Decant Circles

I spent an hour up to my wrists in cold dead chicken last night.

An hour.

One hour.

(1)

In future, I may consider deboning chicken thighs. Never again chicken breasts. Certainly not four pounds of them. They have all those fiddly little ribs. Very bad.

Also, caught up on Torchwood. Think I am detecting a distinct recurring theme, but it's hard to tell--watching them all in a streak like that, it's possible to see patterns where there's just coincidences.

Beyond that, it's a slow day at work, Aunt Caroline's Joy Mojo is a wonderful thing, and I'm about to fire up "Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance."

Today was Chapters "20% off" customer appreciation day.

They have Doctor Who boxed sets. I have seasons 1 and 27 and 28 (and given the contents, am utterly prepared to forgive the perpetual mislabelling of seasons that appears to have started this century).

"Oh, Grandfather, couldn't we stay a bit longer? The Thals are such nice people."
"And the Daleks are not. Which is more important, my child."

First impression: it's stunning how little the Daleks have changed since '63. Gotten more powerful, yes--I pity the poor bastard who tries to manhandle a Dalek onto a cloak in this day and age--but still ruthlessly survival-oriented and utterly without compassion. And the voices. Gyah. I've got it backwards--I saw them in Season 27 before I ever saw them in Season 1--but there's a certain giddy thrill of safe terror in watching them appear. I know what they are, and how bad they can be. They're the anti-life, the beast of judgement. They dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds...[1]

And I'm watching them meet the Doctor, and thinking it's the end of their golden age, such as it was. They don't know who he is. They don't fear the Oncoming Storm. They don't even know about the TARDIS.

Life on Skaro is about to change.[2]
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[1] ...yes, I'm mangling Sandman.
[2] And referencing Fallout.

So. Sunday evening, I watched The Lost Room again. It's a TV mini-series, quiet little modern-day supernatural setting (horror? fantasy?), plot that I can't summarize ATM without spoilers. It starts with someone paying two million dollars for an unusual motel room key, I'll leave it at that.

Sunday evening, I also *ordered* a copy of The Lost Room, satisfying my conscience and picking up a decent mini-series in one fell blow. Amazon was just barely cheaper than having Chapters order it and going to pick it up in-store, so I shrugged at the estimated delivery date (December 13th or 14th), figured I wasn't going to get a serious craving to watch it again in less than a month, and called it good.

Apparently for Amazon, "November 15" is close enough to "December 13-14" for estimation purposes. Came home today to find it waiting in the mailbox. I am pleased.

I have the partial lyric "Let's-- do-- the Time War-- agaaaaaain!" running through my head. You know, to the tune of the Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I'm almost afraid to drink coffee. I'm not sure if that would banish the incipient earworm, or let me figure out the rest of the lyrics.

I'm working on a radical assumption here: to wit, if you are enough of a geek to recognize the Spearhead from Space reference, you have probably already heard about the episode of Doctor Who which came out two years ago. If you are not, then the reference is not itself a spoiler.

I finally saw the first episode of the twenty-seventh[1] season of Doctor Who last night, and I am weirdly happy with the parallels to the 1970 Spearhead from Space (which, I will note, are four out of the five episodes of the older series that I've seen--mostly I read what novels I could get my hands on. The fifth episode, IIRC, had something to do with Ace going feral). Introduction of a new Doctor, technically newer-and-more-polished compared to previous episodes, the same primary antagonist. It seems a little choppy compared to some of the current season, but WTH, first episode in years, finding their feet, all good.

I suspect some of the echoing was deliberate; Spearhead from Space caused a kafuffle about whether Doctor Who was too scary for children, and it seems like the kind of thing that might have stuck in older viewers' minds, something they saw thirty-five years ago and that had them hiding behind the sofa. ( Spoiler? Now with Warren Ellis quote! )

(I am trying to find a better description for the sonic screwdriver than "It's a phaser permanently set to 'useful'." Anyone? ...dear Christ, the thing has its own Wikipedia page.)

Watched the second episode ("Mosturize me!"), realized I'd already seen the third, and watched the fourth. I *think* I'd seen that one before, but couldn't remember anything--one of those cases where you recall vague concepts, and recognize some scenes as they happen, but don't know what's happening next.

( Spoiler (Harriet Jones, Christmas Special 2005). Also, sentimentality. )

*shrugs, slightly embarrassed*

Heh. Fandom.
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[1] The one available on DVD as the first season.

So, I was watching the 2005 Dr. Who Christmas Special. And it's funny and unselfconscious, but overall I am being a touch apprehensive about the general feeling that no-one can do anything about the incursion[1] without the Doctor.

And Rose Tyler and Harriet Jones (who I am rather liking) are dealing with the Sycorax (and while I want to say Mickey is too, he's written as more just there), vile anti-social alien beasties who have determined that since Rose arrived in the TARDIS, she is obviously worth listening to. And Rose, in an untenable position, steps forward to speak. Which is fine. But just before she does, there is a quick little squib of dialogue:

Mickey: Don't you dare.
Rose: Someone's got to be the Doctor.
Harriet: They'll kill you!
Rose: Never stopped him.

And dammit, I am just going to forgive this episode all its deus ex machina by the Doctor, because Rose clearly has no idea what she's doing, and it's probably not going to work, but she has something to try for. More, she has someone to try to emulate--hell, given the fluid nature of the Doctor, you can say she has someone to try to *be*.

(Total Christmas Special material, here.)

That the Doctor is coming across like a cross between Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow and Dick Van Dyke as Bert (in Mary Poppins). With this scatterbrained canniness.

...oh good god, I think he just started quoting The Lion King. I do love the "baffle them with bullshit" element.

...right. I have become a fangirl.

Hm. I'm now drawing correlations between the Doctor and (of all people) Jack the Ripper--as he's often seen, not who he was. Abstract ideals. People of fluid identity but defined goals. Icons. Blanks. There's something there I could follow up on... Archetypes, maybe. The Doctor as an archetype given variable flesh, walking and talking among mortal men. Variable face, variable personality, variable history if you want to read the occasional amnesia that way, and yet consistently the Doctor, perpetually Apollonian in effect, righting wrongs and thwarting monstrosities from one end of galactic time to the other. Because he *does* this.

(Viewing from behind the sofa is optional.)

EDIT: *Ow.* Okay. Retract the deus ex machina assessment. Also, the presence of the Doctor's teeth are duly noted.
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[1] It's on Earth. I am actually suddenly not sure that there *are* any Dr. Who episodes set on Earth which don't involve an alien incursion, so I don't think it counts as a spoiler.

...coming home spacey and out-of-sync, having dinner made for you and getting a foot rub, and curling up (along with cats) to watch two episodes of Deadwood.

I have seen some of my e-mail. I have not checked it in any meaningful fashion.

I will not be in Toronto for the horror convention this weekend, and I can actually live with that, though it pains me slightly.

Life continues. Calls and arrangements must be made.

And there is nothing like watching crows play "whee, I am a kite" and cawing happily as they hover in midair, bouncing up and down in the wind coming in off the sea.

(ObHearstRef: That bastard. How *dare* he beat up everyone's favourite racketeer / pimp / uhm, can you call Swearengen a crime lord? / look, I have *no* idea why he's so likeable. None. It's not even a cheesy sleazy kind of liking the character the way it is with the Grey Mouser.)

The lead singer of Axxis sounds like E. B. Farnum (I'm not even going to say William Sanderson; I can't place the actor from anywhere else, and have no idea how much of the character's speech is Deadwood-specific). This would not be nearly so disturbing--or perhaps even noticeable--if I had not just finished watching all but the last episode of season two of Deadwood.

As is, the Axxis cover of "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" is producing some truly awful mental images.

Coloured lights. Microphones. That terrible powder-blue suit.

Trixie -> heart of fucking gold.

Furthermore, cannot really find a basis to deny theweaselking's hypothesis that Cy Tolliver is the devil.

(Also, eididdy, you are correct. Richardson is awesome.)

No single preferred line this time, but Calamity and Trixie drinking and ranting at each other was priceless.

Watching the doc work, I just wanted to pick up Toby and cuddle him.

Joanie loses her polish when she's angry.

I need a zombie cowboy icon. Sadly, this would require ditching one of my existing icons. In the meantime, the Judge Dredd snowman will suffice.

Started watching /Deadwood/ tonight; I expected a pleasant way to spend time with John, mellow unwinding after a lazy dinner and mop-up errands. I thought it would be something interesting. Warren Ellis said good things about it, and while I do feel the man is cracked when it comes to /The Mummy/, I generally have a high opinion of his writing.[1] So. Watched the first episode.

Watched the second.

Watched the third.

Absolutely must wind down and fall over now, or I would be watching the fourth.

The characters. Dear god, the characters. And the set-ups and the interaction and the dialogue that doesn't drop completely needless expository lumps. I was expecting... I don't know, some kind of well-plotted Western with name-dropping. Something that didn't insult my intelligence and could be geeked over, clipped down or sliced up into short-hour segments.

It's more and better than that. It's got a coherency I didn't expect, and I want to sit down and watch the character interaction and take notes except I can't stay detached enough to write when I could be watching.

...dammit, it's late and I'm going to stop before I start using the word "epic". But yeah. Really, really impressed.
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[1] By which I mean that if he died, I would find myself giving a depressing amount of consideration to the completely unacceptable idea of cracking open his skull and sucking down his brainmeats in the hopes of acquiring some measure of his skill.