you're part of the furniture and don't need to be told to do anything. When there are things to be done that the Temp has never before done, however, that can be a little tricky.
I'm rather hoping for a short break, and then - fingers crossed - a return to full-time gainful employment.
Which reminds me... I should have been working on my CV today...
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