Uh, sports
It’s not a good idea to visit Karori twice in a week unless you live there. The 30-minute walk is good, but the retired people shopping in the supermarkets are extremely slow-moving and suspicious. Their looks of blank hostility remind me of sheep. Sheep with a grudge. It was such a nice day, but the parks I passed were utterly empty. Don’t people still play, uh, sports?
It’s hard to watch Doctor Who when sitting next to a very, very cynical person.
July 21, 2008 at 12:57 pm
OK, I apologise for being a cynic, and having watched too much Dr Who in the past not to find some of this 21st C stuff alarming, as plot developments go. “Dumbing down for the audience” doesn’t appeal to me!
I’m over the enforced “broken laptop” net-holiday now, for anyone who’s been trying to find me..
July 21, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Well, the first season episode Dalek was terrific and not dumbed down at all. I’ve not seen much of the the later stuff, but from what I’ve read, as an example, the decision to cast John Simm as The Master was a mistake – he’s a good actor, and would play a villain well, but there was a rumour for a while that Charles Dance would play him and he would have been perfect with the cultivated disdain that he can project. Too much of a yoof focus I fear – the appeal of Doctor Who is/shoule be that it is/was a family show, meaning that it could appeal to – and scare – both children and adults and have them hiding behind the couch.
Funny thing about Tom Baker was that he could be both funny and plausibly fit into really scary episodes. His eccentricity, I think, did not lighten the stories, but enhanced their essential strangeness. (I even remember a few John Pertwee stories from their first broadcasts if you want an indicator of my age.)
Good to hear that your incommunicability is ended, KT. I’ll see you this weekend.
July 22, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Doctor Who since 2005 has been extremely inconsistent in quality. It usually depends on who the writer of each episode is. Russell T Davies, unfortunately the most prolific writer, tends to focus on such things as farting aliens (Aliens of London and World War Three) and aliens with human faces on their bottoms (Love & Monsters). Steven Moffat, unfortunately one of the least prolific writers, has written two of my favourite episodes (The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink). Unfortunately my other favourite writer Robert Shearman has only done one episode (Dalek).
It’s sort of like a pyramid with Russell T Davies as the base and Robert Shearman at the tip. I think very, very cynical people should see what the higher regions of the pyramid have to offer before judging the series as a whole.