My nerd thoughts on Doctor Who, let me tell you them. (Spoilers)

I have finally watched both The End Of Time and The Eleventh Hour, and will be finishing my Who catch-up tonight. Spoilers ahoy!

So far I'm kind of lukewarm on Matt Smith's Doctor, but I was a big Tennant fan, so he's got some mighty big shoes to fill. His characterization seemed a little bit rough in The Eleventh Hour - but the terribly devious thing about Doctor Who is that, well, yes, he's in a sense a brand new person, so they have an in-universe excuse for it.

Amy seems like she'll be a decent enough companion, though there's kind of too many shades of both Rose Tyler and Donna Noble - she's a little bit dumb, working some stupid dead-end job, crappy/no family, etc. But I did grow to like Donna, and I'm willing to wait a bit before judging. I did really hope that she was actually a police officer, just because that would've been an interesting change, and I think it could've gone some amusing places. But oh well.

If someone could please explain to me the part where Martha married Mickey Smith, that would be great, because - what?

I [i]love[/i] the new Tardis. I will miss the old, more busted-up appearance, but as soon as I saw the spinny thing on the control panel and the hot and cold water taps I was in love. Sexy thing, indeed.

The Doctor's eagerness to have Amy join on struck me as kind of weird, because remember when he really was hesitant about letting his prior two companions on? Yes? Well, apparently he's not, and if that means we never hear a damn thing with him mooning over Rose Tyler again, I'll be pretty damn happy.

Prisoner Zero and the whoever aliens were pretty good monsters of the week - the part with the little girls in the hospital was surprisingly effective. Apparently Steven Moffat is now the writer and Russell T Davies is gone - which is good, because Davies gave us all sorts of mediocre-at-best episodes, and Moffat gave us goodies like The Girl in The Fireplace and Blink (which I still maintain is one of the best television episodes ever). So plot-wise, I'm feeling pretty optimistic, and I have a feeling that Moffat will also do good things with the characterization.

Did I mention that I love the new Tardis? And my god how much do I want to see the Tardis's library?

Two scenes

Last night I got on an editing kick. My adviser has this thing about using the verb "to be" and I'm pretty sure he'd like it if I didn't use it at all, ever. I'm not quite good enough to do that, but I was making a good-faith attempt to reduce it, because in many places the language was a bit sloppy. That, plus various other editorial things, were kind of....well. You know how some people can get totally sucked into a video game, or TV series (fine, I do that too with DVDs), or puzzles, or whatever, and you say, aah, it's evening, I'm just going to do this for a bit, and then the next thing you know it's some ungodly hour?

Right.

So I give up on my staring contest with the English language and go to bed way, way later than I should.

My alarm goes off at about 7:15, which leaves me more than enough time to get ready for work, where I belong by 8:30.

Apparently, I woke up enough to turn my alarm off, and then rolled over and went right back to sleep. Something in my brain was still up, though, because I recall then, after some vague amount of time, thinking that maybe I should get up. So I decide to start slow and open my eyes, and then I look at the clock. Which is telling me it's now 8:29.

Anyway, ultimately it wasn't a big deal, because A) work is about thirty seconds out the door and B) my boss really didn't care. But the point is that I was late to my job at a library because I overslept because I stayed up too late playing with grammar, and I think that little vignette serves as my entry into the League of Pathetically Geeky.

What fifty years will do to grass

That in the center there is the brand-new Cherry Hill Mall, circa 1961 or so.  Pan left about an inch and a half at that scale and you could see my house, which was there long before the mall.  Many of the houses surrounding it are not, nor is the strip of businesses along Haddonfield Rd (running vertically [north/south]).  The building at the bottom was the Cherry Hill Inn.  Now there's a 24-screen movie theater there and a TGI Fridays.  Just to the east, which looks mostly empty, is now a shopping center with a Target and Kohls.  North of the mall is a series of strip malls (seeing a trend?), including a big supermarket.  Northeast of the mall - more strip malls.  

For comparison, here's how it is now:

View Larger MapI'm pretty sure that there's more open space in the 1961 picture than there now is in all of Cherry Hill township.  

It goes 'ding' when there's stuff

Despite not being particularly thrilled with Mr. Gordon Brown, I'm feeling rather chummy towards the Brits right now. Not that I often feel particularly antagonistic towards them, what with the wanting to be British myself and all, but anyway.

For one - I've been watching some Doctor Who recently. It's one of those shows that's hit-or-miss. Sometimes it's just unintentionally silly, sometimes it's pretty crap. Then every once in a while there's an episode that, upon first viewing, is completely outstanding. I'm referring to the relatively recent episode Blink, which if nothing else, had the creepiest damn low-budget monsters I have ever seen. Spoilers, in case anyone's a Who fan but hasn't seen it yet: Stone angels that are only stone when you're looking at them. They send you into the past to live our your life ("the only psychopaths who kill you nicely"), and feed off the life you would have otherwise had (they "let you live to death"). Psychologically, this is absolutely brilliant, because you see a scary monster and what do you want to do? Hide. Turn around and run away. Stop looking at it. But in this case, you can't, and I find that horrifyingly genius.


Anyway, fictional monsters aside, the Brits today also prevented themselves from getting blown up again. Not only that, but it looks like they've done so in a remarkably calm and stereotypically British fashion. All I have to say on that is (if I may): "Well done, chaps".