friday fun times

If there are any two things in the world that could bring me 'round to the Doctor/Rose 'ship, they are my friend Diana and videos like this from Seduff (Sarah):

"...what is the point of you?"

Amy's Choice. Spoilers, yada, we move on.

I have a problem with this post. See, I think Amy's Choice along with Vincent and the Doctor ('cause I am now far ahead of my posting in terms of watching!) is one of the best episodes of the season. It's just...really really impressive. And so I rather don't have a lot to say about it: "It's good. Go watch it."

And I can only imagine how many times the title got changed on this one because about the only person who doesn't make choices in this -- at least of what I suspect are potentially the universe-shattering variety -- is Rory, whose choice is already made. He's picked Amy and he's quite firm on his decision. Amy's his bet and he's going with it. For which I respect him immensely. He's seen the universe -- and he hasn't wavered. And that's something for which I really respect the character. I like Rory -- he wasn't one of those characters who walked on the screen and I was in love with him (hello, Captain Jack; hello, Donna) but his steadiness and integrity are really growing on me. He seems centered and solid and not all that fazed by the Doctor...which is nice because, lets face it, 11 is pretty damn faze-causing.

The TARDIS crew in their dashing new outfits.

But Rory's about the only one here without serious existential problems.

The TARDIS is in trouble (maybe) and everyone keeps falling asleep (possibly) and Toby Jones is wandering about the place being deeply antisocial and creepy (factually.)

And, really, that's the plot, folks: our crew falls asleep in one universe (the TARDIS) and wakes up in another (a quiet country village) only to go through a short bit of life there and fall asleep again and wake up in the TARDIS. And so on and so forth and so on. The problem is that the situation in either place gets more dire as time goes by: the TARDIS is being sucked towards a cold star and the country village is being taken over by crazed senior citizens.

Amy and...

And did I mention Toby Jones? There's Toby Jones. And it isn't quite clear what he is -- or what he's doing -- or why he's doing it -- except that he is somehow responsible for when and where they fall asleep in both universes and he is, to some extent, in charge of it all. And it's all down to choice: which universe is real? If they choose the wrong one -- well, 'oopsie' will about describe it.

The more I think about it, the more I like this episode. It's tight, it's coherent, it's neatly told, and it's self-contained without too much explanation or elaboration on a plot that, really, could have fallen into chaos and over-complexity quite quickly. And Toby Jones' character -- unnamed to the last -- has what you might call a "sequel-hunting" exit. I want him to come back; I don't know about the rest of you!

Back in the day.

I'd like to point out right now that my first bet for the "who is he" stakes was totally wrong. Did anyone else think of the Celestial Toymaker? Please say at least one other person did. And I'm not entirely sure I buy -- or 100% buy? -- the "dark side of the Doctor" revelation. Not that I wouldn't love to think the Doctor has a seriously twisted elfish dark side that runs around taunting not only him but also his companions and, oh, anyone else who happens to be passing. He seems to know where all the Doctor's weak points are -- "The old man enjoys the company of the young," for example, seems particularly telling. But...I don't know, I think I'd rather have the Toymaker back -- or some new villainous character -- than submit the Doctor to more split-personality angst. I have no wish to revisit the Doctor a la The Waters of Mars.

I would say, though, that whoever or whatever this turns out to be, this cannot be the Master. If The End of Time did nothing else, it established beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Doctor and the Master do not now, never have, and never will hate each other. 

I think that the 'choices' in the episode are quite clever. Amy and the Doctor both choose not to believe in a universe where the thing that is most important to her and him does not exist or cannot exist. Each knows that the place where that thing or person is not cannot or should not be real. Reality is consensual and they refuse to consent: "Bugger this for a game of soldiers," is more or less the attitude. Given what happens almost immediately afterwards in The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood, I'm starting to wonder who consented to end up in the wrong reality.

"...there are other worlds than these."

I was thinking on the T the other day -- while pondering my overdue fines at various libraries -- about what books I read when I don't feel very good. Lately, it's been stacks of nonfiction: I have about a half-dozen new -- or new-ish -- histories scattered about the place, ranging from Roy Porter's For the Greatest Benefit of Mankind (not a real winner; I recommend his Mindforg'd Manacles instead) to Lawrence James' Aristocrats to a new biography of Thomas De Quincey because I really am fascinated by how someone can take that much opium and still function, let alone write.

But I don't seem to be on much of a fiction kick -- my explanation for this is largely that the strangeness inside my head is fictional enough without adding any extra fiction'y goodness. I did have a couple of dark genre novels on the shelf for awhile but I just couldn't ever be bothered to pick them up. At the minute, I also have Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars which I'm hoping I have the energy to read at some point before it has to go back to the library -- or add to my aforementioned overdue fines.

Despite that, I do reread the same "old favorites" rather obsessively when I'm...well, lets just say "not feeling myself."

There's Max Frei's The Stranger. I would use the phrase "deeply weird" here, but I feel that would just mean I'd be using the phrase a lot in this post. The Stranger is Russian -- obviously, I read it in translation since my Russian just about comprehends "hello," "goodbye," "you're welcome," and the numbers from 1-10. According to the flap information, The Stranger is the first of a massively popular series called the "Labyrinths of Echo," Echo being the main city of the world Frei has created, in Russia; as far as I know, only this one has been translated -- by Overlook Press and sold so far; by a simple website check, I see the second volume of the "Labyrinths of Echo" series is going to be on sale next year (maybe). Yay!

If you liked the entire The Neverending Story -- and not just the first section that they made into the really popular movie -- then you'll probably like The Stranger. Premise: the main character, Max, is an insomniac in this world. He lives in modern-day -- late '90s -- Russia and can more or less function, but he's always been more interested in the world he has established in his vivid, nay, lucid dreams. He has his favorite city, his favorite restaurants, and even his favorite cafe, where there is another man he chats with frequently -- who suddenly offers him a job if he is willing to switch worlds and come work in the city of Echo.

Max is no fool, so off to the new job he goes!

The novel works as a book-length story, but you can also consider it a series of loosely connected, continually-escalating-in-weirdness novellas. The city of Echo is a strange, wonderful place: magic is an everyday, but is strictly controlled and graded in degrees of white and black magic, some more difficult and verboten than others. Food is a continual obsession; the meals Max and his coworkers consume will make you dribble and wish for a cookbook. Instead of a bed, residents of Echo sleep on a vast, soft floor with immensely comfortable sounding pillows and blankets. And best of all? Cats are about knee-high, long-furred, and intensely cuddly.

So, yes, the book is escapist literature, absolutely, but it's also very involving, very detailed, and absorbing to read. The stories escalate in complexity and difficulty: the first is a simple murder and spends a lot of time establishing the city of Echo, Max's role in it, and the roles of his various friends and coworkers. The last story is about sex and gender fluidity, world-building, willpower, and imagination. If you're not happy with the life you have and the world you're in -- what do you do? What is Echo, really? Is it a real world? Is there a real world? Fun times, yes? Yes. And somehow immensely comforting to read. And reread.

Next on the list, I would say, is Walter Moers' City of Dreaming Books. Again, in translation (from German, this time); and, again, from the Overlook Press. (I really love the Overlook Press: they have authors I can't find anywhere else; their books are lovely; and they stand up to a lot of use!)

I've read, I think, everything that Moers has written that has been translated at this point -- so if you follow my recommendation and read this, don't blame me when he takes over your reading list for the next few months or so. (I also really recommend The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear.)

Books is written by a Lindworm (read the book) named Dancelot Wordwright who is given a task by his authorial godfather (read the book) to track down the author of a mysterious manuscript in Bookholm (read the book).

There is an entire city of used bookstores. Are you fucking kidding me?! What is not to love about this book! It is one long fantastic word joke. Okay, no, not really, that would be kind of annoying but there is a ton of really fantastic wordplay; I would urge you to pay very close attention to any names -- authors, titles, places -- that come your way. And you might want to have some scratch paper or Scrabble tiles handy.

Books is just...it is warm and cozy and it is just like having warm cocoa and graham crackers. But in book form.

It's a lovely absorbing journey story -- one of my favorite forms of tale-telling -- with a surprisingly heart-catching ending... at least, if you get as involved in the story as I do and you have a thing for monsters-that-aren't-really. There's lots of great food and drink, some wonderful book titles, and Wordwright is a really involving narrator, despite being rather pretentious and somewhat high on himself. He manages to be charming in much the same way that you never quite want to haul off and nail Bertie Wooster with a brick.

And there are these little guys:

Bookling by Veli found on DeviantART.

friday fun times

The best part of all this?




Arthur Darvill's bobble hat. The man is wearing a bobble hat!

"Remember us, Doctor."

I don't know if I have much more to say about Vampires of Venice than I did about Victory of the Daleks -- I think almost anything after the Weeping Angels 2-parter would have felt like something of a let-down.

This isn't to say, though, that Venice isn't a highly enjoyable monster-of-the-week 'cause it is. It's a nice old-fashioned Who romp complete with shape-shifting monsters, girls with questionable goals, and an exploding house.

Oh, and this:

Possibly my favorite moment in the episode. :) I love it when the psychic paper goes slightly strange.

Most of this episode felt like one long in-joke, mostly to Casanova since the story kicks off with one of Matt Smith's trademark wandering q-and-a sessions relating to a chicken he owes Casanova. Then, since Mrs. Fish was Casanova's mother (and quite a terrible one as I recall), the whole thing just seems tied up in a knot. Rather like the Supernatural episode I just watched from the second season called Tall Tales including a long in-joke which I think was largely at the expense of ex-X-Files writer John Shiban. Not that that made it any less funny!

It also seemed to me that Venice owed something -- perhaps largely unattributed -- to the old 4th Doctor E-Space story State of Decay. This may be because it's the only other DW episode I can think of to do with vampires. And I always liked Decay.

Venice never felt, to me, as though it quite found its pace. It never seemed really able to make up its mind as to what it wanted to do: did it want to be a story about the missing girl? about the vampire students? about aliens? about shapeshifting vampire aliens? about vampire aliens? about aliens taking over the world? about Amy and Rory hammering out the details of their relationship?

There was a lot of narrative ground here that needed to be hammered out and I think Amy's Choice did a lot of it better, but Venice was a fun 45 minutes while we waited for the story to move on.

And the last scene between Mrs. Fish and the Doctor at the end of the pier was, I have to say, fantastic. It could have been loud and shouty and over the top and dramatic -- and instead it was quite quiet and rather sad and resigned. Whatever the Doctor has done or has failed to do or will fail to do or whatever -- the consequences are clearly enormous and growing day-by-day. Which makes it all the harder to understand why he's still fiddling about waiting for cracks to show up instead of going in search of them.

Perhaps he's just waiting for a fun night out?

Photo Monday

'Tis the season -- for wrapping paper games!

friday fun times

"Where would be the fun in that?"

Found at Not Impossible, Just a Bit Unlikely

So, do I have your attention now? Good, good. It is Wednesday after all and you might not have had your coffee yet. :)

Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone. Once again, spoilers, lots of spoilers, dozens of spoilers -- well, maybe not dozens, but certainly a few. Read at your own risk and/or discretion.

I'm a little torn here because in my notes for this post my first line reads -- and I quote -- "!!!"

I'm no longer sure what this means -- possibly it is just a wordless fangirl squee at the general awesomeness of things or possibly I meant something in specific.

Let me say first off that I was not thrilled when I heard that the Angels were coming back in Season 5. Blink is one of the all-time top ten hands-motherfucking-down best things that the new series has done and I simply couldn't picture any way that the they could come back and not slightly tarnish their prior terror.

Fortunately, they didn't. I can't say that I like either of the two-parters as well as I like Blink but they are pretty damn cool. (And Blink...well, how often do you come up with something as deal-breaking as that? The answer is the next season with Midnight, but that only goes to prove how bad-ass DW always is. :))

I was also a little prejudiced against Time of Angels at least because it opens with River Song. Dr. Song and I have a...complex relationship. She annoyed the ever-loving hell out of me in the library two-parter. I couldn't wait for her to die and cheered when she did.

Okay, that's a little mean and I don't mean to be a hater here; she didn't annoy me that much -- I just couldn't resist parodying Queen Eleanor in Lion in Winter honestly -- but she did get on my nerves a little. And it even wasn't so much her as it was the depth of angst between her and 10. We weren't talkin' a little slosh on the floor here, an 'Oops, I'll get that with a napkin,' this was freakin' thigh-high, 'I need waders'-time. And since I didn't think either of the library episodes were that strong -- although I am going to have to revisit them post Angels/Stone -- it just got to be a little much.

The upshot of all this is that I have no idea what "!!!" might mean -- possibly I was amused by the height of River's shoes? (They are great stuff, I have to say -- plus I adore the fact that, as I have heard on the Tumblr rumor-tree, Matt Smith asked to have them left on the TARDIS set, so they're around... Somewhere.)

Anyway, if you haven't seen Time of Angels yet -- the upshot is this: River leaves the Doctor a message in an ancient Gallifreyan tablet: "Come get me, sweetie." She breaks into a high-security vault on what seems like a...cruise ship? does something mysterious, and blows herself out an airlock for the Doctor to rescue. The ship crashes, River lands the TARDIS nearby, and invites the Doctor to help her investigate it -- with the help of a crack team of CoE clerics who, in this future, bear a closer resemblance to the Marines in ALIENS than they do to the "cake or death" squad. River and the Marines know what they're going after, though: there's a Weeping Angel in the wreckage of the crashed ship. They want it.

Aplan Mortarium.

This is basically the set up for the whole two-parter -- there is, of course, due elaboration: the ship has not merely crashed into the side of a mountain, it has crashed into the remains of a civilization, the Aplans. And what they have to go into are not caves but the labyrinths of the dead. A giant, huge, enormous, maze-like underground mortuary. Fun times with the Doctor!

Not only that, but it turns out Angels can become their image. Moving, still, doesn't matter. Taking a picture of an Angel means you now have an ittle bittie tiny Angel of your very own. Isn't that a comforting thought. And Amy -- poor Amy -- gets to be the one to find this out as she ends up trapped in a trailer with the Angel on video. They thought they had it pinned by leaving the camera on it. Not so much, as it turns out.

Moving on into the Labyrinth of Doom, the Doctor and River are cheerfully discussing the mortuary habits of Aplans, the structure of the mortuary, so on and so forth until, as they move further and further back, the Doctor realises that the statues are not those of Aplans. They can't be because Aplans have two heads. All the statues have one. Bad. This is bad.

I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow here: my job is not to spoiler the entire two-parter here. Lets just say that Flesh and Stone amps up the action a little bit by possessing Amy, bringing Angel Bob (yes, there is an Angel Bob and he is not as nice as his name might imply) into things in a big way, and just generally fucking around with shit. The Doctor does bad-ass things; many Marines turn into toast, including Father Octavian; River is mysterious; and we leave on a "huh" note, as the glorious Mr. Izzard might say.

River and her Shoes.

So here's my thoughts: for one thing, River. I think I am nearly at peace with River Song. She just kinda...pwns. All the freakin' time. Walking in the shoes has to have been a complete triumph for Alex Kingston for one thing. I surely couldn't do it. And I now completely understand the fan babble about "who is River Song." I have seen guesses ranging from her being a future regeneration of the Doctor/the Master/the Rani....I don't think I've seen the Meddling Monk in there yet, but I think I do remember Rassilon. Also Susan, Romana, and Jenny. Ditto some future time-fracture version of Rose or Jack. Lets see...some externalized physical manifestation of the TARDIS? I think that one's my favorite although I think it least likely to be true.

Personally, I'm not sure what I think. She is clearly, much like Ianto Jones, "so much more than the teaboy." She is a released prisoner, for one thing; the leader of the clerics, Father Octavian, is her guard while she's on parole to do this "job" for reasons or reason unknown. Seems likely that the "reason" might just be to get the good ol' Doc in touch with either the Angels or with the latest and most wonderful iteration of our repeating crack in the universe. But it's never quite clear. It is clear that she's a liar; she has told many people many stories; and that she was put in jail for killing a man: 'A good man. A hero to many.' Hmm. Lets see. Who do we know who fits that description? Wait -- I can think of someone! Interesting times ahead, folks.

It was great to see Iain Glen as Father Octavian; he always has so much fun with this kind of role and it was great to see him to a slightly more humane version of his Resident Evil scientist. He managed to be coldhearted and still quite sympathetic so that by his final fate, it was still rather disturbing.

One thing I did want made clear, though: these Angels seem to kill people. Like, really to kill them -- bang on the head, you're dead. The Angels in Blink didn't -- as the Doctor said, "They just transport you back in time and let you live to death." (Okay, maybe he didn't quite say that. It's close enough.) So -- do Angels get to choose what they do? Plus, there's Angel Bob. He starts out as a cleric, goes 'round a corner to see what's happening, and the next thing you know he's communicating as the voice of the Angels. And if you think that's not creepy -- well, you're a stronger person than I am. Bob is deeply disquieting: the Angels are not mindless, but neither are they creatures with whom we can empathise. The Angels talk; the Angels laugh; the Angels torture Amy because they think it's funny. Clearly, these are not meant to be monsters with whom we sneakingly sympathise, like the odd crippled Dalek, the semi-Cybered (like Ianto's Lisa), or the nameless creature in Midnight who doesn't even have words of its own. The Angels are next door to being truly inhuman. They are certainly inhumane.

Amy and her new best friend.

And then, if all that weren't bad enough -- the Angels fuckin' move. This is deeply unfair and very clever. Forcing Amy into a position where she has to keep her eyes closed and move among Angels to get to safety -- of course, she can't see them and, of course, we as viewers aren't really there. So the Angels are free to shift. And they do and it is really really creepy.

Beyond my blatant fangirling -- :) -- there are some interesting story arc things going on here, too. Amy's memory is certainly chief among them -- as mentioned in Victory of the Daleks, her memory doesn't seem to cover quite everything it should: like not knowing the Daleks for example. That's something even the British government couldn't successfully cover up with "something in the water." But there continue to be odd gaps and holes in her memory: side-effects from living so close to the crack in the universe for so long? something simply "nifty" about Amy, as there was something different about Donna to enable the metacrisis? time-travel rub-off? Who knows. Or, rather, he doesn't.

There is also -- not to belabor a point -- River. My guess is she is a failsafe: if the Doctor doesn't do what he's supposed to do or has to do or needs to do...she's there either to make sure he does or make sure the entire universe doesn't go boom because he can't. This makes her far more interesting than I initially thought she was. Honestly, I wasn't that interested in some putative romance of the Doctor's that was over or over before it began or hadn't begun yet -- this, on the other hand, I can get into. And, of course, her closing line is sheer David Twohy-style goodness:



Doctor Who Flesh and Stone Part 12/13
Uploaded by DrWhoBadDalek59. - Dramatic race and crash videos.

I do apologise for the ad at the beginning, but this was the best I could do. So River knows what's going to happen, knows it as something that has happened, but that's about all we get. Perhaps it was something good but -- she's the one who is on her way back to jail for having killed a "good man." So perhaps not, too.

If you'd like to know what worries me here, though, it's the Doctor's line: "Time can be rewritten." And the smile. As a dedicated fangirl, I find both disturbing. Given 10's dedication to self-flagellation for the Time War and, well, pretty much everything that followed it, I'm foreseeing some problems here if the Doctor gets the chance truly to rewrite time. Of course, we know it can't happen or, if it does, it will happen only with "horrible, ironic consequences," as Hayley from American Dad said in very different circumstances.

Overall, these are two of my favorite episodes from the new season so far -- they're beautifully put together -- a little busy in the middle maybe what with the garden and the running and the clerics and all the Angels running around together, but the end is just beautiful. It reminds me of so many other shots from the new series that I can't really begin to list them, starting, of course, with 10 and Rose's farewell at Bad Wolf Bay.

Edit: Okay, I now don't sound like I wanted to cut poor River Song in "pieces" and the paragraph spacing is right. Maybe it didn't annoy anyone else -- but it annoyed the hell out of me.

Photo Monday

Stair post.	Boston community gardens.	Individual plot in ditto.
Willow tree. Not Ambrose Bierce-style.	The Muddy River.	Ditto.
Knothole.	Anthony's Townhouse Christmas lights.	'Cause this isn't creepy at all.
Our new hallway under construction.	New front stairs, ditto.	Underside.
Landing to 2nd floor.	Exposed bricks.	Landing and bricks.
More bricks.

friday fun times

More special short Doctor Who goodness that I only just found out about because sometimes I am not the most thorough fangirl in existence.





I love this one. I think I like it more than Time Crash that I put up last week. And I love it partially because as one of the commentors on the Youtube link says: "The Doctor can save the universe but he sure can't write music!"

But I also love it because I love the audience. I love the looks on the kids' -- and a good chunk of the adults' -- faces. For the space of those 6 minutes and some odd seconds, the Doctor is there. Talking to them. And that is just awesome.

"The alligator speaks the truth!"

Here's something cheerful for midweek. Expect chuntering about Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone this weekend. Plus another few episodes 'cause I've nearly hit the end of the season! And then I'll have nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs, endlessly discuss the episodes, and...oh, yeah, catch up on little details like Being Human, Primeval, Survivors, Supernatural, Bones, and...just whatever else I think of!




Y'know what kind of makes this for me? It's Matt Smith's little pop in at the end -- like: "Hi! Here I am! And...what am I doing here again?"

Photo Monday

Running a bit tired today, folks. Torn between writing totally ranty post for Wednesday about recent really really really poorly thought out article in the Guardian's CiF section and writing about the weeping angels two-parter in season 5. We'll see what happens Tuesday night, I guess!

Charles at Night.	Harvard boathouse.	Ditto #1.
Bridge pillars.	Part of Mordor? Blade Runner?	Kitchen with Anna. Or Anna with Kitchen.
Basically, a bench.	BU boathouse at BU walkover to the esplanade.	Cambridge bank and tree.
Boston Public Garden.	Keep your eye on it.	Lion and lilies on the ether monument in the Garden.

friday fun times

For the rest of us who don't get to catch the Children in Need appeal live...

"You Do Not Require Tea?"

Victory of the Daleks.

Fair warning: There are spoilers. No tea. No jammie dodgers. No apples. Just spoilers. Feel free to provide your own snacks.


So I don't have as much to say about Victory as I did about Hour or Beast Below -- and sure as hell not as much as I have to say about Time of Angels or Flesh and Stone.

Mostly I think Victory can be summed up as follows: mandatory Dalek episode. A little earlier in the season than most. Nice guest star turns. Standard Dalek fare. Perfectly satisfactory.

The War Room Team. Plus tea lady.

Ok, I do have a few other things I can say about it. (You knew I did, right?)

The Doctor arrives in Blitz London in response to an urgent call -- literally, a phone call -- from Winston Churchill only to find that the British have decided that Daleks are going to be their secret weapon against the Germans. They've just been freshly invented by a helpful scientist named Bracewell. Yeah. Like that's really going to end well. Events transpire and the Doctor ends up freaking out, pounding on a Dalek who is trying to offer him tea, and shouting, "You are my enemy! And I am yours! You are everything I despise!....I am the Doctor! And you are the Daleks!"

Turns out this is just what the Daleks had in mind -- they have a progenitor unit that refuses to recognize the units already in existence as "real" Daleks: they aren't genetically pure enough after surviving the last Dalek holocaust. The Doctor's testimony that they are Daleks is enough for the progenitor to spit out a whole new generation of (brightly colored for no apparent reason) Daleks. They immediately zap the impure Daleks out of existence and start the old popular Dalek game of "Exterminating Things."

There isn't a lot here that you haven't seen in....well, pretty much every other Dalek episode ever made. The Daleks show up; yell "Exterminate!" a lot; there is a plan; the Doctor discovers and foils said plan. All the changes are rung quite pleasantly here, but there's nothing wildly new.

There are some interesting quirks: Bracewell, the inspired scientist who "invented" the Daleks, turns out to be a Dalek creation himself, powered by an internal unit called an "oblivion continuum." Is that not the most awesome thing you have heard of ever? Bill Paterson, who plays Bracewell with his usual delicacy of touch and enjoyment, gives the character more depth than the episode really calls for, which really helps flesh the last quarter of the show out.

When the Daleks try -- as they inevitably do -- to destroy the Earth by detonating Bracewell, the Doctor and Amy try to keep him from blowing up by reminding him of the years he has lived as a human, reminding him, essentially, that he doesn't have to be a tool of the Daleks. What's interesting here is that the Doctor leaps immediately to bad memories: he asks Bracewell to focus on the memory of the men he saw die during World War I and on the pain and loss he has suffered. Bracewell is still on the verge of exploding when Amy decides to ask him about the girl he never got to be with -- Bracewell tells her about a girl named Dorabella and his memories of their relationship -- and the oblivion continuum disarms itself.

What I thought was really interesting about this episode was -- again -- how 11 skips straight to pain and suffering, particularly with Bracewell. It's also interesting that he starts to whale on the Dalek with a lead pipe, but understandable given his past relationship with the Daleks. I don't know if there's a lot more to be said about it other than that it seems like more evidence that 11 is a more solidly dark Doctor than we've had for awhile.

The other interesting trick here -- other than the reappearance of the crack, of course -- is Amy's memory. She has no memory of the events of The Stolen Earth and Journey's End. In addition to her other oddities -- she could find Prisoner Zero; the crack in her wall -- this seems like one more thing that might line Amy up for a Donna-like fate. I really really hope this isn't the case, I have to say.

But, yeah, that's about all I got for the first Dalek episode; I'm sure there will be more.

So until next time...

Photo Monday

Kitteh in "sag" mode.	These are the pictures...	...you get...
...when I'm sitting at the kitchen table and don't want to move.	Kitteh in her new favorite seat.	Candles.
Ditto, working out lighting.	Statuary. Such as it is.	The orange tissue had been around amber-scented candles. Kitty smelled great for a while.
Commentary on the Hynes Convention Center T Stop Boyleston St. entrance. That isn't an entrance.	Glazed leaves.	View over Charles River.
Anna and clouds.	Hawk hunting.