Monthly Archives: September 2013

September 23, 2013 · 4:00 PM

New Who in Conversation: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone S05E04/05

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 7 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun! Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

flesh-and-stone“The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone”

Season five, episodes four and five

The Doctor – Matt Smith

Amy Pond – Karen Gillan

River Song – Alex Kingston

TEHANI:

I find myself really struggling with what to say about this two-parter. So much of what is to come in the future of the show has roots here!

TANSY:

Spoilers, sweetie!

amy_river_docTEHANI:

But River! When I first watched these, of course I had no idea about the events of “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead”, so River was this brand new character who apparently had a huge history with the Doctor and I was just learning about it. In light of later events (of which we shall not speak), the relationship between Amy and River in this story is FASCINATING, and her easy manner with the Doctor, the TARDIS, the past and future, well, it’s just marvellous, particularly this time around. That said, River Song’s timeline completely bewilders me. The first bit with the diary seems to imply River and the Doctor have had some intervening adventures offscreen. But then that’s later debunked! So confusing!

TANSY:

Best not to think about it, really. I think it’s great that you came in with this as your first River story – after all, we were told only in the previous story that the Doctor has also been friends with Churchill for ages. You don’t always have to have seen those adventures. One of the best things about Doctor Who (and something new people often don’t believe or understand) is that the massive weight of 50 years of continuity actually hardly matters. It’s always about new adventures, new self-contained stories – and we’re never going to see absolutely everything the Doctor gets up to.

TEHANI:

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I often assume that anytime we meet characters it seems the Doctor has a history with, I just assume there have actually BEEN adventures with them in Classic Who – works really well for newbies! 🙂 Continue reading →

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September 20, 2013 · 8:07 PM

New Who in Conversation: The Beast Below / Victory of the Daleks S05E02/03

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 7 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun! Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

Doctor-Who-The-Beast-Below-1“The Beast Below”

Season five, episode two

The Doctor – Matt Smith

Amy Pond – Karen Gillan

TANSY:

This is one of those favourite stories of mine that I tend to forget because of so many other favourites in this season – one of the things I especially love is the set up. The whole concept of a Starship UK, and the way a whole culture tries to recreate its past on a moving ship is fascinating to me, and all the little details of it make the place feel real – even if it is based on a lie.

DAVID:

The fact that there is something not quite right with Starship UK is evident right from the start, I love the way that it is the children who are aware of it and have built their own little rules to navigate it safely. The Smilers are delightfully creepy, too. 

doctor-who-beast-below_smilersTANSY:

The Smilers are the reason Raeli can’t rewatch this episode! It has a real Stephen King vibe at the beginning, all sinister fairground motifs and children being aware of dangers while adults are blithely oblivious (or pretending to be so – not sure which is scarier)

DAVID:

What a fibber the Doctor is!

“An important thing. In fact, Thing One. We are observers only. That’s the one rule I’ve always stuck to in all my travels. I never get involved in the affairs of other peoples or planets. “

How he said that with a straight face, I have no idea. Continue reading →

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September 20, 2013 · 5:48 PM

Okay germs, you can go now…

I sent the baby to daycare yesterday with no inkling at all he might potentially be unwell. 2pm they rang saying he had a high temp and was grumpy and wouldn’t sleep. I was about to walk into the hairdresser so husband went to collect him. When I arrived home later, poor bub was crashed out on his daddy, hot and clearly not well. He ended up in bed by 5.30am, slept til 1.45am, fed, had some pain relief, went back to sleep until 5.30am. Took him to the doctor this morning and he has a raging ear infection again. *sigh* Back on antibiotics, poor bub, but already perking up, which is good!

We’re really hoping to get the last of the sickness out of the way before we go visiting the family on the holidays!

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September 18, 2013 · 9:23 PM

So remember those germ buckets?

Between them and the marking, I’ve lost the last three weeks even more comprehensively than the month before that! Time, what is it? I had two batches of marking come in with pretty much the same deadline, and started a new sessional job as well. Naturally, that’s when the kids dropped like stones. Poor Master Ten ended up in the emergency room for five hours with suspected appendicitis (it wasn’t , but they couldn’t rule it out – still don’t know whether it was appendix related or something else!). As husband was away, that meant I too was in emergency room. With baby and Master Three in tow (managed to farm Miss Seven off to a friend’s, where she stayed overnight, which was great). And no book, no iPad, a dying phone and no charger – very poorly prepared! We got through it. All the boys were really very good, so I must be doing something right!

Poor Bubs wasn’t 100% at the time, and he went downhill pretty quick. I thought initially it might be teething, or maybe a lingering issue from his ear infection, but it just hung around and hung around. Temps, a nose that was so snotty he couldn’t even FEED properly on one day, and generally grumpiness and clinginess. Eventually took him to the doctor, but he said there was no infection so just had to persevere. So we did. At the same time, while husband was away, I sleep deprived myself in order to break the baby of the nighttime waking habits – the first two nights were awful, but things did improve and now, it seems, we have a baby who sleeps from about 7pm to between 5 and 6am – which is totally something I can live with! Should have “fixed” him months ago!

And in there I wrangled four kids, got started on the marking (very very slowly) and tried to keep up with CBCA reading and FableCroft work as well. Something had to give, and that was housework! Bit the bullet and got a cleaner in for a couple of hours to fix the house enough I felt happy with the baby wandering about on the floors. Which he is doing TERRIBLY CAPABLY – we now have a proper crawler, and a flipping STAIR CLIMBER! I ordered a stair gate for the big stairs which arrived yesterday. A bit of peace of mind, though the two small sets into the lounge/study are still a little concerning – not so much the going up, but the recent attempts at DOWN are downright frightening. I think it will most likely end with tears, and can only hope not blood or broken bones!

Then, right as I was ramped up into the last three days of marking, I started to feel unwell myself. Initially thought it might have been wisdom teeth, then it migrated around my jaw and settled in my throat. Owwwwww. A few terrible nights’ sleep, lots of pain, mild temps and feeling of nausea. Panadol got me through the marking though, and though I did go to the doctor, was again told no infection so nothing to be done but treat the symptoms. *sigh*

Anyway, that’s all done now. Still have sessional and forum monitoring, but no marking for a couple of weeks (before another blitz). It looks like I have a contract to write a new unit for one of my unis though, which is pretty cool. Even cooler is that the bulk of that work won’t really start until the main marking is over, which is good! And somewhere in there, I have four books to get out in the next six weeks, and of course CBCA reading continues, as does Aurealis Awards wrangling – busy busy! But what’s new? 🙂

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