So this is the first episode of season four of the new Doctor Who. I’ve seen this one a couple of times already, and I’ve never been entirely convinced by the aliens. But I’ll get to that when the episode actually starts—at the moment, we’re on ABC News’s weather report. More rain, apparently. But a nice cold night.

In other news, I’ve never quite become used to the way this armchair wobbles when I type. I think it’s all right, but who knows?

Hey, it was International Tartan Day, celebrating all things Scottish! I’m Scottish, technically. Why didn’t I know about this? Oh, well: I never identify as Scottish unless Nick’s irritating me by faking a Scottish accent.

Speaking of Nick, he has his iPhone out, despite the fact that his favourite show is about to start. I suspect he’s actually physically joined to that thing.

Ah, theme music. Here we go!

This opening scenes is so reminiscent of the opening scenes of “Smith and Jones”—I can only assume that that’s deliberate.

I know this Adipose CEO woman is from Rose and Mahoney, but I’ve never seen her in anything—I’ve never knowingly watched that other show—but she’s very good in this role. Creepy and patronising, exactly like a bad kindergarten teacher. (Spoiler! Sort of.)

Whatever difficulties I might be finding right now in getting a job, I’m so pleased I don’t have a telemarketing job. This looks intensely dull.

Ah, the two heads popping up sequentially. They could have badly over-played this near-miss angle, but I don’t think that they did.

I like the detective-fiction angle to these opening scenes, too—it’s always been a sub-text in Doctor Who, but I like it when it comes to the surface.

Nick’s live-Twittering, apparently. I’m not sure why he’s trying to steal my audience, but such is life.

Kidding, honey!

Ah, poor Stacey. It irritates me that she has the whole “I can do better, now” attitude, but she doesn’t deserve the fate that she’s about to meet.

Okay, the Doctor’s “the fat just walks away” line is genuinely creepy.

Are we supposed to assume that Donna is actually implicit in Stacey’s death? That her fiddling with the necklace sets off the unscheduled parthenogenesis? That’s rather what it looks like. But the CEO is ultimately responsible for the full parthenogenesis.

The Adipose! Sounds like a good diet plan to me. But I don’t find them entirely convincing—they remind me rather of very old-school cartoons, when you could tell which bits of set dressing were going to become relevant, because they looked different. I can’t explain it better than that—the Adipose just don’t quite seem to fit into the background.

According to Nick, it’s been a matter of some debate since the advent of the Slitheen as to whether or not Russell T. Davis hates fat people. I hope not, Russell. I love you!

I have to admit, the Adipose do look as though they’re enjoying themselves, and that’s something.

Now that near miss, with the two of them on separate roads—that worked well for me. Partly because it’s just such a lovely overhead shot.

Donna’s home life. This is a strangely depressing sequence, Donna being harangued by her mother. The mother (minor, undetailed spoiler) becomes rather an interesting character later in the season, or at least a more nuanced character, but here she’s so depressing and frustrating.

I’d never realised that Venus was the only planet in the Solar System named after a woman. (Well, a goddess, technically, Donna’s grandfather, but still.) I’d never thought about it, but, of course, he’s right. Plenty of moons with women’s names, but that’s just typical, isn’t it?

While Donna’s talking with her grandfather, which is a sweet scene, I’ll just mention that I wasn’t at all sure about Catherine Tate as a companion—she’s funny, but I wasn’t sure how she’d fit into the Doctor Who universe, and I felt her acting was slightly too mannered in this episode. It kept me from responding to her as a person, kept reinforcing the idea that she was a character. But I warmed to her fairly quickly.

I think I’ve read too many detective novels, but I quite liked this scene of Donna waiting in the toilets. Whenever I go into an interesting building, part of me always thinks, “Hmm, I wonder if I could successfully hide in these toilets?” I haven’t the faintest idea where I first saw someone hiding in the toilets, but it obviously made a powerful impression on me.

That probably explains why I found this scene of the men kicking the toilet doors in quite disturbing.

(Of course, I mainly wanted to hide in the toilets in the museum to see if the exhibits came alive at night—long, long before I saw Night in the Museum—but that’s a whole ‘nother story.)

Ah, the revelation of the villain’s true purpose. This villain seems to think she’s more comprehensible than she actually is.

Case in point: arguing that she chose her name well. “Foster: as in foster mother.” That’s not at all the kind of leap that you’d expect someone to make—and a nanny isn’t at all a foster mother.

I love this silent miming scene between Donna and the Doctor. It’s so strangely comprehensible—and you can believe that they’d get caught up in it and completely forget where they were. She’s a lovely physical comedian, Catherine Tate—and so is David Tennant, actually.

I think I have to give up my ambition of being a companion—there’s no way on Earth I could ever manage all the running.

Ha! Sonic pen. Much more useful than a sonic screwdriver. Well, unless you suddenly need to put up a lot of shelves.

This episode—this scene, in fact—thoroughly reinforced my fear of those little cage thingies that people use to clean windows. How do people ever manage to steel themselves to get in those things?

This woman is evil, though. I wonder what the actual Adipose are like. We never find out. And do they train their childcare workers to employ these insanely ruthless methods? Or is she working entirely alone? I know the Adipose repudiate her methods in the end, but that’s only because they think the Shadow Proclamation has been alerted, isn’t it?

Now the Doctor is calling her a wet nurse. That’s not the same as a foster mother or a nanny, it really isn’t. Unless she’s breastfeeding these Adipose children personally, or doing the Adiposian equivalent, then she’s not a wet nurse.

Ah, Donna stops the Doctor from revelling in his own cleverness. She’s very good at that; Martha was, as well—to an extent—but Donna’s better. At that aspect.

I love you, Martha Jones! Please come back!

The first time I saw that scene, I thought the Doctor had actually killed the two guards that he electrocuted—I didn’t hear him say, “Just enough to stun them.” Nick’s apparently only just heard that this time—this must be the third or fourth time he’s seen this one, too.

Ah, Donna. There’s a kind of desperation to this character that’s heartbreaking—this desire to break out of her ordinary life and do something extraordinary. It’s no surprise that here we have a character who has been actively searching for the Doctor. I don’t think we’ve seen that with a companion before, have we? Except perhaps Turlough, and that was slightly different.

So if one pill means one Adipose baby—which is the impression we’re given through the rate of weight loss, in the early scenes—how is it that she’s managing to generate all those extra babies? Does the body not metabolise the contents of the capsules, so that it can be re-triggered any time?

I know this is “emergency parthenogenesis,” but I still wonder how this is possible. Or are they not responding to the drugs, at all? Is that it? The capsule is a placebo, and it’s the necklace that triggers things? But, then, that would rely on everyone twiddling with their necklace at least once a day, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, the Doctor manages to prevent one million people disintegrating into creepy, little, marshmallow babies, so I suppose that’s a plus.

DONNA’S MOTHER: Oh, what is it now?
NICK: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I believe.

It’s rather cruel, to deny Donna’s grandfather the sight of the spaceships.

Nick thinks this scene with the Adipose children is excellent use of the Massive software. They are adorable.

The villain insists that the children need her, but the Adipose ships clearly disagree—which really reinforces the fact that she’s not a wet nurse.

You know what I really like about Donna—whoops, the space nanny is about to meet her nasty end—what I really like about Donna is that she doesn’t fancy the Doctor. It’s refreshing. She loves him, sure, but not at all in a romantic sense. She’s never jealous, never seeks to supplant Rose or Martha. I like that.

(I don’t think the definition of “nanny” is any more accurate than that of “wet nurse.” The idea that Mum and Dad have the kids, so they don’t need the nanny any more—that doesn’t make sense. Nannies normally worked in conjunction with parents, not exclusively in their absence. Oh, never mind.)

I’m not touching the “I just want a mate” line. Great back and forth, but I’ll leave it to speak for itself.

He’s like a puppy, this Doctor. Always looking to see who he can makes friends with.

I hope no one ever leaves my car keys in a bin.

Oooh, blonde woman. Suspicious. Yep, it’s Rose. I did not see that coming the first time I watched this episode.

Ha! I like this scene of Donna, waving to her grandfather from the TARDIS. The relationship between these two is so lovely.

And that’s the episode.

Next week: The Fires of Pompeii. “The prophecies of women are limited and dull”—ooh, you’re going to regret that when Donna gets her hands on you, mate.

Ah, memorial for the man who played Donna’s father—vale. And they’re playing Doctor Who Confidential; I’m not blogging that, but she’s a lot more soft spoken in real life, Catherine Tate, than any of her characters.

But for now, typing cramp!

(Well, my “minimal spoilers, and if that’s not possible, at least warn people” policy, but that doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.)

Because I have, of course, just seen the season finale for Doctor Who and I’m burning to post something about it.

But I won’t, except to deliver an oblique warning: if you haven’t spoiled yourself for this episode, don’t. It’s well worth watching unspoiled, and most of you (as far as I can tell from my visitor logs) only have to wait another fortnight.

If I can’t post about it now, though, I suppose I’ll have to wait until I get up to it in my season 4 live-blogging extravaganza—but that won’t be for another three months.

I hope I haven’t forgotten all the interesting things I want to say by the time that rolls around.

Nick was fulminating after leaving the ATM about the irony inherent in the fact that “Please insert your card” was crushed down into the corner to make way for an enormous, flashing “We care about customer service!” sign.

ME: It’s like when we used to have those “Keep Left” signs in the stairwell in my building, remember? And the Socialist Alternative would always stick their rally posters over them. I thought that was hilarious.
NICK: Hmmm.
ME: “Keep Left”? “Socialist Alternative”? Get it?
NICK: Hmmm.
ME: You don’t get it, do you?
NICK: Oh, I get it.
ME: But you don’t think it’s funny?
NICK: I’d just be annoyed that a sign that was intended to assist people had been obliterated . . .
ME: You pompous twat!
NICK: I’m a UX guy, Treena.

Don’t worry: you can still skip over these posts if they become too boring. But I have tried harder this time to make the title of the books visible, which—whether my purpose is solipsistic or practical—seems a key concern.

Mind, the pictures in this case are on a funny angle, because this is the middle bookshelf in the hallway, and I couldn’t get far enough back from the shelves to take a straight shot. But, really, it all adds an illusion of artiness to the project.

This is the most recent of the shelves, which Nick’s father made over the last Christmas holidays. I think it was this past Christmas, anyway. It had to be made narrower than the others so that all three would fit in the hallway without blocking any doorways (which didn’t bother me, but Nick claimed would be highly inconvenient).

Oddly, it was only after this shelf went in that I told Nick that I was slightly worried that the house was starting to look like a slightly disreputable secondhand bookshop. (It’s odd, because prior to that I’d always secretly hoped that the house would one day look like a disreputable secondhand bookshop.)

The painting on the top of this bookcase is a print of one of Sydney Lough Thompson’s paintings; he was a New Zealand-born Impressionist, and also Nick’s great-grandfather. Coming as I do from a line of anonymous peasants, I find it quite fascinating that Nick’s great-grandfather has his own Wikipedia page. (I mean, sure, it’s Wikipedia. But it’s still cool.)

(In case anyone is really interested, some of his paintings are here, although the site’s in French, and—even more astonishing to me than Wikipedia—there’s even a Youtube video, also in French but with some nice images of his works. See, the blog is educational!)

I’ve managed to retain most of this shelf, although that is Nick’s copy of Charles Stross’s Halting State lying horizontally up there—horizontal books on these shelves are a sure sign that space is desperately short elsewhere.

The copy of the Brothers Grimm I bought down in Sydney as a necessary tool for the thesis. I mentioned back in March that I ended up with multiple copies of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales: the Grimm tales were part of the same process, in that my author also rewrote several of these tales for her own journal. But the tales that she chose were fairly obscure ones, often not reprinted in incomplete collections, so I bought this complete edition. It’s good to have on the shelf, but it never actually made it into the bibliography for the Ph.D.; I defaulted to a late-Victorian translation by Margaret Hunt that I found on Project Gutenberg, as a more contemporary version of the tales.

How cool is The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, though? Everyone should have this on their shelf! No, seriously. Of course, this isn’t the most recent edition, but it’s still a fairly comprehensive survey of a wide range of authors.

It would also make a useful doorstop, if I were inclined to treat books in such a cavalier fashion.

But the books on this shelf that I love the most are those three slim, green volumes on the right: those are volumes seven, twelve, and fourteen of All the Year Round, conducted—as they point out on the spine, and the front cover, and the title page, just in case you didn’t see it the first two times—by Charles Dickens. Actually, all the volumes at that end of the shelf are Victorian periodicals, but these are the most exciting. Because of Charles Dickens, really.

Certainly, it’s far from a complete set—though I hope to pick up more in time; I bought these ones at the wonderful Berkelouw’s Book Barn in Berrima, the most alliterative antiquarian bookshop in Australia—but they’re fascinating. Volume 7, for example, has the fabulously titled “The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil,” by the Author of “Hester’s History” (seemingly, based on a quick Google search, by a woman called Rosa Gilbert, but don’t quote me on that) while volume 14 has “A Charming Fellow” by Frances Trollope. I could go on, but I won’t—I just never cease to be fascinated by how inexpensively one can buy some Victorian periodicals (although I did just pay a lot more than I did for these for a pair of much rarer volumes. But that’s another story).

Frankly, the first thought that springs to mind when I look at this shelf is a sense of surprise that I own two hardback James Herriot books. He’s a fun read, especially in the early days, but I didn’t think I bought him in hardback.

Most of these are Nick’s books, though—including the rather embarrassing Masters of Doom, although I admit that I did buy that for him. But there’s Tunnels: since I’ve written not one but two posts on that book, it seems only fitting that its picture should turn up on here at some point.

And I do love that Louisa May Alcott hardback: it’s mostly short stories, which I hadn’t read before. Some of them, of course, are intensely saccharine; I imagine that they were originally written for children’s periodicals or Christmas giftbooks and, while Alcott never patronised her child-readers, she did write some intensely sentimental works. Still, I’ve always loved Little Women—though the final book, Jo’s Boys, both bewildered and devastated me—so it’s delightful to come across a whole pile of her works that I’d never read before. Another Lifeline Bookfest find, of course.

Hey, Jasper Fforde! I love those books—and he’s so prolific, there’ll probably be another out before long. But those are exactly my cup of tea, and I’ll keep reading them as long as he keeps writing them. They remind me—in a circuitous fashion—of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but with less sex.

(Mind, Nick and I were watching Press Gang recently, and in the episode “UnXpected”—which deals with the illness of an actor who once starred in a Doctor Who/James Bond-style TV show—the character explains that he once spent two weeks inside The Hound of the Baskervilles thanks to a “fictionalising ray” but he escaped with another minor character. When the man he’s talking to says, “There’s no character of that name in Hound of the Baskervilles!” he urbanely responds, “Not now.” Nick turned to me and said, “Hang on, did Steven Moffat just invent Jasper Fforde?”)

I’m going to skip over everything else on this shelf (I’ve already expressed some concerns about the Twilight series, twice) except to note that I’m fairly certain that’s my copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology over there on the left.

Ah. No, that’s not a book called Who’s Who in Enid Blyton. It’s some sort of highly specific mirage. No, honestly.

On the other hand, that book next to the mirage is a gorgeous facsimile reprint of the stories from The Return of Sherlock Holmes as they appeared in The Strand Magazine. I’m a sucker for facsimile reprints, but the loveliest ones—a growing collection of Victorian and Edwardian children’s fantasy novels—are in the living room.

I also find that collection of Alcott’s sensation fiction two books down from the Conan Doyle absolutely fascinating: I know Alcott herself was rather ashamed of her “pot-boilers”—as was Jo March, in Good Wives—but they’re good sensation narratives, and a far less idyllic account of the opportunities available to women than the Little Women series is.

Oh, dear: I seem to have truncated Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading. That’s a shame. That’s the book that taught me that the ancient Sumerians—to whom I once referred as “Numerians,” to which my brother responded, “I suppose they were very good at arithmetic?”—called librarians “Ordainers of the Universe.” I have aspired to that title ever since.

I think that’s a complete set of L. M. Montgomery, too, although I may be lacking some of the short stories. The Anne books do get rather irritating after a while, but Anne of Green Gables remains utterly delightful every time I read it. And down towards the end is a copy of The Blue Castle: I never read that as a child, not until I bought it (at, surprisingly, the Lifeline Bookfest) a couple of years ago, and was quite astonished. It’s a fairy tale, of course, with a happy marriage to end things, but the fascinating aspect of it is the monotonous horror of the heroine’s early life—the sheer drudgery of being poor but of “good family,” thoroughly devalued for being an unmarried woman in a family that sees spinsterhood as the ultimate failure, unable to do anything independently, not even reading. It’s devastating, in a way.

But then Montgomery is often most interesting in the back stories of minor characters and in short stories: the women with illicit sex lives, with illegitimate children, with dark secrets. Little of this comes through in her best-known works, but some of the short stories show a much darker side to late-Victorian and Edwardian life than you’d ever imagine from the Anne books.

I’ve become overly prolific in my love of books, again—but I should point out Nick’s pride and joy, The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction. He’d wanted it for years, but baulked a little at the price. I found that one in a Lifeline store in Narellan for $5, and thus cemented my position as best girlfriend ever.

$5 is a small price to pay for such a honour.

Well, technically, this is stage one of three, one side of the hallway being entirely lined with shelves. Oh, it was a happy day when I realised the hallway would sustain bookshelves! Lucky for Nick, it’s a narrow hallway, or there’d be shelves running down both walls. I did suggest it, actually, but Nick vetoed it on the grounds that it would be inconvenient to have to walk down the hall sideways.

The hallway bookcases, though, are the very shallow ones that my father-in-law made for us. Well, three of those—the original two are still in the living room. I love those bookcases: they just swallow books, and they don’t attract dust as obviously as ready-bought bookcases. Honestly, do the people who design bookcases not actually own any books? They make the shelves such inconvenient sizes.

(Actually, that’s just reminded me: I took the idea of putting shelves in the hallway from Who Magazine, back when I used to read it. I’d forgotten that. They briefly ran a page in the back of the magazine with allegedly fun ideas for each month: one example I remember was “take an embroidery class, then scatter silver butterflies over your skirts and T-shirts,” which I thought was an oddly specific use of your newfound skills. But on one occasion they recommended buying cheap bookcases—I wish they’d told us where to find those mythical creatures, the cheap bookcases—then paint them bright red and put them in the hallway, filled with colourful paperbacks. I was slightly appalled at the expense and effort involved in using books as set decorations—at no point did they actually suggest you might already own the books—but it did remind me of my hallway’s bookcaseless state.)

What I mainly like about this picture is how beautifully the Chagall print has turned out. (Ignore the matting: I know it looks like the print is by someone called “Marc Caoall.” I’ll fix that at some point.)

(The print was a Christmas gift, and I had to undergo a brief but intense battle of wills with my three-year-old nephew when he wanted to open it himself. I even tried misdirection: “Look, there’re the presents Auntie Treena bought you! Look, they’ve got ribbons and everything!” There’s something about preventing a child from opening a Christmas present that makes you feel like a cad. Luckily, his fingers were too small to get the top off the tube.)

(Does that anecdote make me look like a total monster?)

This top shelf’s a weird mixture of my books and Nick’s, but what I really want to know is why I don’t have those Iain M. Banks books together. That’s unusually sloppy. The Banks books are Nick’s; I don’t read him, having unfortunately started with Complicity, which scarred me for life. It doesn’t matter how many times Nick points out the difference between Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks, I’m still not reading more. Although I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that I didn’t start with The Wasp Factory.

I also note some of my Kurt Vonnegut books are on this shelf, over to the far right: I haven’t read Timequake in years and I only recently read Deadeye Dick. But the strange thing is that I have almost a complete collection of Kurt Vonneguts—I don’t have A Man Without a Country, though I’ve read it—so I wonder where the rest are. Why aren’t they on this shelf?

Ditto Sylvia Plath: I can see the copy of The Bell Jar that I bought for a third-year course on women’s writing and Ariel next to it, but I own another copy of The Bell Jar, surely? And her diaries? Why aren’t they all together?

And just to give you an even lower opinion of my classification system, I seem to have lodged The Prime of Miss Jean Brody next to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I’m sure there was a reason for that.

For some reason, the next two shelves are mostly Nick’s books. (Which reminds me: I wonder if he’s ever going to read those Alastair Reynolds? They look pretty, and all, but I might shift them into another room. Maybe then I can fit some more Kurt Vonnegut on there, if I can find them. And I still haven’t spotted my copy of the Heaney translation of Beowulf. Where is that?)

But I am building up a nice collection of Victorian detective fiction. Almost all of them are about male detectives: I do have a collection of stories of early women detectives, somewhere. I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s not here.

And I really must buy the next in Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes saga. Actually, the fourth must be out now, although maybe not in paperback.

Hmm. My main intention here was to remind myself what I already had, not to make a list of what I still need to buy.

Hey, look, Agatha Christie! Some part of me thinks it would be nice to have these all in one binding, but I’m resisting the impulse to rebuy what must amount to forty-odd books.

But those numbered black-and-white books to the left of the shelf below the main Christies are brilliant. I found those at a Lifeline Bookfest, and they’re collections of old-school detective-fiction novellas, divided into themed collections: Women Sleuths, Police Procedurals, Locked Room Puzzles, and Great British Detectives. The books are oddly narrow and the binding crackles ominously when you open them—you can’t read them in bed, but have to sit up to do so—but they’re so cool. And pretty. I wonder if there are more than four books in the series?

Ooh, Ivanhoe. I don’t think I’ve ever read that—I find Walter Scott a real slog for the first hundred pages or so, before the narrative really grabs you—and I have a sneaking suspicion that I own more than one copy. I have read The Three Musketeers, though—which is one the next shelf down—and thought it was hilarious. (Except for the bit where Athos hanged his wife. That was well weird.)

Nick and I once had an argument about the Lord Darcy stories, which are on the third shelf here: I really enjoyed them, but Nick unexpectedly came over strongly republican and said he couldn’t stomach all the kowtowing to the Plantagenets, which I’d largely skipped over. I suppose that’s why he doesn’t read much fantasy fiction: there’re far fewer kings in science fiction. And two down from Lord Darcy is William Morris’s North of Nowhere: I haven’t read it, but I’m not the woman to turn down the chance to buy an obscure Victorian novel.

Oh, and hey! There’s my copy of Sylvia Plath’s diaries: last time I read those, I was completing my Honours year. I think it’s best to draw a veil over my resultant state of mind.

Okay, I realise this picture makes the carpet look really grubby, but it’s not, I promise.

Also, Nancy Drew! I love Nancy—she was feisty. In some of the books, anyway. Not the ones where she let Ned do all the dirty work. (One bookshelf over I have a “Nancy Clue” novel, which is slash fiction involving Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames—as Cherry Aimless—who was a nurse in her own series of books. Not usually my cup of tea, but I found it in the children’s section of an Alumni Book Sale. I’m all for children having an open view of life, but this was perhaps a little too explicit to sit next to Lucy M. Boston and Helen Cresswell. Plus, it makes a good anecdote.)

This has to be the geekiest pair of shelves in the entire house: my Nancy Drews—with some random Ray Bradburys propping them up at the end—and then Nick’s entire collection of Doctor Who Target novelisations. And that’s not even including his New Adventures and Missing Adventures, which are all in the spare room.

Still, I suppose you never know when you might want to read that one about the giant maggots again.

I’ve just been faffing around, quickly tidying over the surfaces of a generally clean house before my father-in-law comes around for dinner.

So I was dashing through the kitchen with an armload of clean washing, and I gave an open drawer a quick push to shut it as I passed.

Behind me, a tinny little voice from the closing drawer shouted “Exterminate!”

It was a full ten seconds before I realised the talking Dalek bottle opener must have fallen into something metal and activated itself.

There’s a lesson in this: if something scared you senseless as a child, don’t buy a talking version of it as a kitchen implement, no matter how cool it makes you look at parties.

And that’s sequentially upload images of my bookshelves on to the blog.

I do actually have some quite good reasons for doing this. Some are just solipsistic (example: I just like looking at books. Preferably other people’s books, but my own will do if there are no others available) and some are practical (I don’t have a decent catalogue of the books, which worries me slightly).

But the main impulse is practical. I love my books, and I’m radically running out of space. People do tell me that I should stop buying them (or worse: my mother once suggested that I throw a book away for every new book I buy) but the short answer is that I can’t.

I do restrict myself to the best of my ability, but it’s more than flesh and blood can stand to walk past a bookshop without looking in. And once you look in, you inevitably find something you want. And . . . well, the end result is you start posting pictures of your bookshelves onto the Internet just so you can be sure what you actually own.

So this might be dull. Might be exciting. Who knows?

But it’s rather a big task, and I’m not going to devote every entry to it for the next two weeks. That would be dull, no question.

Listening to Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez is blocking the noise of the gravel shovelling and calming me down.

My cup of coffee is hyping me up.

As a result, my brain is vibrating helplessly between the two states, which doesn’t aid the construction of lucid, elegant prose.

The process is something like this:

CALM: What a soothing piece of music. Ah! I remember! I need that section from chapter two to make this argument flow more smoothly . . .

HYPED: No! That’s ridiculous. Hey! Hey! Hey! No, pay attention! Hey! Hey! D’you know what would be fun? If we played tennis! That would be fun, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? Ooh, shiny thing. No, wait—it’s not that shiny. But that’s shiny! That’s really shiny. Wait, was that a noise? Was there a noise behind me? Was it a spider? I bet it was a spider. Hey! Hey! No, pay attention! Hey! Want to play tennis?

It’s like having a toddler in your head.

I’m sure I used to be productive. I’m fairly sure, in addition, that that period of productivity was only last week.

I wish I could remember how I did that.

I’ve made the point a couple of times—as have, of course, many people before me, as I mentioned in that post—that far from existing in an ivory tower removed from reality, much academic work takes place among a myriad of irritations.

Take today, for instance. So far, my attempts to continue an article on adaptations of nineteenth-century serials to the mid-Victorian suburban stage have gone something like this:

Wake up. Don’t enjoy waking up, but it has to be done. Still, a cup of coffee is always a good way to go.

Have a cup of coffee. Think about having another cup of coffee, but realise I haven’t finished the first one yet, so it’s probably a bit soon.

Work off some excess energy (from all the coffee) by playing Wii Tennis for fifteen minutes.

Play around on my social-networking sites briefly, trying to find a raincloud for a set in Packrat, as well as moderating and responding to comments on the blog.

Start a debate with Nick on Pownce about whether it would be advisable to have the same actor playing the Doctor for twenty years of Doctor Who. Since we both think this would be a bad idea, the debate is rather futile, but that’s all right—it segues into a fairly snarky discussion of who knows what about folkloric beliefs regarding human eyes.

Have another cup of coffee.

This is standard morning routine, and I’m ready to work by about 9 a.m.

Settle down to the draft—hovering at a fairly useless 1300 words—and realise I need to put a load of washing on.

Choose bed linen, because I’ve just realised I have to clean out the spare room—currently a repository for electrical equipment—and make the bed up before my parents arrive next week.

Come back to the draft, which hasn’t grown any longer in the interim.

Realise there’s a man next door doing something with an enormous pile of gravel, which makes an irregular but frustrating noise when he starts shovelling it.

Reach a possible breakthrough on reorganising the chapter.

Get a message on Facebook, reiterating this argument about whether French dictionaries are boring. Answer brusquely but resolve to ignore any responses.

Realise the washing machine is beeping, meaning it’s developed a problem.

Go and fix the problem.

Come back to the draft. Decide where to put the reorganised material, and decide I need to print the draft out to look at it properly.

Realise the washing machine is now chiming, meaning the cycle is finished.

Put the washing out, put a new load on.

E-mail my draft to myself so I can access it from Nick’s machine and print it out. Wonder why I can’t print from my machine.

Hear the man with the shovel and the gravel move around so he is now directly under my study windows.

Answer a phone call from my mother, who wants to know if I want the papers stored in her spare-room wardrobe. Decide it’s best simply for her to bring them all up next week and sort them out here.

Realise the damn washing machine is beeping again, but I’m still on the phone.

Start to worry that my mother is going to run through every item in the wardrobe over the phone, so ask her to stick everything in a box and bring it all up.

Hang up, and worry I’ve been brusque with my mother.

Restart the washing machine.

Get back to printing out the draft. Safari won’t load, so I can’t access the e-mail. Force quit Safari, and realise the washing machine is beeping again.

Restart the washing machine.

Print out the draft.

Realise the damn washing machine is beeping again.

Curse the washing machine, the person who invented washing machines, the manufacturers of this particular washing machine, and the people who sold it to us.

Realise I’m going to have to fill the washing machine manually, with a bucket.

Sit down with the draft.

Washing machine beeps again.

Restart the machine again. Contemplate running away to join the circus—but not as laundress.

Sit down with the draft, locate the section where I want to add more material, write “Furthermore,”.

Hear the washing machine beep. This time, it can’t decide between hot and cold water. Hit the “Warm” button: machine starts working. Wonder why it couldn’t figure that out on its own; realise its CPU has been exclusively devoted to a range of irritating beeps.

Think about having another cup of coffee.

Decide blogging is a safer alternative.

Of course, a lot of this comes about because I’m working at home and trying to do a little light housework on the side. Much of this could be avoided if I were to work in my office—but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

But if anyone finds an ivory tower—at a reasonable rate, of course—would they let me know?

I have no real idea what prompted this, except for Nick’s constant habit of strewing bits of his work clothing around the house when he gets home.

ME: Nick, is that your shirt you’ve left lying over the back of the sofa?
NICK (whisking his shirt away): I have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you been at the laudanum again?

To provide context, I am addicted to Wii Tennis, as result of which I think I have Wii-Tennis elbow.

NICK (freshly home from work): How are you?
ME: I think I’ve done myself an injury.
NICK: A ninja-ry? Is that like when you’re a ninja . . .
ME: Go away.
NICK: . . . . and you have an accident. Like, you drop a shuriken on your foot.
ME: What type of ninja would drop a shuriken on his foot?
NICK: Well, not a very good one.

So, I was making myself a cup of coffee.

As you do.

I had the espresso made up on the stove.

Once the kettle boiled, I picked it up, to top up my cup with hot water.

Then I realised I hadn’t actually poured any of the coffee into my cup.

I could, of course, have simply put the kettle back down, picked the coffee pot up, and made coffee in the usual fashion.

But, no. I decided it made more sense to pick the coffee pot up in my left hand, while still holding a kettle’s worth of boiling water in my right hand, and try and make the cup of coffee that way.

And then . . . well, does anyone else remember that old Dilbert cartoon where Dogbert was running a training school for self-serve garage attendants, and Scott Adams couldn’t figure out how to end the story line, so he had them all die from papercuts sustained in a map-folding exercise?

It didn’t end up anything like that.

But it could have.

The point of this? There is none.

But I think the lesson to be learned from all this is that I would benefit from drinking less coffee.

What is it about Jane Austen that prompts so many people to take her world as the basis for their own works?

(Admittedly, that’s largely a rhetorical question. I don’t know the answer. I don’t even know if there is a single answer to that question; I doubt there is.)

But it fascinates me. What is is about that England that Austen created—an England hovering somewhere in the thirty years that made up the late eighteenth century and the Regency, an England that, excepting some encamped soldiers and Anne Wentworth’s vague fears for her husband’s future, seems so isolated from the Napoleonic Wars—that so fascinates authors seeking a world in which to place their own characters?

Make no mistake: I revere Austen, but not without some reservations.

Pride and Prejudice I will say nothing against: I don’t know how many times I’ve read that book, and it delights me every time. I see no flaw in it. (Excepting, perhaps, John Sutherland’s apt question in one of his books of Victorian literary puzzles: who does betray Elizabeth Bennett? Who tells Lady Catherine of the likelihood of her marrying Darcy? But that’s a small question.)

When Nick and I watched the recent BBC adaptation—I’d seen it before; Nick had not—I thought at first it would be a failure; the first installment failed to draw Nick into the narrative. But when, at midnight, we got to the end of the third episode and I suggested we go to bed, he looked at me as though I’d suddenly gone insane: “But she’s just rejected Darcy’s proposal!” It took us until 3 a. m., but we watched it all. Apparently, Austen can even amuse a man who won’t buy a book that doesn’t have a spaceship on the cover.

Sense and Sensibility I re-read quite often, as well, despite the fact that Elinor is really too sensible and Marianne too much a victim of sensibility—and that the marriages are rather unsatisfactory.

Northanger Abbey is hilarious, and I’m partial to Persuasion, as well—it’s gentle and melancholic, but the heroine is delightful and the happy ending satisfying.

I’m less enthusiastic about Emma, although I’m aware that that’s rather an unpopular opinion. It just seems to me that Emma is less lively and intelligent than she is callous in her prosperity and actively cruel to the less fortunate. I find it difficult to re-read Emma without skipping over that final act of wanton unpleasantness to poor, dependent, scatter-brained Miss Bates.

The one that causes me real problems, though, is Mansfield Park—I can’t stop reading it, and yet it drives me mad. I feel as though there must be a key to it that I haven’t yet picked up; I can’t quite believe that the woman who created Elizabeth Bennett created weak, passive-aggressive Fanny Price and expected us to sympathise with her.

(Janet Todd’s Women’s Friendship in Literature—although almost thirty years old now—has a fascinating section on critics’ responses to Fanny, which she divides into “the hostile critics who find her distasteful or nauseating,” “the approving critics, who find Fanny the true embodiment of the ideals of the novel,” and “the ironic critics who consider Fanny fatally flawed, an ironic creation of Austen” (246-47 n.1). The debate, indeed, is analogous to that which raged around Pamela’s marriage to Squire B. in Richardson’s novel. While I can’t say that Fanny thought to make a small fortune through her face but now thinks to make a large one through her vartue—a paraphrase, since I can’t find my copy of Henry Fielding’s Shamela—I certainly think she plays her cards very cleverly. It’s what I’ve seen elsewhere called “the tyranny of the weak,” and it works—but how will Edmund stand living with a wife who becomes faint every time she’s faced with something she doesn’t fancy doing?)

But my interests aside, what is it that prompts so many authors to use Austen’s settings and characters for their own works?

I don’t even know how many have done so, but consider this—a certainly incomplete list gleaned from Amazon.com:

• Skylar Hamilton Burris has written a sequel to Pride and Prejudice called Conviction, which focuses on the marital opportunities for Darcy’s sister—and I sincerely hope that it is only in the Amazon blurb, and not in the novel itself, that her name is mis-spelt as “Georgianna.”
• Helen Halstead has written a sequel to Pride and Prejudice as Mr Darcy Presents His Bride.
• both Pamela Aidan and Amanda Grange have “rewritten” the novel from Mr Darcy’s perspective, the former as a trilogy under the umbrella title Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman and the latter as Mr Darcy’s Diary.
• in what to my mind is the most disturbing of these examples, Linda Berdoll has carried on the original novel in two sequels: Mr Darcy Takes a Wife and Darcy and Elizabeth: Days and Nights at Pemberley. Does that second title give anything away? Does it help if I mention that the first key term that Amazon lists under the title is “physical congress”? I’m sure I wish Darcy and Elizabeth all the happiness in the world—but I don’t want to read about it.

I’m quite sure that’s not a full list—and that’s only the Pride and Prejudice spin-offs.

I don’t imagine that Austen alone is subject to this type of response: I shudder to imagine how many times Wuthering Heights has been re-written from Heathcliff’s perspective or provided with a sequel.

But I do wonder why.

I’m not interested in these re-writings and sequels. I’m not entirely immune to the attractions of the world; I’ve read a completion of Sanditon that, while not Austen, was smooth and enjoyable; I wouldn’t be adverse to reading Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen Mysteries; and I read and enjoyed the first in Carrie Bebris’s Mr and Mrs Darcy Mysteries, which is what prompted this post.

Is Bebris’s work Austen? Of course not.

Do I think Elizabeth Bennett would ever have said “it’s a really shiny stick” (46)? Probably not: that use of “really” is too colloquial, it seems to me, for the period.

Is the strong supernatural aspect to the mysteries in keeping with Austen’s world view? No: but, then, this isn’t Austen.

I have no real point to make here: just some confusion to express about the proliferation of works that adopt, manipulate, or radically rework Austen’s individual version of English society in the production of modern narratives.

Certainly, Austen is marvellous. But do people do this with Charles Dickens? And if not, why not?

I never thought I’d be particularly attached to social networking sites.

I’ve never had much of a social network, for a start. And moving in my early twenties to a strange city one thousand kilometres away broke most of my established networks. So I was never really in the position where I was keeping in contact with hundreds of people across the globe.

And then I’ve never had much interest in that aspect of the Internet—I say, on my blog. But, then, this blog is really indicative of that shift in my thinking.

Prior to a couple of years ago, I regarded the Internet as a large, unwieldy, badly written and appallingly edited, mostly inaccurate encyclopaedia. That is, I went to it for information, which I then largely mistrusted. I never treated it as something to which I might contribute, or as somewhere I could go to interact with friends.

Of course, I was already reliant on e-mail, as the primary way of keeping in contact with students and colleagues. I know people—Kurt Vonnegut is one who springs to mind—complain about the impersonal nature of e-mail, but I think it’s fabulous: I once contacted a museum in England about possible access to some material—a nineteenth-century theatrical poster—in their collection, and received a reply e-mail with a high-resolution image attached three hours later. You won’t find me complaining about e-mail.

But I think it was really Pownce that changed my general attitude.

I came to Pownce fairly late compared to others in my social group—which, good little geeks that we are, had been using it on an invitational basis before it went public—but it rapidly became a site where I could keep up an intermittent chatter during the workday without actually interrupting my work to any great extent. As one friend said, it’s like sharing a virtual office with people you actually like.

But from Pownce it was a short step to Facebook. And I don’t regret my Facebook account: I keep my privacy settings locked down, don’t add any questionable applications, and limit my Friends list to people I actually know. (Although I don’t thank Facebook for turning “friend” into a verb—but the issue of verbing is a whole separate issue, for another post.) Facebook is the only way I keep in contact with a number of friends, and the primary way (apart from phone calls and reading each other’s blogs) that I keep in contact with my best friend: it’s easy and fun to send short messages through the day.

Plus, Facebook means Packrat, and we all know how I feel about Packrat.

With e-mail, Pownce, and Facebook already becoming part of a daily ritual, it was a short step to actually starting a blog. That’s a simplified explanation of the process, but largely accurate.

So now I have my webmail provider, Pownce, Facebook, and my blog open in my web browser each day. I don’t have to, of course—I could simply keep my browser closed until I need to Google something. But what’s the point of being socially networked if the network isn’t available?

But today—today I was going to be virtuous. And I was, largely; I wrote nearly one thousand words of a putative journal article on manipulation and verisimilitude in adapted plays on the nineteenth-century suburban stage.

But I was also enmeshed in the toils of the social network.

No significant e-mails came in today, but at one point this afternoon I was trying to map out a structure for the first part of the article, chatting to a friend via the instant-messaging function on Facebook (that ended abruptly: I may have offended him when I suggested that it was nonsense to say that a French-English dictionary was boring), taking part in a six-party discussion on Pownce about whether we can get a Dungeons and Dragons group together, and trying to attract Nick’s attention on another Pownce thread so he could buy me two volumes of a rare Victorian periodical that had suddenly popped up for sale on the American Book Exchange.

(Why, yes: I am a woman of varied tastes.)

Of course, if you’re reading this, chances are you were involved in one of those discussions, which is one of the downsides of being closely networked to a relatively small social group.

(Downside for you, I mean: I have no problem saying the same thing four different times, and will, in fact, talk to the furniture if there’s no one else available.)

Don’t get me wrong; I love my social network. A day when I can chat to so many people in so many different ways that I don’t have to hold an animated, if one-sided, discussion with an armchair is a good day.

But it does reinforce the perils of social-networking programmes: sometimes, if your self control is weak and your propensity for conversation strong, you just have to shut your browser down and work, bereft, outside the network for a while.

Well, I’m not live-blogging it yet; I’m sitting on the back verandah, having a quick cigarette while ABC News runs through endless updates on tennis (seriously: most boring sport ever? Assuming golf doesn’t qualify as a sport?).

But I intend to live-blog all the episodes in this fourth season, barring catastrophe.

Live-blogging is now my favourite pastime; it puts inordinate stresses on the writing process, which I find refreshing.

But I’m not doing it with a bottle of vodka at my side any more.

Right, now I’m back in the living room—of course, I wonder whether there’s much point live-blogging if I can’t be sure that people will be reading at the same time. But, really, if I wrote the blog under those circumstances, I’d never get anything written.

They’re really pushing the Kylie Minogue angle—but I can’t really blame them.

Ooh, my spell checker doesn’t recognise either “Kylie” or “Minogue”—but it did take her a while to break into the U. S. market.

What? The Peter Serofinovich (near enough) Show? I’ve never heard of that. But I love him—thanks to Star Wars (embarrassingly) and Black Books and Shaun of the Dead, so I’ll probably watch that.

Low-level violence? I don’t remember that. But here we go—the Titanic improbably crashes through the TARDIS.

I wish they’d played the Children in Need special first, though—that was delightful.

NICK: New Zealand!
ME: What?
NICK: New Zealand Shipping Co. Ltd.

Right you are, then.

Ooh, the creepy robots; I like them. They remind me of the gorgeous deco robots in “Robots of Death”—they were stunning.

Ah, the revelation that it’s the space Titanic—and then the theme music. It’s new theme music, I think—hang on.

No, Nick says it was re-recorded after this. But then he tells me it is in fact a new mix for this, so I think he’s lying to me to make me look silly.

Geoffrey Palmer! Hey, Geoffrey! I love you! Don’t be evil!

Oh, you silly midshipman—leave the bridge, regardless of regulations. He’s sent everyone off for a reason, and you’ll regret this.

Oh, Palmer’s definitely evil. (Of course, I’ve seen this before—but that’s not the point. I can still tell he’s evil.)

Have we ever seen the Doctor in a tuxedo before?

Nick hates soft-rock carols—and I’m absolutely with him. I love real Christmas carols, but these things . . . no.

I’d never noticed before that the Doctor is imitating the robot’s head movements as it breaks down. Apparently it’s worse when the robots break down in first class—that’s a bit disturbing, given the conditions of the real Titanic’s sinking.

Ooh, Kylie! Hello, Kylie! Gee, she’s tiny.

She’s kind of adorable, though—especially when she grins. “Astrid” is an anagram for “TARDIS”, but I don’t know if that’s intentional. Kylie’s not lost her accent, though, at least not on the vowels. I do like hearing a genuine Australian accent on telly; it doesn’t happen enough, and it seems to be an extraordinarily difficult accent to counterfeit, for some reason.

Ah, the working-class passengers who are being mocked by the people in first class. But the Doctor gets revenge—petty, but amusing.

Uh oh, back to Geoffrey Palmer.

NICK: And in Davies’s scripts, there’s always someone saying “Doctor” as in medical doctor. Interesting. I don’t know what to make of it.

Make of that what you will—I’d be interested to hear opinions.

Ooh, Clive Swift. Apparently, there’s an excruciating interview with him in Doctor Who Magazine—according to Nick, from whom I got this information, Clive Swift made the whole thing very difficult for the interviewer. That’s a shame, because I’ve always found him amusing.

DOCTOR: The pyramids are beautiful. And New Zealand.
NICK: Yay!

Hey! It’s (spoiler!) Donna’s grandfather! I love you, you adorable old man.

Ah, the Queen’s staying in London. A lesson learned from her mother: “The King won’t leave the people, and I won’t leave the King.”

(Should those nouns be capitalised? I can’t tell at this stage, and I can’t be bothered looking it up. But I’m talking about specific monarchs, so I’ll leave them as is.)

Uh oh, Geoffrey Palmer again. This can’t be good. And do those meteors have engines? How are they turning on that sharp angle, otherwise?

Ha! The Doctor’s put his glasses on. That’s usually the sign for me to get whacked by an excitable friend when we watch these in groups, but Nick’s not susceptible to David Tennant’s charms. That I know of.

Oh, you poor midshipman. Geoffrey shows his true colours. He was a villain in the last Doctor Who story he was in, wasn’t he? Or at least a stooge? I’ll ask Nick in a moment.

Uh oh! Tiny asteroid.

NICK: Ha! It’s a gigantic Ferrero Rocher!

Oh, Geoffrey! I know you’re dying, but this is evil. You know that, don’t you? Although I’ll admit that that lugubrious face works well with this kind of character. I love you, Geoffrey! I’m sorry you’re dead. Or almost. No, actually dead now.

The screaming and the death gives me a good opportunity to ask Nick my question: apparently, Geoffrey wasn’t evil or a stooge in the last story, just a misguided beaurocrat. Also, Geoffrey—I’m sorry I’m calling you by your first name when we haven’t been formally introduced—I blame the exigencies of live-blogging. Oddly, “Geoffrey” is easier to type then “Mr Palmer.”

Man, this episode has a high body count—we’re up the steward being sucked out of the ship, if I haven’t been making the narrative absolutely clear, which I suspect I haven’t. But I don’t think I’ve seen this bloody an episode since “Horror of Fang Rock”—and that had a fairly small cast of characters from which to work. But this reminds me of classic episodes such as “Warriors of the Deep” and “Robots of Death,” naturally.

Slight pause while I figure out why the page just went really strange and then realise that I hit the “html” button accidentally. But that’s fine—we’re all here again.

The Heavenly Host have gone evil, by the way. Ah, evil robots. Have any Doctor Who episodes involving robots ever been bad?

The Doctor’s claiming to be 903 years old—is he lying about his age, again?

No! Don’t bring that robot back to life! You’re really going to regret that.

NICK: Hang on, Rich Chappy knew the Host said “You’re all going to die.” So he should know mending it is a bad idea. Bit of a plot hole, there. Mind, it’s the first time I’ve noticed it, in four times of watching.

Ah, “allons-y”—or something along those lines. (I think I can confidently say ‘Excuse my French’—it really is non-existent.) The Doctor’s habit of saying that is going to pay off in a really disturbing fashion in a devastating episode later in the season. (Spoiler!) Kind of.

The anti-cyborg attitude behind this episode is one of the more interesting aspects of the world-building: it’s a shame there isn’t more room to develop it further.

Ah, the disappearing life signs—that reminds me of something. Is it another Doctor Who episode? I can’t remember now.

Killer robots! Why oh why do people trust robots? It’s never a good idea. At least not in Doctor Who.

NICK: You’re supposed to be a helper robot! Why aren’t you helping?

Never mind, he’s been squished under a giant block.

NICK: In death, they’re extraordinarily unrealistic.

Nick thinks the last instance of the disappearing life signs was “Earthshock,” when the Cybermen’s android was slaughtering troopers. He could be right—I’ve blocked a lot of “Earthshock” out of my head, because it was a bit silly.

This whole episode is so The Poseidon Adventure—although now we appear to be crossing the bridge of Kazak Dhum (don’t check my spelling).

Nick was very unimpressed that the Afro-Caribbean man was the first to die. He’s just said so again—about the fifteenth time he’s said that. But he feels it is pandering too much to the conventions of the disaster movie.

(I agree, but I still laughed and laughed when Samuel L. Jackson was eaten by that giant shark in Deep Blue Sea—a movie so cliched that my father, who’s seen about fifteen movies since the late 1960s, was able to spot the plot developments before they happened, including the bit where the shark turned an oven on with its nose.)

Nick’s right—this scene is is beautifully lit. See, killer robots who can also fly is just cheating. What are you supposed to do about that? And it’s all very well to hit their haloes away with lead pipes, but what if you’re like me? I’m far more likely to whack myself on the back of the head and just make the whole thing easier for them.

Oops, second man down—little, spiky, red dude. I have no chance on Earth of spelling his name correctly, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Ah, about to be third man down.

But first, a Douglas Adams joke. I wish Douglas Adams were still writing for the programme. Of course, I wish Douglas Adams were still alive, and writing anything.

Now that’s the third man down. That’s a shame; I rather warmed to her.

Now the Doctor’s angry—this Doctor spends most of his time angry, it seems. Who was the last genuinely angry Doctor? The sixth regeneration was pretty cranky most of the time, but it wasn’t this kind of white-hot anger. Ah, but Sylvester McCoy was capable of this—remember “The Happiness Patrol”? That is the one I’m thinking of, right?

Ah, the point where the Doctor kisses the latest girl. Call me old fashioned, but I do think there’s too much kissing in this new incarnation. I preferred the original series in that respect. (And other respects, although I do love this new version.)

I think there’s a logical flaw in the “survivors must equal passengers or staff” argument that the Doctor sets up. Surely, survivors simply equal anyone who survives the crash, by definition. But, he might be talking about an assumption that the Host have been specifically programmed with a list of people who have survived and need to be hunted down. But surely that’s nonsensical—wouldn’t they just kill anyone human, regardless of their standing?

Oh, never mind.

In the interim, the Doctor is working up to a confrontation with the big boss, and Astrid is following him.

I’m not sure I want to be a disembodied head on some kind of hydraulic cart—that really doesn’t seem as though it would be a satisfactory life. Still, at least they seeded the necessary backstory for this with little, red, spiky man—I would like to know more about why Stow (is that right? We’ll leave it as is) despises cyborgs.

The head/cart thing is really creepy, though. And I do like a good revenge plan. I don’t care how fond the “ladies” are “of metal”—what can they do when you’re just a head on a cart?

Actually, seriously, don’t answer that. I have a feeling I could work out the answer with a bit of quick Googling—but I don’t think I want to.

Let’s just forget that bit ever happened, shall we?

Oh, dear, Astrid is making her move. Nick’s not sure why the robots don’t just kill the Doctor, anyway, but let’s be glad they don’t.

Whoops, slow motion—never a good sign.

Oh, that’s a shame. She would have driven me mad as a companion—but what about this nice young midshipman? We haven’t had a proper male companion in ages?—but I rather liked her.

Ah, a hero-shot of the Doctor, framed against fire. And about to play with all those Messianic overtones that this new series has been overtly seeding into the show. (I spelt that “dhow,” which would have been an entirely different point.)

This hero-shot reminds me of the scene at the end of “The Runaway Bride”—I assume it’s deliberate—where he’s killing the Rachnos (seriously, it’s close enough, spelling-wise) babies.

(By the way, the Titanic is falling on Buckingham Palace, and we’re about to have queen-related hi-jinks.)

With the scene in “The Runaway Bride,” I felt that this Doctor was cruising for a bruising, so to speak. He was so implacable, and in a way that was entirely foreign to an old-school fan of the series.

(Ah, queen-related hi-jinks. Is there any surer form of humour?)

Anyway, back to the main point—I could deal with implacable Doctor—but I felt he needed to get his comeuppance at some point. He needed to be brought to a sense of how extreme his behaviour was. And I’m not sure that’s ever happened to him, yet. I sort of hope it does.

Poor Astrid. I’m not sure I want to spend my life floating around the galaxy as atoms. And “the ghost of consciousness”? Does that mean she’s still sentient? What if the atoms are scattered at some point?

Man, she’s tiny.

There’s a fine line between falling and flying—at least as long as the ground is a reasonable distance away.

Nick thinks there are shades of this in the Steven Moffat two-parter—still to come in our Doctor Who season 4 live-blogging extravaganza—but we’ll come to that when we come to those episodes.

Why does the jerk always survive in these episodes? Why?

I wonder if it would have been possible for me to make fewer references to the actual narrative? I’ll see how I do next week.

This really does have an enormously high body count. How many people were on that ship? And only four survived? Well, technically two, since Mr Copper went AWOL and the Doctor was a stowaway.

Oh, the Doctor is so English. I wonder if I could make something out of that about nationalism and consciousness of the foreign on the part of immigrants—but I can’t really be bothered.

(Spoiler coming up. Seriously, a spoiler. A minor spoiler, but still a spoiler. Is that enough warning? Have you skipped down to the next paragraph? Good. This Mr Copper character is going to pay off in an interesting if minor way later in the season. Keep an eye out.)

And there goes that TARDIS.

Oh, Verity Lambert. Vale, Verity Lambert.

And that’s “The Voyage of the Damned.” Next week: creepy little aliens and Catherine Tate. I wasn’t sure about her, but I’ve warmed to her.

And a preview for the first half of the season. Some good episodes coming up. Any season that includes Agatha Christie is a good season.