2008..in review

So how was your year?

Mine was the usual mixed bag. As I accelerate away from 2008 and into 2009, I thought it was worth looking back and toting up the high and lowlights.

On the Upside:

New Music. The likes of British Sea Power have made this year more entertaining than it would have been. When I was a teenager (some time back in the early 1700s, according to my personnel file at work, which I discovered today has my year of birth as 1699) music was the most important thing in the world. Less so these days. However, there are some excellent bands out there and if anyone feels like recommending some, please feel free.

Good TV. I've watched less of it and spent more time catching up on shows via services like Hulu and Joost. Nevertheless, a cracking season of Doctor Who and the revival of Survivors, accompanied by Fringe and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the ongoing presence of Top Gear and an assortment of decent documentaries from the dear old BBC have meant I still have a use for a TV set.

The Wrinklies. Denizens of an internet forum, or two, and decent thinking people who occasionally read and comment here. Marvellous chaps, all of them.

Facebook. I despise MySpace, but have apparently fallen into the trap of having a Facebook account and posting stuff there. As a social networking site it has been remarkably inefficient for the most part, but it has allowed me to kind of sort of reconnect with a few old friends.

Published! I finally got off my arse and wrote some stuff for a variety of outlets. I got paid - not very much, I admit, but it counts - and I also got to write some Doctor Who stuff for The Celestial Toybox, which is probably what I'm most proud of (unless you count an ongoing fanfic idea that I don't seem to be able to stop tinkering with and probably deserves a blog of it's own). Let's be honest, it's a small start, but after years of doubt and buggering about I achieved that small start, and I'm delighted. The new year's resolution for 2009 is to write more, and better.

Work. I recently came to the conclusion that the company I work for has no clue what I do or why it's important. Last year, I came to the same conclusion but from the opposite end and it left me feeling awful. It's hard to have a lot of responsibility and be under pressure with no way to pass any of the burden off; it's harder still to never be recognised for it. This year, this week in fact, I realised how much freedom I have. If they don't know what I'm doing or how I'm doing it that gives me vast leeway to do it my way. So while the focus of my team is on client and customer, I'm burrowing off into the infrastructure and learning how and why it all works.

Plus, the Band. The Relo Rockers, for whom I write the odd lyric here and there, has got me praise for the thing I love. And what praise! "Why is he here? He's brilliant" said one, while another told me "What's someone as creative as you doing working in that department?"

So, at this point, they can say what they want to me. I have a plan.


On the Downside:

If you've read the blog you know. If you don't know, read the blog.

There are more ups than downs.

And I wanted a pithy comment to put here, something to round it all out, say something simple and clear, but it hasn't been that sort of year. I've got a difficult and painful time ahead of me, nothing that 2009 holds is going to be easy. In fact, I think most of it is going to be quite unpleasant. I can be cowed by this and hide under the covers, or I can admit my faults and failings, patch them as best I can and get on with it.

The only way to meet the year is head on.

Come on, then, 2009. If you think you're hard enough.

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The Next Doctor

I can encapsulate this Christmas special thusly:

It was Doctor Who - wonderful nonsense.

There. Done. Assorted fellow fans have griped about the ending, and I don't disagree with them entirely. Here's why:

The Cyber-King is pointless. It is just a huge stompy steampunk robot. The Doctor's babbled explanation that it's a dreadnought class ship with a conversion factory inside is mystifying because it comes out of nowhere - (however, see later for Amusing Fan Theory #23811) - these are Cybusmen, after all, and he doesn't know that much about them (however, see later for Amusing Fan Theory #431), and also the monster with the conversion factory is only useful if it stops to capture people to convert them. There are really two reasons to have the vast stompy robot.

1: It's impressive as all hell. Cyberzilla. This is pure spectacle, a triumph for The Mill, all very Iron Gianty.

2: It pulls the bad guys away from the humans and isolates them. The Doctor is forced to ascend to face Ms. Hartigan and is therefore also isolated. The human drama goes on at street level, while the gods duke it out up above.

The interesting stuff, for me, is that the clash of elements and concepts. The ending is very Heaven vs Hell. We have seen how the cybermen have been lurking in the sewers (again! is it a tradition with them? "We're in London, lads, let's hide in the sewers!"), which they have transformed into their base of steampunk operations, but this isn't the forge of Vulcan...it's closer to the scenes we saw in Isengard, or in some of Bosch's paintings. It's an underworld, it's Hell. Filling it with terrified innocents is rather a blunt metaphor for what happens when people seek revenge. Then the cybermen rise, with a scarlet woman riding the head of the Beast, and we're ini Revelations territory. Everything about the cybes at this point is about the Underworld - even the fact that they are steel, and riding a giant made of iron, Ms. Hartigan is wearing red (a ferrous colour, as well as the colour of flame and passion)... it's all biblical.

And it goes on!

Having risen, the CyberKing is confronted by the Doctor in a balloon. Here we have the element of air vs the element of Earth, or Heaven facing down Hell. Hell is legion, Heaven is just the one bloke. But we also know that the Doctor is more than a flesh and blood individual; more and more we've had it demonstrated that the Doctor is a set of ideas and principles; when Lake has his brain rewired by the infostamp, he absorbs the qualities of The Doctor and then becomes him. So the Doctor isn't necessarily a person, he can be a concept, an ethereal notion.

Then we get the Doctor's offer: come with me if you want to live.

He's got to make that offer. It's the Good Guy Rule. Only a villain or an anti-hero can kill without first offering the chance for redepmtion or peace. Even if the Doctor knows the answer before he makes the offer, he has to make it otherwise he's "just another alien threat". That we all know, as he does, what the answer will be is neither here nor there. Everyone believes he's the hero, he has to act like the hero. He also, as he points out, gets forced into being the executioner.

That's the price that the 10th Doctor has paid for his freedom. If the monsters have nightmares about the Doctor, it's because they force him to become the thing they fear the most. As fans, we know what the Doctor really wants. He wants to go and have fun, preferably with people he loves, and that is constantly denied him. He says that his companions leave because they find someone else, or because they have to, and he knows that his life - and the presence of the monsters, and what they make him into - is why his companions leave. The anger he shows in the moment before he zaps the CyberKing, is because yet again he's being forced to take responsibility for the actions of monsters; while the Doctor wouldn't ever turn his back on someone in need, he's becoming tired of the price he has to pay.

Which is why he accepts dinner. And why he hangs around for the applause.

The Amusing Fan Ideas.

How Does The Doctor Know So Bloody Much?
- like, how did he know about the CyberKing?

The answer is that he doesn't. The Doctor stumbles into a situation and stares at it for a few seconds, then starts talking. There are two possibilities here:

1: He's making it up. Who'd know the difference?

2: The TARDIS has all the answers, and is feeding them to him. After all, the TARDIS is alive and a vastly powerful time machine with telepathic circuits that can get into the heads of humans and aliens alike. There's no reason it couldn't have had a wander around in the Cyberleader's head, or the heads of the Cybermen when the Doctor met and spoke with them.

Let's not forget, the Doctor may not actually speak English. He might be speaking Gallifreyan and we're just hearing English because of the Tardis. This has to hold true for all of the monsters he meets too - the TARDIS has access to their brains because it's translating for him. If it can read the language centers, it can probably read everything else too - including memories.

Thus, when the TARDIS has information that it knows the Doctor wants, it supplies that information. However, the TARDIS has a sense of the dramatic; it never tells the Doctor the entire story and it never gives him all the answers he needs. Thus, it occurs to me that the Doctor is, in fact, being strung along by the TARDIS for the ship's own amusement.

Why Did The Cybusmen Build a CyberKing?

Mostly for all of the reasons in the main post above, I think, but here's another theory.

Since the events of Silver Nemesis the universe has technically been without Cybermen. These alternate versions, on entering the Doctor Who universe, have encountered a phenomena unique to that reality: the morphogenic field.

The Morphogenic Field is one of the things that binds the universe together and ensures that most aliens are humanoid and most of them speak to communicate instead of using lights, hand gestures, complex dances, smells etc. It also ensures that certain things keep happening; it's the source of Narrative Causality. In this case, for example, the reason that the Cybermen build a giant to go stomping over London is because of the following threads of Narrative Causality:

1: Godzilla. Giant monsters flatten cities after rising from improbably shallow bodies of water.

2: Gog and Magog, the giants and protectors of London.

3: The Cybermen of our universe might have created a Cyberking, and the Cybusmen are slowly being changed by exposure to the Morphogenic Field.

4: You've got to have giant robots. Where the technology exists to have a giant robot, a giant robot is the outcome. Humans of a certain type seem irresistably drawn to giant robots.

anyway, that's that.

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'Twas Christmas Day in the Workhouse

I thought today might be a bit rough.

You know, what with one thing and another. It turned out not to be.

Various denizens of the apartment complex were merry, one guy dancing in his doorway having attacked the Christmas spirit with a couple of straws. The Soon To Be Ex Wife came over with the kids. They bought me a kettle, a posh one with a base unit that turns itself off. I like those.

In terms of loot, I also scored some rather fine tea (and have drunk a pot of Chai by myself, me really knowing how to push the boat out in no uncertain terms). I also have a Starbucks and Barnes and Noble Giftcard. Barnes and Noble will shortly be in receipt of their card in exchange for a couple of books; they don't have the range that Amazon has but since any books I buy in the next year are either going on ebay or being shipped home, I will wait for making landfall in the UK before attacking the books on the Amazon wishlist.

Anyway, I ate a non-christmas dinner and I have watched a bit of TV - on Joost, as it happens - and have done a bit of reading.

I'm tired now. The last couple of weeks have been exhausting, but today I'm really feeling it. I shall sleep shortly; assuming I don't pick up The Alienist by Caleb Carr, because it's a psychological profiling hunting serial killers book set in the late part of the 19th century, and because it's a foodie book. The author constructs some truely astounding meals, and reading them is actually nicer than eating them would be.

This is my third christmas on my own, which isn't bad considering my age, and I find that just for once the hoopla and the fuss isn't being missed at all. I'll take the peace and quiet, thanks, and hope that if you're reading this your coming year is also peaceful and quiet.

Merry Christmas.

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Domestic bliss?

I haven't decided what to call the new place yet.

For those interested, I'm living in a single bedroom apartment in a small complex in Phoenix. I have four rooms: the kitchen is tiny and I have a walk in closet that is nearly as big, so I count them as half a room each.

It looks a bit like the picture above. In fact, that's my sofa.

I have, of course already altered it. That arm chair? Right to the table where the PC is currently located. The complex has wifi, so that's what's connecting me to this. The kitchen is to the left, and the bed (which offers superior corrective massage when I'm out) you can just see to the right.

In a fit of domestic pride, I cleaned the oven when I got home from work today. This is partly me being house proud and partly me not wanting a colossal cleaning bill when I move out.

In the meantime, between worrying vaguely about laundry and sorting out all the tedious ephemera of changing addresses, I am attempting to write. It's not easy. The laundry, while not pressing, weighs on my mind. And to be perfectly honest, the bed is like sleeping on sticks wrapped around granite, so I could do with a kip. Perhaps the couch?

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Mutating Language

It sort of bothers me when people take a phrase and get it wrong, and then defend their wrongness. It bothers me even more when they claim that the language is changing and that I should "get with it" or somesuch nonsense.

Recently encountered howlers:

"that would be a bit of a damp squid."
- the word is "squib". Saying a squid is damp is...silly. Of course it's damp. It lives under water.

"Lip-singing"
- have you tried singing without lips? It's "Lip-synch", because you synchronise the movement of your lips to the playback.

"to be pacific"
- because you are not an ocean, and because you mean "specific".

"irregardless"
- double negative hell-word.

I think particular ire should be reserved for those who insist on propagating their ignorance and defying correction. I don't think we need go as far as pillorying, or burning at the stake, but I do think a rolled-up newspaper to the forehead might be instructive.

Of course, anyone using the word "irregardless" probably also uses the phrase "pro-active" and that's a shooting offence.

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Heroes: Fugitives

And it looks like they've hired a writer for the next season. OK, I will be watching.

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

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More Sarah Connor

"Earthlings Welcome Here" is the finale of the current run; Sarah believes she has a lead to a company that is developing Skynet type technology, via blogger, and Riley strays from her mission somewhat.

The long and the short is: good ep. Through Riley, we get to see the effect of the transition between Skynet future and our present. Out of her environment, Riley behaves very much like someone who has been institutionalised. Her responses to the various stimuli of her life are not always appropriate and she has great difficulty fitting in. Even her interaction with John is becoming more strained and tense, which Cameron has noted. Riley, friendless and disconnected, locks herself in a bathroom and slashes her wrists. We are not reassured as to her fate.

Sarah's fate also remains unresolved, and as the widget over there --> tells us, it's 60 days until the next episode.

Crap.

It's a very low key cliffhanger. In both cases, there's genuinely something to be worried about because for both characters the future is uncertain. They have threatened two people we have grown to care for.

Riley, though a secondary character and not one I have really paid much attention to before, is really pretty good. For a while I hoped that she was representative of the normal life that John Connor wasn't going to get. As it turns out, she's a honeytrap and just there to distract him from his relationship with Cameron. Nevertheless, Riley has more to her than this simple mission and our current revelation - that she was never a soldier - is nicely portrayed by a flash-forward to her marginal life in the corners of John Connor's campaign and then a flash back to her arriving in present day California and exploring the simple pleasures of a not so upscale motel room.

Sarah, meanwhile, is chasing UFOs and UFO believers because of some drone type technology. The interesting thing here is that Sarah once more lingers over the people she was; we have images of Sarah Connor in a waitress's uniform (which is what she did for a living way back in Terminator) and a much harder version in the scrubs she wore in the mental institution, complete with spinning knife and "No Fate" carved into a tabletop.

So who is Sarah Connor? Like Riley, she's essentially alone. John is exhibiting greater and greater independance, Cameron can protect him far more efficiently than she can...is her usefulness as a parent at an end?

And are they really doing this? Come on! Surely this "children grow up and leave home and stop needing you" stuff is more suited to Gilmore Girls. Surely this is the dreaded Sope! much reviled by Doctor Who fandom?

Yeah. It really is. And it's really nicely done too. It sneaks in, it infiltrates.

There's also some stuff from Shirley Manson and teaching an AI about religion (which has got to be the worst thing to teach a computer! Do we really want a Fundamentalist AI?). It's going to be important later, you can hear this particular gun being loaded and set on the mantlepiece.

I've changed my mind since the last post about this show.
Watch this.

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