Twitter Silence WIll Fall .. and Today of All Days

An excellent choice for Doctor 12. I've never seen an episode of In The Thick of it (calm down at the back) though I do know of his character's prediliction for choice language. Anyone who thinks that memories of this might detract from The Doctor's position as role model should review his part in the Torchwood special Children of Earth. I am hoping for fewer special effects and more character-driven stories, something that probably departed with John Pertwee, who has the honour of being my "First Doctor".

I generally try to maintain a calm air (for the children you know) but I was obviously shaking with the tension. Of course we knew it was Peter Capaldi from the second we saw his tensed hand. And glad we all were though with reservations from certain people **cough** Mrs deW **cough**.

No Flies on the Roman

This pair need their own series. I'd watch it. Then again, nearly all the characters in this episode need their own series. There were maybe a few too many threads in A Good Man Goes to War but that is no matter - it kept us interested and laughing. All back to mine in a couple of months for Let's Kill Hitler. Yes - lets - despite what happened in the book by that nice Mr Fry. Oh well I know technically they didn't kill him did they.

Anyway as you may have guessed from previous posts I have had a lot of time on my hands and of course none of this has been filled with me actually creating anything but I have managed to read quite a lot. I'm currently just about to finish Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin Hersh - the eloquent diary of a year in her life at the age of around nineteen. Next up is Alex's Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos.

Come on Ponds!

The Doctor Yesterday.

And we're back! Amy has managed to conjure up the entire universe down to every detail - Andy Murray is still fourth seed and currently looking likely to go through so looks like she got everything right. Take that Mr Stephen Fry and your new-fangled adventures. Here was the ultimate Deus Ex Machina or as Richard Adams would say Dea Ex Machina 'cos of course it all comes out of Amy's head. And also here was a Dalek begging for mercy - three times - that River Song is some woman. The youngest is now dancing The Doctor's wedding dance and looking very unlikely to go to sleep before we do.

Where have I been? Working mostly - not away from home but for more of the day than is usual. Can't talk about it any more - it's not secret - just very, very boring. So no blogging. Maybe a bit more in the next few weeks.

Interview Without Coffee Sweetie

I want to stand inches away from the face of whichever Beeboid Drone decided it was a great idea to splash a multicoloured, cartoon Graham Norton over the point of maximum tension in The Time of Angels and threaten to send them back to whichever time in history would make them most uncomfortable. I already rate Over the Rainbow as possibly the worst programme ever for its sugar-sweet portrayal of the audition process and now I have even more reason to hate it. For the first time in my life I have broken my policy of enlightened ignorance and actually complained to the BBC as part of what I hope is the beginning of the end for DOGs on the state broadcaster. I am not a hard-core Whovian but I imagine that they are the last group of people you want to annoy. Graham Norton seems to be becoming the Nemesis of Doctor Who after his voice spoiled the broadcast of the first episode of the revived series.

Anyway, love this cartoon of River Song.

I suppose I should mention the episode itself. Terrifying! In this article, Steven Moffat says that these Weeping Angel episodes are Aliens to the original Sally Sparrow episode's Alien. Remember - whatever shows the image of a Weeping Angel becomes a Weeping Angel. Sleep well!

Tate a Tate

Here today for a saunter round the art gallery and Maritime museum. We were all slightly surprised to find that one whole wall in one gallery was moving at a speed of 10cm per minute which while not exactly as scary as the Star Wars trash compactor, is slightly disconcerting. I'm certain it is art though. We also went down and made collages from very posh art and design magazines with scary phrases like "according to Marxist theory" in them. Result is below.

And then on to the Maritime Museum for spin around what can only be called The Luxury Liner Disaster Area - Titanic, Lusitania etc. There was also a very good bit of monologue from someone playing the Titanic Helmsman Robert Hichens, the man who Molly Brown threatened to throw overboard.

Of course all this didn't stop daughter's continuous announcements of the time left until the start of Doctor Who. And so was it worth the wait? Sure was! It kept a six-year old rapt for an hour and still has him quiet in front of DWC. And now the Weeping Angels are dancing. We are happy here and still two days of the weekend to go. We do have to go (shhh - don't tell Dawkins) to Church tomorrow morning but after that our time is ours. More collage maybe - more Infra-red and all the other manic inventions that float around my head. Somewhere we have The Quatermass Experiment on the PVR as well.

Ten feet of steel combination, made in Liverpool. Magnificent workmanship

(The small one - second from left - third if you include Uranus itself)

We are much taken with Miranda, the epitome of Radio Comedy made into a TV show. It reminds me both of seventies sitcoms and the peak of radio comedy from the mid 90s. Asides to camera, general play-acting from the whole cast as the credits role (only half of them - you cannot fully get past the BBC guidelines which allow the continuity announcer to break the mood by talking over the end-title music), and the tribute to Dad's Army with the "You Have Been Watching ...." caption. Our review is almost continuous giggles punctuated with roll-on-the-floor guffaws. Set-dressers have gone a bit mad but you can't have everything.

And introducing professional segue of the week in the form of Peter Davison, one of The Doctors along with David Tennant who surpassed himself on Satur...... - er ..... sorry ... Sunday, with The Waters of Mars, showing him Time-Lording over us with the realisation that he thinks he can play God. As with all Doctor Who specials, I start off thinking how naff it all is and then being smacked about the head with the energy and inventiveness of it all. Who exactly are the people who complain about the clunkiness of the scripts? It is after all a kid's show, though after Sunday, I'm not so sure. Punched the air at the Liverpool line. Damn you all!

Hornless B

Some Vikings invaded the local park the other week. They were very friendly though there was a bit of pursuit with spears going on at times. We did get a rebate on our Danegeld though, in the form of some freshly-minted sliver pennies as you can see below.



They seem to have gone away now which is useful as they were beginning to confuse the dog walkers who thought they might be a Draconian response to the fouling problem.

The new notebook has been broken open and with it I have defined a new system for notes and decided on keeping it neater. First up is this article ABOUT CAPS - YOU MUST READ IT. I'm not sure that anyone should lose their job for using all CAPS but a quiet word (possibly in italics) might be in order. And loosely connected to notebooks is my daughter's purchase of a perfectly formed facsimile of The Journal of Impossible Things - the dream diary of John Smith from the Human Nature episode of Doctor Who. Because it came with a sonic screwdriver pen, I was convinced that this would be a throw-away cash-in but it turns out to have 72 printed pages of rough notes in terrible handwriting, interleaved with charcoal drawings of many of the things from the recent series. Fantastic value! I can only hope that whoever created it has been well paid - this really is like a window between the real world and the Whoniverse.

Daughter has also bought and constructed a half-scale cardboard Dalek which is currently creating further restrictions to entering her room by being stuck to the door.

Circle of Fifths

(From http://www.neverendingbooks.org/)

I do not pretend to understand this drawing, other than it shows the various groups that Marcus du Sautoy was talking about. It is here to mark finishing the symmetry book and finding myself in that rare state that usually only applies to novels of a certain type, in that I was racing to the end and yet wanting it not finish.

However a suitable replacement of equal magic has been found in the shape of a recommendation by Alice Roberts from the Tuesday edition of A Good Read (which by the way, started broadcasting in the middle - V. Poor I thought). Her chosen book was Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin - a plotless collection of pure observations, loosely connected by trees but mostly a celebration of the general nature of nature. It has loose echoes of Cider with Rosie and yet more of many other personal collections of natural history. It is very like an extended version of the Country Diary in the Guardian. Again I am drawn in to it at any spare moment. To come, an imminent celebration has brought us a trawl of books which should keep us occupied for some time, including one by the aforementioned Doctor Doctor Alice, which she has written and illustrated. I can only say stuff that Paxman!

Daughter will be most happy with this picture. I'm having slight problems with the bow tie - doesn't seem to fit my image of Matt Smith but as we have all been uncomfortable with many of the leaked details throughout the new runs of Doctor Who, and then been quite happy, I am sure that it will be carried off with ease. We were watching the new series of Coast last week in which Neil Oliver visited one of the Thames sea forts and I happened to mention that it looked like a good place to set a Doctor Who story. This was overheard through two closed doors and up the stairs leading to a speedy descent of firstborn to enquire about it. This is spooky in itself and suggests some sort of mental link with the Tardis. If only I believed in such things. All of which reminds me of the newly-ignited debate over the reality of the moon landings. I suspected that some newer high-definition pictures of the landing sites would be released this week - it is unfortunate that they are all provided by NASA rather than an independent organization. Never mind - the Chinese will land next to one of the sites pretty soon and it will all be over. The world is full of kooks.

Running to Stand Still

Daughter's Doctor Who obsession has been pandered to by repeated viewings of the first ever serial with its commentary and information subtitles. I have to say the first episode was really good though I struggle to tell the difference between the two different versions but my first view of the following episodes was that they were slow and uninteresting but with the commentary they became much more interesting. The original scripts pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable on teatime TV at the time, involving vegetable-originated sound effects for the crunching of bones and crushing of skulls in the wrestling scene. The director, Waris Hussein, threatened to resign after being asked to remove these sounds but he eventually gave in and the scene is strangely bloodless, as if the final dropping of a large rock was onto a mattress rather than the antagonist's head.

The escape of the Tardis at the end of the last episode would have been better had they all arrived back home rather than them segueing into the next serial - the first Dalek episode - a nice neat introduction but that may just be that I like the idea of a rest between traumas.

I am intrigued by the idea of Marsh Daleks.

This Episode Goes Up To 11 .... Malcolms

David Tennant Day in this house it seems. There he is on breakfast news and then again doing a reasonable-if-shambolic stand-in for Jonathan Ross along with Catherine Tate and various other Whoniversers on Radio 2. And then the main feature which did not disappoint (shame on all you reviewers who seem to think it was not grown-up enough - that is the point saddos). It would have been enough just to have a flying double-decker let alone swarms of omnivorous metal stingrays and the bionic woman as well. And then there was Malcolm. We love Malcolm as much as Malcolm apparently loves The Doctor. I'd salute as well.

Have YOU Buried Your Cheese?

Should have been on Christmas Day but snow on New Year's Day is fine enough. There wasn't really enough to make anything but it did at least look good and The New Camera was able to cope with the high contrast. I still have not taken it off auto apart from a few sterile test pictures but point-and-shoot is far better than with the old camera and crucially the start-up time and the delay between the pressing of the shutter button and the actual taking of the photograph is almost zero. It also makes a satisfying click, the result of a physical operation rather than some electronic simulacrum in a program somewhere. Very happy here in the wilderness.

Happy also about the new choice of Doctor Who. I heard the name while driving and my reaction was as for almost everyone else but I do recognise him, primarily from Ruby in the Smoke and he seems to have something undefinable which bodes well for the mysterious Mr Smith.

Titanardis!

Eye-Stubble from Tennant.

A special Saturday entry for you! You are lucky people! Of course you know why. Martha gone! Jack – the FOB! The Tardis getting its chameleon circuit back in working order and pretending to be an Iceberg! Actually that was my daughter’s idea and she is currently standing behind me to make sure that I don’t steal credit for it. She also made up the title at the top there. And she bawled when the Master died. There was something in my eye too – not quite of the intensity of that created by “Daddy! My Daddy” but something.

But seriously – what a ride that was. No drama has been this compelling since … er… since …. actually I can’t think of anything at all. We are all quite sad at Martha’s departure but maybe it is actually a bit of a trick to build up a legend round her. We shall see.

Anyway – time to detach the baby from the back of the sofa.