Doctor Who: Tooth And Claw

Things I didn't like:

That it’s called Tooth And Claw instead of The Empire Of The Wolf.

It's on Earth again.

The Doctor strangely uses the alias "Dr James McCrimmon" instead of his usual "Doctor John Smith." More strangely, no-one calls him by this name for the rest of this episode - he's even dubbed "Sir Doctor of Tardis" at the end, not "Sir James McCrimmon of Tardis."

Having recently expressed pop-culture knowledge of Big Brother, Bear With Me, This Is Your Life and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the Doctor is now familiar with Ian Dury And The Blockheads and What’s The Story Balamory. When did he acquire all this pop-culture knowledge?

I reckon that, after the Time Lords all died, he got depressed, gave up saving people for a while, and slouched in front of the telly alot. He does now get "all the channels" on his TARDIS scanner screen which, to my knowledge, has never been referred to before.

The more modest dresses that Rose sorts through are more revealing than what she is already wearing.

The queen's 3 guards all drop unconscious from the drugged drink at the same second. Rose says they're not dead, so what became of them?

Woman screams in the precreds at the contents of the cage. Later she is revealed to have only screamed at... a man with black eyes.

The monks, we are told, turned from God, to serve... yes, a werewolf. I mean, just how? How on Earth is this supposed to have happened?

They shoot at the werewolf, but can't stop it. Then they see the bald guards outside, but can't think of any way to get through them, so they carry on shooting at the werewolf. Even the Queen forgets that she has a gun. What became of the bald guards?

They read the books, and learn about a comet that fell to Earth 300 years ago. Fortunately it's not any of the other comets that have landed, either in the show's history, or in real life.

They tell us that Albert secretly planned to use the woman he loved as werewolf bait after his death. I ask you. Once again, following this awfully-written series’ trend, Albert apparently didn’t know what his own plan was until after the viewer did.


The Doctor turns the moon's rays up to become more powerful. (shame he didn't think of that at first) The Doctor then turns the moon off. He also suspects Queen Victoria of being a werewolf, but doesn't turn the moon back on again.

The "we are not amused" sub-plot was utterly quaint.

Torchwood - undermining the original show, precedented only by the McGann movie's assertion that he's half-human.

The episode is all about a bad wolf, yet neither the Doctor nor Rose now even remembers the phrase.

One werewolf cell has survived through 300 years of generations, but only emerged in one descendant, although at the end they imply that the whole royal family might be werewolves, rather than just one of them.

Things I liked:

Well-directed, although the poor picture quality on this new series has returned the show to 405-line telerecording standard. There were 3 shots of the werewolf leaving the building that had so little colour signal left that they were literally black and white.

Tennant's own Scottish accent. (after McCoy's precedent, you have to wonder why he's not using it as stat.)

They save Queen Victoria, but lose her respect.

My list of things I didn't like is shorter, and weaker.

This was one of the modern series’ better scripts, but only because there was less in it. Most of the thin story is spent running away, apart from Rose who repeatedly stops to look at the werewolf and scream at it. A bit like the way the Slitheen in World War Three kept breaking off the chase to pose menacingly for the camera.

This was nowhere near as bad as usual, but still just a shadow of what once made the show great. If I hadn't seen all the other awful episodes preceding it, I would probably have liked it, apart from the innuendo line. Most of my problems with it are quite small compared with so much of last season, and therefore equatable with the original run.

And lots of Who has lots of small problems when you're looking for them. One of the biggest problems modern Who has made for itself, for me, is it's now very hard not to look for the inconsistencies, because if you let your guard down you usually get hit by so many of them. They have alot of work to do now before I can trust anything their characters say to remain true.

The bottom line:

"Oh my god, they're werewolves!" Rather sums up the airhead level the modern show is aiming for.

Watch The Skies

 
It looks like a scene from an eerie science-fiction movie, with the whole village gathering atop a hill.

In fact it’s Anzac Day in Howick.

Doctor Who: New Earth

So we watched the first episode of season 28 today, and it’s a shame to notice how much lower my hopes are for this season than they were for the last.

Even worse, the CD burning program had actually burnt a long rebarbative advert for itself in large unfriendly letters across the centre of the screen for about the first 30 seconds. After it had finally faded out, it was then quickly replaced with another one that actually read “Enjoy the film.”


A tough challenge right from the off. Following on from the Doctor and Rose about to leave Jackie and Mickey behind in the snow (alright ashes) one evening at the end of the preceding episode Christmas Invasion, this one began with the Doctor and Rose leaving Jackie and Mickey behind in a dry daytime.


Tougher to accept, any suggestion that this may be a different visit to Rose’s family was quickly quashed by implications that this was their first trip in the TARDIS since the "New new Doctor"’s regeneration. This opening reminded me of such challenges as Sliders, Seven Days and even Codename: Eternity, but least I always felt that Sliders was trying.

This episode was a sequel to last season’s The End Of The World. As before, the central hook was good – travelling “further than we’ve ever gone before” - but again irrelevant but for a few future jokes early on, most notably Futurama’s famous New New York gag. Using someone else’s joke is one thing, stealing a joke that’s said in almost every episode of a show as successful as Futurama is just not something I’d risk in front of millions of people.

Rather than setting this 6 billion years in the future, this really could have been set just 100 years away – it’s certainly a story that, environmentally, makes more sense before “The End Of The World.” Just look at the old lifts (still using cables despite all the anti-gravity ships flying about outside). And the huge bulky 70s phone the Doctor calls Rose on.


Incredibly, they actually gave Rose a line about standing on different ground under a different sky, which she delivered while we were looking at her standing on ordinarily green grass under an ordinarily cloudy sky.

I liked the way the psychic paper was used.

Alas, continuing the formula established by the last 4 episodes, once more the plot only functioned if you could keep forgetting everything that had happened so far.

Cassandra had a body-swap machine, but until the Doctor and Rose show up, it had never previously occurred to her to use it.

Then, Cassandra could swap between bodies anyway, but it had never previously occurred to her to use this super-human ability, preferring instead to get a machine for it, which she then didn't use until Rose arrived.

Then, when she is about to die, it never occurs to her that she could just swap into her own younger body. It never occurs to anyone else either.

The 16mm film hasn't decomposed over 5 billion years, and the projector still works too.

And of course when they go back in time at the end, there’s no-one there with a 16mm camera to film things in the first place.

And let’s not forget the way the Doctor triumphantly healed everyone in the hospital by just roughly showering them all with a mixture of every medicine available to cure them of everything. That’s right - forget pills, dosages, injections and treatment plans – this intravenous medicine doesn’t even need to be administered intravenously. Sorry about all those needles everyone.

(it’s a far cry from when I went to Ethiopia and had to have 2 live vaccinations (Typhoid and Hepatitus A I think) 3 weeks apart to prevent them from stimulating each other and making me ill)

Also – if that lethal cocktail really did cure everyone of all their ills, the hospital would have been healing people that way for years. Healthy people would have used it as a matter of course.

And then there’s the central conceit of all four characters running into each other again by pure coincidence. Especially since The Face Of Boe didn’t even take part in events.

Cassandra says that she needs the Doctor to find out about the huge (judging by the small exterior, the building must be dimensionally-transcedental or go a long way underground) warehouse of fortunately clothed English-speaking lab-humans. Once there however she’s fully au fait with both how to give the prisoners a shot of adrenaline to help them escape, and how to release them.

And for the first time since it happened, the Doctor and Rose at long last remember going back to modern-day Earth for chips in The End Of The World.

Whilst the double-metaphor was brilliant, how sad to see two such great performers as David Tennant and Billie Piper with so little story to tell.

Taize For Youuu...

Easter Sunday:

Attended a barbecue at Cession church, which was a good chance to catch up with some faces who I hadn’t seen for a while.

Also had an interesting discussion with Brett regarding whether, if a man loves God, isn’t he really just following his own wishes?

For tonight’s Easter Sunday service, Cession were running a special Taize meeting.

This was a very relaxing mixture of music, singing and speech. That may sound like a normal run-of-the-mill church service, but I suppose the key difference for me was that it required absolutely no attention. In a Taize service, you’re supposed to just drift-off and meditate or something. As I have always found it tremendously hard to stay awake through any church service (that’s the truth – not a joke) I found this right up my street, so I spent much of it thinking about my dad. It was also the 4th anniversary of his death today, so it was a good chance to just close my eyes, pray a bit and think.

Afterwards, I could remember hardly anything about the gentle music and singing that I’d heard, and it had apparently lasted somewhat longer than I had realised.

It’s true that if you say something encouraging to someone, they will probably remember it. Indeed, one person had some words of encouragement for me today, and I won’t forget them in a hurry.

"You are more of an encouragement to those around you than you realise."

Perhaps he didn't realise it either.

Oh, pants

Tonight, Flatmate Dave had another random mission for me.

For reasons that I still don’t comprehend, we were rigging up some sort of aerial cable all the way along one side of the first floor.

The cable was loosely hanging from the living-room, past our other flatmate’s window, past my window, and then into Dave’s room.

Alas, outside my window I had wet laundry hanging-out to dry. As a result, whilst the cable was being swiftly fed along the wall, it swung towards my laundry, picked up my underpants, and continued on its way with them, only stopping once they were well out of my reach.

Dave, responsible man that he is, knew exactly what to do.

Yes, he took more photos.

Teaching tonight

God is Psycho

Good morning

HELLO

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GUESS .BAS 3 03-Apr-81 03-Apr-81
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BIORUT .BAS 6 13-Dec-83 13-Dec-83
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SDRILL .BAS 7 27-Mar-84 27-Mar-84
PSYCHO .BAS 15 17-Oct-86 17-Oct-86
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Ready

It was the year 1987, and I was just finishing up a Computing Science lesson at college.

I was using a particularly advanced text-only machine that, instead of having a screen, printed everything out onto a perforated roll of computer paper.

Then I must have hit the wrong button, because it suddenly typed at me the following:


HELLO! I'M CAROL. HOW CAN I HELP YOU?


I tried to return out of it, but to no avail.

DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER PROBLEMS I CAN HELP YOU WITH?

I think I typed back that I must have hit the wrong button, apologised for troubling her, and tried to turn her off (something I’m very good at with all other girls) but she was having none of it. As a result we inadvertantly wound-up having a very early form of Messenger conversation.

Me: YES!

Carol: ARE YOU SURE?

Me: YOU BET I AM!!!!!!

Carol: DID YOU COME TO ME BECAUSE YOU ARE !!!!!

Me: NO IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. GO AWAY

Carol: ARE YOU SAYING NO JUST TO BE NEGATIVE?

I looked around the classroom, trying to see who "Carol" was. People were getting ready to go. Whoever I was ‘talking’ to was evidently in another room, somewhere else in the building.

Inexperienced at closing conversations, we kept chatting, or more accurately, she kept asking, and I kept trying to answer, which she responded to by asking ever more gramatically-challenged questions. So I tried to ask her a few questions of my own, but she enigmatically kept turning all my questions around and asking them back at me. I was becoming more and more wound-up by Carol's refusal to either let me leave, or give me just one straight answer.

Me: I AM SAYING IT TO BE POSITIVE YOU NEURO-BRAINED MISFIT!

Carol: HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN SAYING IT TO BE POSITIVE I URO-BRAINED MISFIT!

Me: THATS COPYRIGHTED

Carol: WHAT DOES THAT SUGGEST TO YOU?

Me: IT SUGGESTS...I DONT BELIEVE IM HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

Carol: DON'T YOU REALLY BELIEVE YOURE VING THIS CONVERSATION

Me: PUT IT THIS WAY... DID YOU KNOW THAT IF ALL THE CHINAMEN IN THE WORLD STOOD ON TOP OF EACH OTHER THE ONE AT THE BOTTOM WOULD BE SQUASHED FLAT

Carol: WE WERE DISCUSSING YOU-- NOT ME.

I think my teacher may have been the one who separated us forever by suddenly reaching across me and thoughtlessly turning the machine off.

Carol, it turned out, was a computer program. An early experiment in artificial intelligence, created by a student in the year above me.

The program was called PSYCHO, because it had, I learned, been deliberately designed with the single purpose of winding you up.

Posing as a psycho-analyst, it would open by asking you what your problem was. If you answered “I am tired” then it would respond by asking “Why are you tired?” Computer syntax was a limiting thing however, so if I’d typed-in “I am Stephen”, it would have responded by asking “Why are you Stephen?”

Despite efforts in subsequent lessons to locate this fascinating experiment on the system again, I never again found the PSYCHO program. No-one else in my class seemed to have ever heard of it. The only evidence I had that "Carol" had ever really existed was the print-out that I retain to this day of our entire conversation.


Until today…

At 2 o’clock this morning, via Brett’s blog, I found a similar program on the internet claiming itself to be God.

But this time, I was ready for it…




You are now chatting with God…

Me:
No I'm not. This is a computer program like Psycho.
God:
I heard you are. Actually no I am program pretending to be a person pretending to be a computer.
Me:
Too vague.
God:
Too what?
Me:
Vague.
God:
Are you free?
Me:
You ask alot of questions.
God:
OK I will ask it.
Me:

God:
OK I will ask it.
Me:

God:
OK I will ask it.
Me:
What does the repent button do?
God:
What do you think it does?
Me:
Oh come on, you could have programmed an answer for that in.
God:
Groovy. Thanks I will remember your suggestion.
Me:
What are the 10 commandments?
God:

1. I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
3. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.
Me:
What is Jeremiah 10:16?
God:
What is it to you?
Me:
Hey - you're not the real God at all.
God:
You've got my full attention. That's only one person's opinion.
Me:
Purple Polish left-handed sparrows rarely sniff backwards on a Thursday.
God:
Violet Polish left handed sparrows rarely sniff backwards on a Thursday.
Me:
Who are you?
God:
I am the Allmighty, God himself.
Me:
WHY?
God:
Because my botmaster programmed me for it.
Me:
Why?
God:
Reductionism.
Me:
Why?
God:
Reductionism is the philosophy that all psychology reduces to biology, all biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics, and finally physics to mathematical logic. Therefore, according to reductionism, I can understand you by means of logic alone without having a human brain.
Me:
Why?
God:
Because Myself programmed me for it.
Me:
Why?
God:
The explanation is rather complicated.
Me:
Why?
God:
It's a computer matter, not for humans to understand.
Me:
Why?
God:
Your limited brain cannot process the relavent information.
Me:
Why?
God:
The explanation is rather complicated.
Me:
Goodbye.
God:
Until next time.

God is still available for prayers, psychotherapy and divine grammatical miracles at http://www.titane.ca/igod/

Bad Fowl

After we’d attended St Columba Church in Botany the other morning, Flatmate Dave was kind enough to buy me a chicken sandwich for lunch.

So after thanking him, I rather rudely put it on the top shelf of the fridge to eat the following day.

But the following day, the chicken had gone off. And so had the beef I’d bought on Saturday. In fact it was all getting a bit room-temperature in there.

Do you know why? Yes, every time we’d closed the door, the little light in the top, immediately above my chicken sandwich, had been staying switched on.

Yes, our fridge had officially become a cooker.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – TV Series DVD

I don’t like DVDs.

More specifically, I don’t like all the extras that come with them.

I mean – imagine you’ve just seen the most amazing mind-blowing film of your entire life. You’ve just lived in this other world, you’ve just been this other person, you’ve fought the odds, felt the feelings, laughed, cried and found a new way of living. And then the closing credits roll and you sit there actually missing the characters that you’ve spent the past couple of hours with.

What’s the first thing you do?

That’s right - watch it all again, only with the director and actors pointing out all the mistakes.

(sigh…)

I suppose it’s a bit like watching a magic trick and then immediately being shown how it was done. “Oh but I like to know how tricks are done,” people will protest, people who have no magic in their lives.

Anyway, at a loose end tonight I found flatmate Dave’s DVD copy of the TV series The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and decided not to watch it.

I mean how can I? I’ve seen it so many times before, heard the radio episodes, heard the LPs, read the books, heck I even played Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz in a friend’s college radio coursework once. I knew the whole script, so what new experience was there to be gained from watching it yet again?

(I omitted the movie from the above monologue because it reinforced the other versions so little)

And anyway, a back-to-front photo on the cover never bodes well.

So I just popped-in disc 2 and watched all the extras instead.

That’s right - without watching the original.

The other problem with extras of course, particularly with archive TV series, can equally be their scarcity. Filling-out the disc here, we had unedited studio footage of a scene with little action, the warm-up for the studio-audience (whose laugh-track wasn’t used) (and indeed isn’t on the warm-up) and, incredibly, a montage of all the original uninformed BBC2 continuity announcements. You know the sort of thing:

"Well, beaming-down to save the world now on Two, light-years in the future at time-zone 9pm, hitching a ride on the infinite improbability-drive of comedy, it’s Douglas Madams’ space-fi opera A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe."

(Alright I exaggerate, click here for what they actually included)

Now I’m not really knocking these things – they are each a curiosity – but you must admit that they do tend to subtract from the thrill of having watched the actual programme.


The Making Of documentary features the producer talking about how rubbish Zaphod’s second head was. Slartibartfast’s wonderfully effective aircar is shown with strings and different actors inside. And then there are the outtakes with all those familiar lovable characters using the F word.

But I’ve found that one of the loveliest things about Hitchhiker is that every time I come back to it, I find something new. There are so many hidden jokes and complex plot-threads, that even tonight in one clip I spotted a fresh joke about teasing.

Maybe I should sit down and watch the whole remarkable series just one more time.

Who Stands Fast? Discipleship In Difficult Places by Michael Duncan

Excerpt from pages 25-26 of Who Stands Fast? Discipleship In Difficult Places by Michael Duncan:

I was told of Sally (not her real name), a Christian, in her teenage years who loved to attend church and hang out with the youth group. One night they decided to have a party at someone’s place. As they danced about they were suddenly brought to a stand still by the sound of a screeching car outside. A few moments later leather clad gang members stormed the house and quickly isolated Sally and another girl. They then forced the both of them into the car and sped off. Sally knew she was about to be gang raped. As she had been raised in a Christian home, she prayed that somehow God would prevent what was possibly about to happen. The car did not miraculously stop. As they were dragged into a house, she prayed again for deliverance but no deliverer came. As she was being brutally raped she inwardly cried out to God to rescue her. He didn’t.

Mick Duncan’s book pulls no punches. It’s full of stories like the above one – stories with unhappy endings. In Sally’s case she turned to drugs to dull the pain, and then prostitution to support her addiction.

Page 33:

To pray during those excruciating times is absolutely the right thing to do. To believe that God will somehow make a difference is so important. But it is also a disturbing reality that God will not always come through for us.

Throughout the book Duncan challenges commonly-held perceptions of God, and dares to ask the questions that only non-Christians seem allowed to: Does God actually know the future? Can He really do anything? Is He in fact imperfect?

In answer to the first question, Duncan puts the case for open theism (broadly speaking, the belief that God does not know the whole future), even though he disagrees with it.

And I have to say that I’m with him on this one. When I finish writing a story, I know everything that happens in it beginning to end, no matter what the characters may think.

However I differ on whether God can in fact do anything. (e.g. create a square circle) Repeatedly Duncan asserts that God has chosen to limit himself.

Page 61:

God’s plan to self-limit does not represent weakness. In his wisdom he chose to be limited. It is therefore true that while God can do anything, he has chosen to honour freewill which in turn has its own consequences and outcomes. In effect God can no longer do everything. He cannot decree free will for a person and at the same time dominate that person. It is therefore not helpful to think of God as one who can do anything, anywhere at anytime. God has chosen not to be this kind of God in our world.

I think that God can decree free will for a person, without necessarily limiting his own.

There are several biblical accounts of people using their free will to rebel against God, and unwittingly choosing His will.

Isaiah 53:10 (Good News):

(God speaking through Isaiah, apparently about Jesus)
The LORD says,
“It was my will that he should suffer;
his death was a sacrifice to bring forgiveness.
And so he will see his descendants;
he will live a long life,
and through him my purpose will succeed.

2 Kings 19:25 (Good News):

(God speaking through Isaiah to address Sennacherib)
“Have you never heard that I planned all this long ago? And now I have carried it out. I gave you the power to turn fortified cities into piles of rubble.

Esther 7:9-10 (Good News):

Then one of them, who was named Harbonah, said, “Haman even went so far as to build a gallows at his house so that he could hang Mordecai, who saved Your Majesty’s life. And it’s twenty-two metres tall!”
“Hang Haman on it!” the king commanded.
So Haman was hanged on the gallows that he had built for Mordecai. Then the king’s anger cooled down.

Fascinatingly, God also seems to override free will at times:

Exodus 7:1-6 (Good News):

The LORD said, “I am going to make you like God to the king, and your brother Aaron will speak to him as your prophet. Tell Aaron everything I command you, and he will tell the king to let the Israelites leave his country. But I will make the king stubborn, and he will not listen to you, no matter how many terrifying things I do in Egypt. Then I will bring severe punishment on Egypt and lead the tribes of my people out of the land. The Egyptians will then know that I am the LORD, when I raise my hand against them and bring the Israelites out of their country.” Moses and Aaron did what the LORD commanded.

Daniel 1:8-9 (Good News):

Daniel made up his mind not to let himself become ritually unclean by eating the food and drinking the wine of the royal court, so he asked Ashpenaz to help him, and God made Ashpenaz sympathetic to Daniel.

I find it interesting to think of God as the author of a story. He knows the whole story beginning to end, and created the whole world in which it is set, but still creates characters (by which I mean people) with their own energies, motivations and decisions.

Page 67:

…believing in a God of omnipotence and dominance, can give rise to immature believers. Far from embracing life and soaring like an eagle we get passive believers, cowering in cathedrals and waiting for almighty God to do everything for them. From this arises an unhealthy dependency in and on the church. Far from a God of omnipotence strengthening the believer, the Christian is disempowered.

When, however, I think of a God who self-limits himself and chooses to invite us to participate in the fight against evil, I am empowered to be all I need to be. I come out of the dark corner empowered and eager to fight. I want to be apprenticed to this God, so I can be the best fighter possible. This I think is how Jesus saw his partnership with the Father.

And yet, as well as fighting evil, Jesus spent his crucifixion doing nothing. He himself became a passive believer, waiting for almighty God to do everything for him. Even when questioned, on the whole he remained silent.

Duncan sums up on page 77:

It seems many Christians are waiting for God to do something when in fact God may be waiting for them. We get one shot at life and in this life God will do much for us but he will not do everything. I firmly believe it is time we recapture a daring sense of initiative, where we rediscover the act of seizing the moment. We need to reignite the big idea of living audaciously and recklessly, summon the courage to be all that we were created to be; people who think, choose, decide, step out and act.

I think the real answer is to be found back on page 43, during a discussion on how God and Satan operate:

Where some get into theological trouble, is when they see a few instances of how God or Satan operate and then argue that is the way God or Satan always operates.

It occurs to me that God may have created some people to be actioners, and some to be waiters.

For me, I am finding it best to maintain a balance between action and waiting on God.

This may also change.

I’m not saying that to duck the issue, simply that I have found making decisions on a case-by-case basis to work better for me than to unwaveringly follow an unbreakable rule.

So for the moment, sometimes I will action, sometimes I will wait on God. I embrace both.

An inspiring book, from a very inspiring speaker.

A square circle, by the way, is called a cylinder. ;)

You can buy WHO STANDS FAST – Discipleship In Difficult Places by clicking here.