Just the start of it all

Near-pointless jumbled thoughts post on the latest Who ep:

( Spoilers for the ep, and discussion of rumoury spoilers/spec I've heard for pt2 and S5; also spoils book things that Rusty seems to be 'influenced by' )

( 22 year old spoilers )

I watched Twin Dilemma at the weekend too, incidentally (my last ever Colin-I'd-never-seen-before) but I'm still wrapping my head around what I think of that. (Well, except that I want to know where all the Four/Azmael that-time-by-the-fountain slash is, fandom. Does everyone hate this story so much that they don't get inspired by the incredibly obvious stuff?)

I have found it very hard to work out what I think of this one, and last night I felt very much as though I was being buffetted by whatever opinion I'd most recently read. But having spent a day thinking about it when I should have been working, I am currently of the belief that I liked most of the bits of it individually, but I didn't like the way the bits added together at all.

( The same thing, but tl;dr and with spoilers )

( Long Torchwood reaction post is long and filled with my obscure personal obsessions )

Anyway, I need to go write my femslash09 fic now.

I am going to have proper thinky thoughts about the whole thing tomorrow, but briefly ( I'm going to talk about spoilers )

I had thoughts this time. Not that I didn't have thoughts the previous three times, they just didn't feel worth expressing here. These ones aren't really worth expressing here either, but express them I shall.

( Spoilers, obviously )

( The general trend with these is that my opinion regresses to the mean somewhat, and this one's no exception )

So, er, I have gone off it a bit on balance, but I still basically like the things I liked first time round. It's such a shame, it'd be a neat little SF-as-satire ep without that huge element of awfulness embedded in it.

So there has been quite a lot of fannish-type telly while I've been semi-away. I am going to pretend that you care what I thought of it.

( New Doctor Who! )

( New Red Dwarf! )

( New Ashes to Ashes! )

Terminator 2 was on at the same time as Ashes to Ashes, so I taped it even though I have it on proper bought-in-a-shop VHS somewhere. The little bit I did flick to after A2A was over completely messed up my Cunning Theories about how time travel works in SCC, though. Argh. (I have also spoiled myself ever-so-slightly for 2x22 [only Wikipedia-episode-list-summary level, accidentally], which spoilers suggest I am even wrongerer.)

This is typical me, make a post about how I'm going to be away more and THEN get really spammy.

(It's been over two months since AoL/WWIII, eep.)

( Dalek )

Back after a rather arbitrary Christmas break, my long-winded pontification on New Who S1:

( Doctor Who 1x04 Aliens of London, 1x05 World War Three )

Actually, reading this back to check I haven't left gaping holes in any of the sentences (though I probably have anyway) I'm realising that even when Nine is being Doctorish I respond to those moments on a fairly intellectual level rather than in the squeeful sort of way I do most other Doctors. Maybe I just don't have fannish chemistry with him or something. :(

Dalek next, though, that should be good. :D

( This isn't just a Christmas Special, it's a Doctor Who Christmas Special )

( Strictly! (is voting meta, as per usual from me) )

And Wallace and Gromit was just perfect.

A couple of weeks ago I started rewatching New Who S1, to see if it's as bad as I've made it seem in my head by indulging in arguments with people who ... er, see it very differently to me. I'm splitting the reviews into four sections -- my thoughts before I started the whole thing, for comparison, then "The Good" (things I liked), "The Bad" (things I didn't), and "The Ugly" (things I actively dispprove of).

It's taken me a while to get to this next one, because I wanted to wait until I was in a really good mood so I wasn't projecting any external issues onto it and thus give it as fair a chance as possible.

( Doctor Who 1x03, The Unquiet Dead )

Um, yeah, there is a lot of good stuff there but it's nowhere near as good as RTD's first two, because to my mind it doesn't bring anything new to the table (there's a very cogent argument that that's exactly what the series needed at this point, something to reassure certain tranches of old school fandom [and more generally the parents watching with fond memories of Tom] that this was still the show they remember, but it's really not my thing), and Ecclescakes's weaker points are a bit more obvious here.

I think I now think it's an unobjectionable way to pass the time, and that's a major upgrade on my previous opinion of it. I think I like it better watching it at this time of year, maybe? Given that it's Christmassy. I completely fail to understand how it's meant to be OMG oh-so-scary, though. The Autons in Rose are betterer at that, and they've got Keith Boak hamstringing them. It is definitely the best handling of the new series's famous writer obsession, though (I prefer both Shakespeare Code and Unicorn as eps, but not because of Mr Shakespeare and Mrs Christie).

NAOKO MORI NEXT TIME! YAYNESS.

I am very behind on Sarah Jane. Very, very behind. And it's deeply foolish of because holy crap this show is awesome.

( Mark of the Berserker: a short incoherent post )

How is it that this is the best of the three? Why can't they make the main show this good? What on earth went wrong to make Torchwood so spectacularly faily? Who is Phil Ford and is he really an alien? (And where is Enemy of the Bane on the iPlayer, huh? Is it that they're going to do the finale-on-BBC1-first thing and are syncing up to that?)

Same as with Rose: what I thought before starting the whole process, things I like, things I don't, things I worry about.

( Doctor Who 1x02, The End of the World )

I LOVE THIS STORY SO MUCH I USE CAPSLOCK AND HTML TAGS OF EVIL TO EXPRESS IT!

I think I tend to forget how obvious Nine's death wish was, when considering his later failiness. (I still don't like it but it makes a bit more sense.)

I might be having something resembling a life this weekend so there'll be a bit of a gap before Unquiet Dead, I think.

OK, so I'm going to break this into four sections: a recapitulation of what I put in the intro post of my pre-rewatch thoughts about it, and then Good, Bad and Ugly (the distinction between bad and ugly being things I don't like vs things I think are actively bad bad).

( Doctor Who 1x01, Rose )

Lots more good than bad there, and even the big worrying bit is undermined by everything that leads up to it such that it doesn't really make sense. This is a very encouraging start.

(BTW, did they clean up the Nestene Consciousness's "Time Lord" for the DVD? I could swear Jabe was the first to say it unambiguously on screen in the new series and that Nick Briggs just sounded all roary and growly on that line just like the rest of the Nestene dialogue. But this time around it was almost too clearly audible.)

ETA: BBC3 is just starting Human Nature. I would just like to point out before Father's Day comes up in six posts' time that I love that pissmidget more than anything and think Timewyrm: Revelation is at least one of the Real Beginnings of the NAs. So it's not that I don't like Paul Cornell. (Of course I may yet discover some deep and abiding love for Father's Day, which is kind of the point. But, er, don't hold your breath.)

( ... I've just seen the Best. Smallville. Episode. Ever. [by which I mean 7x18 Apocalypse] )

ETA: OMG the next episode has Robert Picardo in it! <3

( Spoilers for Journey's End )

I'm going to go and read comics with Shayde in them now so that I can write that overdue fic. Have I mentioned how much I love Shayde's intro? He gets all this build up about how dangerous he is and how he can get on board the TARDIS undetected and his last appearance in his first strip ends with standing impassively in the console room with the caption "... and he is waiting for the Doctor!" (you can practically hear the orchestral DUH-DUH-DUH sting)

And then next strip the Doctor turns up and Shayde's all "O HAI, I R SUPER HELPFUL MATRIX CONSTRUCT DUDE SENT BY RASSILON TO HELP U. CUP OV TEA y/n?"

That episode was all kinds of awesome almost all the way through. I'd just like to make that clear up front because there is a bit of moaning about certain recurring tropes in RTD's Who

( So, basically, this episode proves that my preferred old school companions are the best )

I'm sure there are many other things I thought about during the ep that I have temporarily forgotten. This is going to be one of those posts that gets hundreds of ETAs as I read the flist and remember stuff.

Why isn't it next week yet?