by Catriona Mills

Articles in “Doctor Who”

Why Else Was Instant Messenging Invented, If Not To Discuss Doctor Who?

Posted 24 April 2009 in by Catriona

I don’t have a real reason for posting this. It’s not quite a strange conversation. It’s just that as we were having this conversation, the following thoughts ran through my head:

This is interesting: I’d not thought about Time Lords quite like this before.
I wonder if I should post something along these lines on the blog?
Would people be interested in that?
Hmm, that might be quite a bit of work, though.
What button is it to cut and paste? Control or command?

And, yes: I genuinely am this verbose on IM.

ME: Sweetie, Romana is dead.
NICK: Well, probably. But you’d have thought the same about the Rani.
ME: No, because the Rani comes under the same category as the Master.
She’s an outlaw. Why would she go back to fight for Gallifrey? The Master wouldn’t if they hadn’t resurrected him specifically for that purpose. So she would never have been involved in the Time War.
NICK: Yes that’s true.
ME: Romana would have been.
NICK: True.
ME: As Susan would have been. They have social consciences that the Master and the Rani never had.
NICK: I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a full-blown resurrection of the Time Lords at some point though. It’s too tempting for someone not to do.
ME: Yeah—I’d love to see that, in a way. You know? But, at the same time, this new series is predicated on that all being gone. So it would also be a cop-out, and I might shout a little bit.
NICK: I know. That’s very much the danger of such a move. A lot of the authentic emotion of the new series derives from it. It’s made the Time Lords seem a lot grander than they ever did in the flesh.
ME: Well, and they are a lot grander now than they were.
NICK: That’s true too.
ME: The Time Lords in the original series were grandiose. But they were also atrophied.
NICK: Yeah.
ME: And the original series never shied away from that. That’s why the Doctor fled, really.
NICK: Yes, though the mise en scene distinction between atrophied and spangly was always a difficult one.
ME: Well, yes. I’ll give you that. Those collars, though! Magnifique!
NICK: Oh yeah. That is why James Acheson got Academy Awards after leaving the BBC.
ME: The costuming was awesome. And it reinforced the fact that they were an atrophied species, that they were so secure (metaphorically) in their self-righteousness and (literally) in their dome that they never needed to fear attack. No species fearing attack would wear collars they couldn’t turn their head in. The Time Lord collars are their “brains in the hand.”
NICK: That’s genius. Maybe the collars were bulletproof too?
ME: Maybe? Who uses guns in the Whoverse? Apart from humans.
NICK: True. Stasers were used on Gallifrey.
ME: And we know Time Lords aren’t bullet proof—poor 7th Doctor.
NICK: Yes, indeed.

Spare-Room Dalek Update

Posted 13 April 2009 in by Catriona

Tonight, we had friends over for dinner.

As I was preparing dessert, I looked over and saw that the Dalek was moving down the hallway . . .

I screamed and screamed and screamed.

Eventually, the laughter stopped.

Later, I noticed that an attempt had been made to ameliorate the Dalek’s ferocious demeanour:

Do genocidal cyborgs not also deserve their dignity?

You Mean You Don't Have An Inflatable Dalek In Your Spare Room?

Posted 13 April 2009 in by Catriona

What on earth do you keep in there, then?

Nick’s sister sent this to him for Christmas, and I’ve only just inflated it, because I needed to get a new pump (the old one finally succumbing under the strain of reinflating my plastic palm tree).

And, honestly, hand inflating a Dalek is nowhere near as easy as it sounds.

I have a somewhat conflicted relationship with inflatable objects. My best friend gave me an inflatable palm tree for Christmas the year before I moved the Brisbane, to get me into the tropical spirit, and it stood in the corner of my kitchen for years—until it starting deflating faster than I could reinflate it. I’ll need to locate that puncture at some point.

Prior to that, my parents bought me an inflatable version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” which was fabulous—except it brought out the worst in my mother. When I was waitressing and coming home late at night, she’d relocate it from my bedroom to places like the toilet or the bathroom, so I’d open the door and scream.

She found this endlessly amusing until the day she set it up just inside my bedroom door, forgot about it, and scared the living daylights out of herself when she went in with some washing.

But there’s a simple and special kind of joy to having a Dalek in the spare room. My absolute favourite part of the Dalek is this, though:

Well, now: that’s something of an understatement.

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