My Thoughts: “The Day of the Doctor”

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THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT ‘The Day of the Doctor’

Hello once again and welcome to: ‘I’m Pretty Geeky, This is a Geeky Post – Get Over It!’

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These are my thoughts on the BBC’s Special 50th Anniversary episode of Doctor Who, an episode that I had high expectations for… and as a result, an episode which I woke up early in the morning (well, early compared to my usual awakening hour) to watch.

If you really liked the episode, and dislike others’ opinions… I suggest you stop reading this now.  My opinion doesn’t effect the video whatsoever, and it’s certainly not a concrete rating of any kind.  Whether something is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is a variable determined by whoever’s watching it and what they think about it.  Basically what I’m saying is: don’t take this post the wrong way.

First up, let me talk about what I liked.  Then I’ll tell you about the things that kept ripping me away from the story and stopping me from feeling immersed, and ultimately, enjoying the special event.

What I Liked

I’m probably going to miss stuff out – I might come back and add to this if I remember other things I enjoyed.

Production

As someone who’s produced a fair few videos myself – I am aware how much time and effort went into the production of the 50th Anniversary. It’s pretty impressive, especially given the time frame.

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  • Unlike the Doctor Who documentary ‘An Adventure In Space And Time’, where the Doctor glitches in-front of the TARDIS console between two shots, I didn’t notice any visual issues in ‘The Day of the Doctor’ at all… well… apart from at the end with the awkward looking 2D Doctors standing in unison.  But what do you expect?  Recreating the Doctors in 3D for that shot would have been too time consuming.  They’ve been editing for months as it is! For the length of the shot, and the fan glowing inside me, it was fine. =)
  • The other effects like the paralax action going on with the 3D paintings was pretty damn nice.
  • Costumes, sets – everything was to the high standard we’ve come to expect from the more recent era of Doctor Who – although the Time War did seem a bit too Star Warsy…  I almost wish they had kept it out – because my vision of the Time War was so much larger and complicated than what was shown to us on screen. Time Lords in control of space and time using lasers like Stormtroopers? What’s up with that?

References

There were some funny references, as well as nostalgic ones in the 50th Anniversary.

  • Although I thought that the scarf the UNIT woman was wearing was a bit corny, as well as a bit of an obvious hint that we’d probably see Tom Baker later in the episode – even so, it was a clever ploy to introduce the scene that lays a crucial foundation for the next series of Doctor Who.
  • Clara working at the school that Susan used to go to – with the scrapyard where the TARDIS used to be parked just around the corner, the moment I saw that sign at the start, I smiled.
  • Rose’s BAD WOLF ‘incarnation’ – I wanted to mention this here – even though I’m not drWho9particularly fond of the idea. (Rhyming… woo!)  It didn’t really make too much sense… Obviously the machine (“The Moment”) wanted to choose an appearance for the War Doctor to interact with – and in doing so, chose one a bit further along in his timeline than it had planned… but it seemed like a waste when it comes to involving her in the show.
  • The joke about covering up the TARDIS/Helicopter ordeal by blaming it on Darren Brown and sending him some flowers again, was brilliant.
  • In the black archive, pictures of Susan and companions on the board, as well as Cybermen gear and Captain Jack’s not-your-ordinary-wrist-watch.
  • The Tennant Doctor’s use of old lines. While this was interesting – it did also annoy me to a degree, more on why this annoyed me is later on in this post.
  • And of course, although I didn’t pick up on many of them – there are various references to Classic Doctor Who, like the Brigadier’s daughter – and her mention of ‘Cromer’, the drWho14location believed to be the location of the UNIT base, from ‘The Three Doctors’ special in the early 1970s.
  • PETER CAPAULDI’S EYES!
  • Seeing the 9th Doctor begin to regenerate into the 9th Doctor… well, 10th Doctor now…

Dialog

The acting of the cast was immensely good, apart from a few of the extras that seemed a bit unnatural… Queen Elizabeth I for example, though maybe she actually acted like that.  IN WHICH CASE, I’m an idiot.  I must add that David did seem a bit odd, obviously this could be partly to do with the fact he hasn’t played the role in a few years.  There are quite a few lines I enjoyed, especially when the Doctor was bickering with himself.

  • “One of them is a Zygon.” “Eeeeh, I’m not judging you.” – David’s Doctor and Matt’s Doctor talking about the two Queen Elizabeths standing before them.
  • Then later after the Queen’s both kissed Tennant’s Doctor:
    “One of those was a Zygon.”
    “Yeap.”
    “Big red rubbery thing, covered in suckers…”
    “Yeap.” “Venom sacs in the tongue…”
    “Yeah, I’m getting the point thank you.”
    “Nice.”

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  • “Well, this has all the makings of your lucky day.” – John’s Doctor, When the English guards are talking about beheading the Doctor was hilarious. John Hurt had quite a few brilliant lines.

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  • “They’re screwdrivers! What are you going to do, assemble a cabinet at them?” – John’s Doctor when 10 and 11 (or 11 and 12) are standing waving their screwdrivers at the guards.drWho11
  • “We’re confusing the polarity” – David’s Doctor, this line was brilliant, loved it.
  • The entire segment where David’s Doctor rips into Matt’s Doctor about forgetting the body count.  It was such an intense moment that fitted the character of both Doctors – it’s exactly the way you’d expect them to act.  It was beautiful.

What I Didn’t Like

Yeah… here we go.

Plot

The plot, as it has with quite a few of Moffat’s Doctor Who episodes – has a few significant holes in it.  Obviously plot holes in Doctor Who, a show running for 50 years… is inevitable.  But some of the plot holes and unexplained altercations are recently ’caused’ – and they just remove me from the immersion of the story and leave me a bit unsatisfied.  Most of these are Moffat just refuting things that happened in the Russel T Davies series of Doctor Who – but he still included the Time Lock from ‘End of Time’? He’s cherry picking plot devices. Will I come back and add to this? Probably. *Evil Laugh*

  • The phone on the TARDIS doesn’t work – it’s not connected.  The one on the TARDIS console is the one that works.  We found this out with the 9th (10th) Doctor in ‘The Empty Child.’ So the TARDIS has changed to include a working phone now? Well, that’s one way of getting the Doctor to the door for that lovely dangling intro shot I guess…

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  • How the hell is the Doctor holding on to the TARDIS here?! How convenient… the TARDIS now also includes hand-grips on the base of the TARDIS.
  • I mentioned this earlier – I think Rose could have been involved more effectively in the episode.  But I think there are quite a few living Doctors and companions that could have been involved in the production as well. I found the other 50th Anniversary special video ‘The Five(ish) Doctors‘ far more of a comforting Doctor Who universe than the Doctor Who episode itself!  We see Peter Davison (5th Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (7th Doctor), Colin Baker (6th Doctor), Matt Smith (11th… 12th Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Paul McGann (8th Doctor), David Tennant (10th…11th Doctor), Georgia Moffett (The Doctor’s Daughter), John Barrowman (Captain Jack), Stefan Moffat (Current Doctor Who Writer), Russel T Davies (Previous Doctor Who Writer), Peter Jackson (Film Director, The Hobbit), Ian McKellen (Actor, Gandalf)… AND SO MANY MORE, there were family members of the original Doctors, Dalek operators – it was packed with people from the Doctor Who universe.  However in a fourth-wall-breaking ‘mocumentary’ styled sort of short film.

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  • The Doctors ran the calculation on their screwdriver to figure out how to disintegrate the door… but how could the Doctor’s screwdriver calculate something over centuries if it’s been broken, burnt out and replaced multiple times…  It’s not the same screwdriver that’s been upgraded… In ‘Smith and Jones’ the Doctor sacrifices his screwdriver to take out a ‘slab’… the screwdriver is toasted to a crisp, and then the Doctor throws the screwdriver over his shoulder.  Then he loses his screwdriver again at the start of Matt drWho15Smith’s era, in ‘Eleventh Hour’ which results in him getting the new green sonic screwdriver. Is there some telepathic screwdriver calculation field we haven’t heard about?  Because that’s one durable calculation… maybe the Doctor has ‘iCloud for Sonic Screwdrivers.’
  • Somehow all the Doctors were involved in the Gallifrey Time-Lock plan… Wait… so the first Doctor knew that he would have to Time-Lock Gallifrey and started doing the necessary calculations to perform this incredible maneuver – taking into account that in the future he would have 12 other Doctors and their TARDIS’s helping him?  Then after that, somehow, every Doctor proceeding the first remembered to continue on with the calculations leading up until the recent Doctors… then they forget about Time-Locking Gallifrey, toil with the idea of destroying it… and then come up with the idea to Time-Lock Gallifrey? What? Even if I haven’t followed that right, Hurt’s Doctor loses his memory of the whole ordeal because of the ‘Time-Sync’ issue, SO does Tennant’s Doctor – so if that’s the case, he wouldn’t remember about the Time-Lock, or doing the calculations… IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. I really like the last scene, and it sent chills up my spine… but that drWho13detracted from it substantially.
  • And speaking of ‘Heroic’… Clara described John’s Doctor as the Warrior, David’s as the Hero… and before saying that Matt’s Doctor is the Doctor… she said that ‘any old idiot can be a hero’. Uh… okay. Ouch.  I know, I know I’m sounding like one of those argumentative Facebook pillocks playing the ‘he said, she said’ game… They probably didn’t even think about it that way when they wrote the script… but it’s not the only time this episode David’s Doctor is knocked down to ensure that Matt’s Doctor remains the most important Doctor on the scene.  It’s the 50th Special guys, surely we can forget about trying to make our Doctor look better than the previous writers’ Doctors.’

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  • At the end, the Zygons and humans are in the Black Archive… any negotiations
    they made in there would be meaningless by the time they walk out because they would forget everything that happened.
  • Not only that, but there were 6 Zygons hiding downstairs… and only 3 went into the Black Archive. What were the other Zygons doing then?
  • Although somewhat out-of-place, the 10th (I guess 11th now?) Doctor giving his serious speech to that rabbit was funny, however, I do feel he was acting a bit too idiotically for his character.
    David Tennant’s Doctor had some incredibly powerful moments… which were seemingly defecated on in this 50th Special.  His heroic line in ‘Voyage of the Damned’ has gone from a serious Doctor-taking-charge moment into something he just says to everyone.  Including rabbits.  I could have probably sailed with that, one line… no problem. BUT THEN at the end, he says when talking about Trenzalore, “I don’t want to go.” Matt’s Doctor then says to Clara, “He always says that.”  No he doesn’t… At this point in time he’s NEVER said it.  He will only ever say it ONCE.  After giving his life for Wilfred, and saying farewell to all of his companions. I guess Matt Smith’s Doctor is saying this ironically as a private joke with Clara, who’s seen the entire timeline of the Doctor and would know what he’s talking about… But all I see is Moffat jumping into the Davies timeline before the Tennant Doctor dies, and making his final-words-to-be just a ‘meaningless thing that he says all the time.’
  • ^ Does Clara still remember everything she saw in the Doctor’s timeline?  I think she must because she recognized Tennant in ‘locked’ prison cell.

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  • David Tennant’s Doctor is kissing like crazy – and the proposal thing? I get why they did it… but he isn’t supposed to remember the events that occur with the other Doctors… but then he mentions that he got married to the Ood in ‘End of Time.’

Other things of note:

I don’t want to come across as too picky… haha, who am I kidding. Well done… that’s exactly what I’ve done.  But these are other things I wanted to make note of – they wouldn’t have ruined the 50th Anniversary for me, but they were minor things that I thought about.

  • The Zygons… the seem like a bit of an odd addition, they could have done just fine in an episode of their own.
  • The War Doctor (9th?) told the (11th and 12th?) other two Doctors that they’re wasting their time waving their screwdrivers about at the English soldiers… yet they fight of a Dalek with them? I guess they’re just controlling the pace of time taking place inside the painting – but I don’t know. =/
  • Allons-y seemed like it was used a bit unnecessarily. It’s the first word you hear the 10th Doctor say, then he says it again at the end when flying the TARDIS.  I was pretty sure that he said it 3 times during the special, but after glancing back through the episode I think I must be wrong.  I think introducing Tennant with ‘Allons-y’ wasn’t needed…  They should have saved it to the end, made it truly special.
  • Clara, like many other recent companions, seems to be the sole decision making body in the Doctor’s mind.  We have three drWho12Doctors about to pull the plug – David’s doctor was so angry about it, and Matt’s Doctor regretted it every day. Yet, Clara is the one to tell him to come up with another plan.  (One that as I mentioned, he already supposedly had been figuring out for centuries.)
    However, obviously part of this companions being the ‘moral compass’ thing is to do with the Doctor forgetting about how to react.  He’s become a torn character that seems to need guidance – heck, that’s why he explores the universe with companions – because he’s gotten used to everything, so he needs someone to remind him how amazing it is.  Well at least, that’s how it was during Russel T Davies era… Who NOSE! Obviously not a total set back to the story, but something that did make me think.
  • So there we have it… for now… unless I decide to add something that I forgot. Obviously this episode was massive, there was a lot going on – and a lot of references everywhere you look.  But more importantly, everyone will experience it differently. I feel starved when it comes to Doctor Who… I haven’t had a satisfying feeling after watching a Doctor Who episode for some time now.  I still want to watch and I still want to follow what’s  going on – because I do love the concept and the universe surrounding it… but I’m not feeling content like I used to when watching Doctor Who. There are many other shows on television like Being Human, The Originals and Arrow, (Sherlock would be here too… but you need to get on the new series ASAP Mr Moffat) that I feel satisfied with after watching them.  My ‘story hunger’ is fed, it no longer hurts… but I still have the craving for new episodes… Doctor Who on the other hand… I’m getting breadcrumbs leading to an empty room…

Wow, so the Doctor wouldn’t remember this right? So perhaps the memory-wiping device on the wall of the Black Archive has something to do with that? Nah… It’s some time-sync issue, that didn’t exist when we had the Peter Davison and David Tennant mini-episode for Red Nose day…

Agh… Am I expecting too much?  Why am I expecting a believable plot solution to come out of adrWho10 SciFi show that involves travelling through time and space? A scientific impossibility, well, if you’re trying to travel backwards in time…

The way Moffat’s storylines work continue to leave me starving and

missing the satisfaction I used to get from watching Doctor Who as a child. His problem is that his plot solutions often come out of nowhere and can’t be figured out during the episode because it’s some insane thing that’s never even been referenced before… ever. AS a poorly written example:

PROBLEM: The lawn needs mowing.
SOLUTION: We saw a shed earlier on that potentially harbors a lawn mower.
MOFFAT SOLUTION: The grass begins to shrink… by growing in reverse.  The Doctor has upset the local flow of time because his TARDIS has parked in this same spot before – even though there isn’t an episode where he has parked here before, and the TARDIS has never modified time before by parking in the same spot, as exampled by the TARDIS’s visits to CARDIFF multiple times to recharge… but why would that matter? That’s a Russel T Davies issue, we’re in a new Moffat Universe Baby!

I shouldn’t have bothered writing that… Why did I choose mowing the lawn?  That’s the most mundane thing I could have picked to demonstrate a point.  Of course Moffat’s solution in this example would be more entertaining than actually… mowing the damn lawn…  But hopefully you sort-of get what I’m talking about.

There we go, I think I’ll end it here.  I think I’m being a bit over the top… which actually speaks more highly of Doctor Who in a sense – because I’m being as harsh about it as I am with my own work.  I question my own stories and films to the same extent – I guess it just shows how much I consider Doctor Who a part of my life if I feel like I have to critique it in the same manner.

Nonetheless, thanks so much for reading.

See you later,

Ben.

 

‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’

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the Serious Doctor… who really needs way, way more screen time.

I have to say, Doctor Who is a relatively odd experience for me these days.  There have been many episodes in the Matt Smith episode that have just left me completely disappointed and dislocated from the absorbing storyline of  the Time Lord and his many companions.  To me it has been quite unnerving, because many of the plots have just been ludicrous to the point that I don’t want to ‘take them seriously’ – in other words, I cherry-pick my favourite episodes and try to forget all the below average episodes that don’t fit my vision of Doctor Who. Woah, reading that back to myself… Doctor Who IS a Religion!

But behold, the one episode of Doctor Who in Matt Smith’s era that I actually don’t mind.  Keep note here,  I didn’t say I love it – but it is most definitely an improvement.  That episode is ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’ – and let me tell you what really made this episode for me. THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS.

My Favourite Things

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1. “Save her, or we all die.

“It’s no secret that Matt Smith hasn’t played a very serious Doctor in his time on the show.  His incarnation of the Doctor often seems more confused and silly than serious and insightful – I’m not saying that the role of the Doctor shouldn’t be humorous – but there’s a balance needed to persuade the thought that there is over 900 years of Time Lord in that head.  Even Tom Baker, who was without a doubt one of the more silly Doctors, had his balance of seriousness and wisdom.

When the Doctor set the timer and locked the scavengers in the TARDIS – telling them that if Clara wasn’t found within the hour the Time Machine would explode killing them all – I, for the first time in ages of watching Doctor Who, laughed in excitement.  That was the Doctor that I’ve always wanted Matt Smith’s Doctor to be.  But it gets better. For me, the greatest moment in this episode… and I could probably go as far as to say the whole Matt Smith era leading up until now… was the bluff.  Later on in the episode, the Doctor reveals that he was bluffing – saying that you just have to ‘Wiggle a few buttons’ – but most importantly, give them ‘the face’ and say, “Save her, or we all die.”  Absolutely freaking brilliant and so very, very Doctor Who.  It sends shivers down my spine just thinking of the perfect execution of that scene. (They slightly diminished the moment when the dialogue suddenly devolved into ‘We’re in trouble Clara, proper trouble. It needs fixing or we’re toast.’ Nonetheless, that moment is fantastic all the same.

“I just wiggled a few buttons, yeah, the old wiggly-button trick – and the face, you’ve GOT to do the face.  Save her, or we all die. I thought I rushed it a bit but..” – Best Line, Evvver!

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2. Ye’ Old References

The references in this episode were pretty abundant.  I smiled when I saw the ‘Eye Of Harmony’ on the screen of the TARDIS console, memories of the Gallifreyan power-source, and the Doctor Who Movie from 1996. To be perfectly honest though – I really wish that it had been the only reference to the Eye of Harmony in the episode.  I’d much have preferred if it were left out of the plot – and just remained an Easter Egg.  Just like the ‘Smiths’ key, the various Gallifreyan audio encyclopedias, the toy TARDIS from Amy.  They even showed us the TARDIS’s swimming pool that we’ve heard so much about but never seen… at any point… ever.

I don’t think that a lot of the rooms that Clara bumped into really seemed to fit into the TARDIS… nor did it make sense that she was stopping and taking the time to look at these rooms and smiling while there was a monster chasing her…  These references seemed a bit out-of-place, or unnaturally squished into the episode.

3. Genuine Doctor-ness1

Often in Doctor Who there have been times where I felt that the reaction of the characters in the show don’t always seem very expected.  I have to say I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that when the TARDIS went dark the Doctor acted accordingly.  He wasn’t exaggerated and panicky, scared – he was serious and concerned.  I’m probably just pulling this out of the air. =)

 

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I know that the Doctor Who Movie isn’t really cited as a ‘true to Doctor Who’ storyline – being that the Doctor is somehow ‘half-human’ in the movie. But it still irritates me a bit that these two things are … so very different.

My Not-So-Favourite Things

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1. The Monsters

During the episode, everyone, particularly Clara, is being chased by these horrid mutant monstrosities. Later we find out that these monsters are in fact the Doctor, Clara and the scavengers from the future – who have been cooked and boiled alive by being exposed to the Eye of Harmony for too long. Considering the fact that exposure to the static pre-black hole is pretty ruddy damaging to… living in comfort… it really makes me wonder why the flip the Doctor decided that it’d be the best time to STOP and EXPLAIN his clever Gallifreyan technology to everyone… WHILE THEY’RE STANDING IN FRONT OF IT. Wouldn’t it have been better to give your tour-guide speech AFTER you’d gotten to safety and were no longer in threat of  being char-grill-zombified!? Come on!

Also – if you’re cooked, roasted and liquified I would have thought that you’d be in some pretty serious pain.  I would have also thought that walking around and hunting down yourself in the past would have seemed like a pretty ruddy weird thing to do.  Not to mention… your muscles and bones are… out-of-order… which I assume would make mobility quite difficult in the first place.

Why did the Doctor and Clara NOT turn into monsters even though they were exposed to the Eye for the same amount of time as the scavengers – and why on Earth is the transformation so instantaneous?

LASTLY,  the Doctor… is a Time Lord… We’ve all established this.  Now correct me if I’m wrong.  But if a Time Lord’s body is brutally injured or damaged beyond healing… there’s a certain little trick they’ve got called ‘Regeneration’ – I would have really thought that liquified cells, burning skin and strange glowing-eyes would be classified as pretty significant bodily damage.  Oh well, perhaps there’s a point where a Time Lord’s body can be too far damaged for the cycle to work.

2. The Name of The Doctor3

Quite an interesting inclusion was the ‘History of the Great Time War’ book – then again the fact that Clara learns the real name of the Doctor… only to forget it when time is rewritten (more on that later) seemed a bit pointless, (I guess you could claim the whole episode pointless considering it technically never happened. Hmm.)

It was cool to see – but poorly implemented.  Clara walks up and instantly flips to the exact page where the Doctor is mentioned by his Gallifreyan name?  How does she even know that its him that book is referring to?  I. Don’t. Know.  Seemed like it was more of a reference to the season finale more than anything.

 

3. TARDIS Engine Explosion?a2-engineboom

What? The engine of the TARDIS explodes – the TARDIS decides to freeze it in time and prevent it from causing any problems.

Just curious, it seemed like a very odd place for an engine.  A white vast empty space… and it… exploded upon ‘impact’ with the scavenging ship?  Lovely durable Gallifreyan technology right there, I’m surprised the black hole being held in stasis didn’t suddenly break free of its captivity and start swallowing everything up.  But never fear, you can fix all damaged done to the TARDIS by just jumping back in time…inside the time machine… and reclaim your time machine from before it broke. It’s all very strange.

 

4. Mountain Climbinga1

Why is there a large cliff inside the TARDIS?  I guess it’s a similar scenario to what we saw in Tom Baker’s era, where he was walking around corridors of the TARDIS which were quite obviously the hallways of an abandoned hospital.  Yes it added more variety to the episode – and the Doctor described it as ‘snarling’ at them to scare them away because it was vulnerable.  Well it seems more than just ruddy vulnerable if the engine has exploded…  Seems like it’s ‘in proper trouble.’

 

Conclusion

The writer, Steve Thompson, who also brought us the rather… ordinary… ‘Curse of the Black Spot’ episode, has done really well here.  By far my favourite Matt Smith episode – however I feel that the ending was very rushed, and because of this you come away after watching it pretty unfulfilled.  The feeling of fulfillment has been pretty rare with Doctor Who in recent times – but this episode was so close to being perfect! For what I got from this was 40 minutes of pretty decent, genuine, fan-boy Easter egg filled adventure… that was all swept under the rug and destroyed because the Doctor stopped it from ever happening in the first place.  The conversation the Doctor had with Clara about who she was? Never happened.  Clara’s journey through the TARDIS and finally getting to know her? Never happened.  ‘The Big Friendly Button?’ Whaaat?

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS had some really great elements – but I just come away from it wanting more.  The ending was too quick and contributed nothing to the long-term storyline of the Doctor and Clara because they won’t remember any of it.  The zombified monsters that are really themselves… which means they’re attacking themselves for some strange reason… some family dilemmas between some of the scavengers – which you kind of suspect at the start of the episode anyway.

Certainly my favourite episode in this era so far – lets see though if Neil Gaiman can win me over with his ‘Nightmare in Silver’ episode.  Have to say, I’m quite worried about the episode entitled: “The Name of the Doctor” – but I doubt that Moffat would reveal the name of the Time Lord… I hope…

 

Well there, long post – probably ambiguous in nature and filled with contradiction… nonetheless.

See you later,

Ben.

An Interview with Lyndon Riggall

This is an interview conducted, as part of my media course, with my awesomeness cousin, Lyndon Riggall – you can check out his blog  right here.

Ben: Today we have with us an inspired and very, (very) good literature driven Australian, who has so many online blog posts, and so many online book reviews that you could be reading all night.

In 2011, he went in the Australian Poetry Slam, where he went into the finalists, and eventually the runners up.  In 2012, he set off to travel 2224 kilometres, the same distance that Frodo travelled to Mordor in the Lord of the Rings series.  And recently he’s been reading lots of children’s books, because he’s part of the Children’s Book Council of Australia, which requires you to read every children’s book released in the past 12 months, about 400 books.  So Lyndon!

Lyndon: Hi!

Ben: Thanks for being on the show!

Lyndon: Thank you for inviting me.

Ben: So what inspires or introduced you to literature, and what about it keeps you pursuing it?

Lyndon: I think for me it probably began… I was really lucky that I grew up in the Harry Potter generation and so when I was a kid, Harry Potter came out and I was probably in Grade 2, and I read it and it was new and exciting and of course I’d like to say that now because ah look *I was ahead of the trend.*

But I read it, and I was completely in love with it.  And then as the years went by, everyone else read it and everyone else fell completely in love with it and the movies came out. And it was probably the first time… and in fact it’s still used as a benchmark for… it’s about as big as a book can get. And I think when you grow up through that it often has an effect on you, the things you grow up with… so for me…

Ben: Kind of the fact you get to watch it grow and expand.

Lyndon: Yeah that’s it, there was no convincing me that books weren’t important when you see something like that happen. So yeah.

Ben: So in the Australian Poetry Slam that you went in, in 2011, how was your experience with that? And for those that haven’t seen it, maybe you’d like to explain what your poem was about?

Lyndon: Yeah, so my poem was a little bit controversial, it was based on a true story about… it dropped into fantasy… but it was a true story about Jehovah’s Witnesses coming and door knocking on my door. And it was sort of about the attitude they have when they come to your door – because I find it a really strong and terrifying attitude, ’cause I’m not the sort of person who thinks that the world is ending… you know… and that we’re all going to die.  So for me, to wake up in the morning in your dressing gown, to go to the door, and to just be immediately hit with that is a really funny experience. So I wrote about that and performed it in Launceston and eventually got to take it to Sydney… and that was really scary. I performed on the stage at the Sydney Theatre where, obviously I wasn’t in a play, but people like Jeffrey Rush and Cate Blanchett and lots of really famous Australian people have performed there – and I didn’t get to take my family with me, so I was all alone, in front of this massive Sydney audience.  Which is nothing like you’d see here,  but it was amazing.  It was a room of thousands of people screaming and cheering over poetry… which is kind of nice.

Ben: Which audience do you think took your poem the best, the Launceston or the Sydney one?

Lyndon: I think probably the Sydney one. (The) people in Launceston are probably a bit more tentative about coming up and talking to you afterwards, and maybe it’s part of being in a small crowd, that they have people they came to the show with, that they’ll talk to them. But even as I was walking up the stairs after finishing it, people were trying to grab me and say, “My mum’s a Jehovah’s Witness and I need a copy of that poem so that I can show it to her, and she’ll find it really interesting.” And that was really exciting. Yeah, that was nice that people wanted to share that.

Ben: So quite a journey of course from Launceston to Sydney, not quite  as big as your 2224 kilometre trip. On the fan forums, the Internet, it said that apparently it’s estimated that Frodo took about six months. How long did it take you on your journey?

Lyndon: Yeah, I decided to try and walk the… it’s often confusing for people so I will explain. I didn’t try to go into the wilderness and take bread wrapped up in leaves or anything like that in the Lord of the Rings books.  But what I tried to do was, just to get a sense of how far that really is, how far that journey is.  I started on January the 19th 2012, and I wanted to finish by the day that the Hobbit came out, which was boxing day. And so I made it… but all I had to do to keep up with that was six and a half kilometres a day. But yeah, it took me twice as long as it took them.

Ben: Do you have any plans for literature driven journeys in the future? Not necessarily exercise based.

Lyndon: I would love… on that front, I’ve had lot’s of friends say, “Can we walk around Westeros?” which is the Game of Thrones world, and I would love to work that out.  But I was really lucky with the Lord of the Rings people, who have really nutted out all of those details. Tolkien inspires people to get really obsessive about tiny details, and so I was lucky that I actually had someone who had done most of the maths for me, I just had to convert it into kilometres and work out where I would have to be at each point to actually chart the whole journey of the books.

But in terms of my own literary journey, what I’m doing next, I’m trying to write a book. Which is probably much more scary than walking. Yeah, so I’ve finished a first draft but what’s interesting about books is that first drafts often aren’t anywhere near ready. So it’s still hiding from the world at the moment.

Ben: Okay, and finally your a member of the Children’s Book Council of Australia… what’s it like reading 400 children’s books?

Lyndon: *Laughs* Really interesting! So what the Children’s Book Council do every year, they give, and you may have seen them, their little medallions that they put on the books.  So they get a gold, if they’re considered the best of that year, across various categories.  And then there are honoured books, and notable books.  So I signed up and asked it I could perform that process for them, without really thinking the quantity of books you’d have to read.

I mean it’s logical that if you want to choose the best book that this country produces… you have to read every book that this country produces.  And I should have thought of that.  But sure enough, pretty much every two weeks, until very recently,  I get about 30 books in the post, and I go through them and make notes on them and send them off – and they gradually fill up all the space underneath my bed.  But it’s really hard, sometimes you get a box of picture books, and you know, it’s stories about babies and food and stuff like that and they take 5 minutes – but sometimes they are really big novels.

But one of the really good parts of the experience, is finding terrible books… and Australia produces very few really bad books, but everyone who wants to write – should read bad books.  Because when you read a bad book, firstly you teach yourself what’s wrong with it, and you know, some of the books I’ve read I start to see problems and I go, “Oh, that might be a problem in the book that I’m trying to write.”  And the other thing that’s really good about it is that you really get a sense that… (if a ‘bad book’ gets an award, that perhaps your book has a chance in it all.)

Ben: (Thank you) So this of course is Lyndon Riggall! You can check out his blog at lyndonriggall.com for more, maybe the rest of that sentence will come to light on the blog.  Thanks so much for watching, and we’ll see you all next time.

Hey guys!

Hope you enjoyed this painstakingly-written-out version of this interview I recorded for my media studies in school!
I just wanted to let you know that at some point I’ll be doing a major refresh of this site – as you can see it’s been a bit glitchy recently, and I think I know what I have to do to fix it.  MAKE IT A BLOG AGAIN.  I’m going to be getting rid of the social ‘Facebook Profile’ like area of the site because all it does is cause compatibility issues with every single theme I use it with – and I honestly don’t have the time to go through and code myself a theme right now that works.  So I’m going to remove the cause – get it out of the way – and get back to a pretty stable blogging site – all ready for Vlog my Blog 2013… I mean… what?

YOU HEARD NOTHING.

 

Ben,

The Not-So-Long Brain Debate

I cannot believe some of the people in the world these days,
There are people that punch you, whack you around the back of the head. Mindlessly hurting you because they obviously don’t have the brain power to do anything other than fling their arms at you like some complete and utter dead-headed zombie, with ‘whacking’ being their only thought process.
But the people I am really starting to hate are those that in every single conversation you have with them they have to critisise you, even if they weren’t in the conversation they will jump in and critisise you. Like when I told my friend the other day that I had uploaded my poem to my website, then the dimbo jumps in and says, ‘What? Him writing a poem? He doesn’t even have the brain power to even write a poem.’
You are the one who lacks the brain power dimbo! (No not you, reader . . . the person that said the stuff about me not being able to even write a poem . . . anyways.)
He seems to have this thing that I’m some brainless moron who doesn’t have enough ‘brain power’ to string 2 words together!
It seems to me that he needs to think that someone is dumber than him so that he can feel good about himself. Someone that goes around all day critisising people obviously isn’t capable of doing anything else but that!

Now I had something to say at the end of this, but since I imagined what kind of things people would say or think about it, I decided it was best to leave it out.

I hope the person that thinks I don’t have the ‘brain power’ is reading this, because then you will see that I am more than you think.

What If Poem

I did this poem as humanities homework, I thought that it was a gutsy move . . . but the teacher loved it. So hence I’ll stick it up here for all those stupid copy cats that are too lazy to write their own.

WHAT IF

A 14 line POEM BY BEN

What if our teacher was a witch? That if we forgot our homework her nose would twitch?

She’d say a few accursed words, and then we’d turn into fluttering birds.

Her eyes would stare sharply at us too, as she made our faces go slightly blue.

We would speed from the classroom in a leap, as her swift broomstick gave a sweep.

Off to our lockers we would go, as tiny horns began to grow.

For we had a big surprise, that we in fact, were devils in disguise.

We came along, the very next day; the moment we entered we saw our prey.

First we used our annoying chatter, making the loudest possible all-out clatter.

The teacher told us to quieten down; she received backchat from the class clown.

She took a step back, and then with a roar, blasted the class into a snore.

To the left she turned as she took a rest, her magic had worked, for the best.

Her eyes read comments from other teachers, describing the class as awful creatures.

Leaning back into her dark black chair, she had the feeling of being rare.

For no other teacher could control this class, but this great teacher could really kick . . .

Time is short, and long. It changes.

Time has been growing quicker by the second, it never goes back, it keeps on going. But no one thought about the fact that time doesn’t exist. The sun doesn’t exist, there is no such thing. They are just words that we called stuff. The human named the tree, the sun, the sky, the time and the moments that fly by.

Did you imagine this, people that do not know a language. How do their thoughts wonder. How do they think if you don’t know a language. When we make mental notes we think in our mind ‘Right I have to do this today . . .’ but what do those with no language think? What do they think I ask you?

Do you think of the fact that right now when I am typing this, that I am thinking of what you would think of it. I’m imagining that some people think I’m crazy, not with it, have no idea what I’m on about. Some will be really into what I am saying and are reading every word with interest.

So from now on, whatever you are doing. Just think. Think of it, right now you could be doing all kinds of things. You may be famous in one world, or a graffiti artist in the next, in one world I may be typing something completely different. I may be typing about how I hate people who think about stuff to often. I might be that sort of a person.

Also when you walk down the street. Something you haven’t done since you were little is think about each step you take. Try it, each step, concentrate on the step you take.

Thanks

Benaball,