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llywelaBusy weekend. Answered an SOS from Mum yesterday and met her, Small and Friend of Small in town for lunch and a mammoth birthday-money-shopping spree. Two eleven-year-old girls and shopping? An exhausting combination. Then spent all day today at their house post-Sunday School.
Rather than waffle on about boring life stuff, I think I shall just make a big show post and catch up on some stuff I've been watching lately.
Caught up-to-date on Grey's Anatomy just in time for the season three finale this week. I've never been a die-hard fan of this show, but always found it entertaining bubble-gum viewing. But this season I've increasingly found myself enjoying it less and less. I know there's been a lot of complaining about GA, and I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but…well. It kind of feels like the bubble has burst for me. It was never a show to take entirely seriously – bubble-gum entertainment, like I said – but I've realised in the last few weeks that I no longer believe in any of the characters as professionals, or even as adults half the time. It's gone from being a show about real people juggling a demanding career with some semblance of normal life to being a glossy soap opera set in a hospital, and that isn't what I want to see. ER has been way, way superior this season, because it is what it claims to be: a medical drama. Plus, the cast represents all the levels of staffing you'd expect to find in a hospital, which GA never has.
I hope GA improves next season, but I can't see me watching it.
As for the Supernatural finale... Oh, boys!
I don't actually have any more coherent thoughts than that at this stage. Between them the two parts of the season finale have melted me into a gooey puddle of love, so most proper thoughts are going to have to wait for the full recap, but I'll try to drag a few of them together now. Um, this is probably going to get rather long and waffly, and may not make much sense, because I'm tired and incoherent and have too many thoughts!
It's kind of awesome to look back over this season as a whole and see how beautifully all the pieces fit together – I can't describe how impressed I am with the writers. So many random and disparate details had been tossed out over the course of the last two seasons that I'd started to think they might start to quietly sweep a few under the carpet, but no – it seems everything has been planned very carefully from the very start. The two-part finale has answered so very many questions, and yet also left more questions unanswered, allowing future plot development to develop out of what has already happened and been revealed. Fabulous.
It's also fabulous that the Big Bad YED has been killed off now. So many shows decide they are onto a good thing with one particular plot strand and then drag it out to infinity and beyond, rather than letting it run a natural course. Not SN. Killing off their Number One Big Bad after only two seasons is a bold move, and opens up all kinds of possibilities for the future.
Oh, and the boys, the boys. Dean! It was fairly predictable that Dean would make a deal to get Sam back, and so a season that started with a sacrifice ends with a sacrifice, which is nice and cyclical and all. Dean has believed he should be dead already all season, and that fed into his despair over Sam's death. He told Sam at the end of What Is And What Should Never Be that since John's death all he could see was how much they'd lost – how much more so now? It was always only a matter of time before the sacrifice demanded of him became too much to give, and the breaking point was always going to be Sam.
Dean has dedicated his entire life to trying to keep his family safe, never had any plans or grand ambitions for himself beyond that. So, take his family away from him and this raw desperation is the inevitable result, because he has absolutely no idea who he is without them, no idea how to let go of that purpose that has driven him almost his entire life. With Sam gone, and believing he should himself be dead already, Dean has nothing left to lose – his entire life has been collateral damage in someone else's war. And it was also pretty inevitable that he'd blame himself completely for not being able to save Sam, no matter that there was nothing he could have done. Dean always takes responsibility for anything that goes wrong and tends not to believe that anything could be out of his control, but rather that he just wasn't good enough, should have done better. Making that deal to bring Sam back is less about Sam and what's best for him, and more about Dean needing to salve his own pain. He's not prepared to live alone with the knowledge of his perceived failure, and this is the only way he knows to set it straight.
But that desperation makes him easy prey for the Crossroads Demon. He's just too raw and too desperate to think it through – he's got no insurance, no backup and no Plan B. His life, his soul – it's the only thing he has to barter with, and the demon knows it. He's got no leverage. All the power in the negotiation belongs to her; no doubt Dean's soul would be a tasty prize for her to capture, but she doesn't need it the way he needs what she can give him. And he did snare her in a devil's trap and almost exorcise her the last time they met. Watching him squirm, seeing how far she can push him…it's all part of the game for her.
So she haggles him down to one year, and the chances are that'll be next season's finale. Although the writers could be cunning and resolve this storyline earlier and come up with something completely different for the finale. The one year thing would tie in very neatly to a season finale, though.
I love seeing the boys interacting, and we haven't seen much of that in the last couple of episodes, so it is fantastic to see them back together at last in this one. They even hugged! Maybe next season Sam might even hug back…
Sam doesn't tell Dean everything about what happened while they were separated. Specifically, he doesn't tell him what the YED showed him about their mother's death, that Mary recognised the Demon, that Sam's infant self had demonic blood dripped into his mouth. It's almost like old times, with secret-keeping between the boys after they've started sharing absolutely everything this season, and another tantalising little snippet of information to leave hanging ready for season three.
Sam has a pretty bloodthirsty attitude toward Jake right from the first moment Dean tells him about the stabbing. That's worth noting, because in every other respect he is exactly as you'd expect Sam to be. But the anger against Jake is there from the start, and of course culminates in Sam murdering him pretty much in cold blood – not just shooting him, but emptying his entire clip into his body. As the YED said to Dean, that was pretty cold. And what's so great about that is that there are perfectly human reasons for Sam behaving that way toward the man who killed him – who he'd only just found out had murdered, rather than just tried to murder him, with the inevitable accompanying realisation that Dean had to have done something truly desperate and stupid in order to get him back. But, as the YED implied, there could also be something far more sinister going on beneath the surface. The YED set up his cagefight in order for the psychics to kill one another off until there was only one left. And now, thanks to Dean, Sam is the last man standing of his generation of psychics. Opening the gate to hell was only the first job the YED had lined up for his human general. Now that the YED is gone, of course, he won't be dishing out any more chores. But you've got to wonder if one of his underlings will attempt to pick up the reigns of his battle plan, if there isn't more in store for Sam.
You've also got to wonder if Sam's powers will start to develop now, if he'll actively not develop them as he always has previously, or if they will become completely dormant now that the YED is dead.
I have to say, though, that I really don't think that cagefight was the best way to determine the strongest of the psychics. Seriously. I mean, Ava lasted for months, honing her abilities, only to get taken out right at the last. Jake was a novice in comparison. Being the last man standing doesn't necessarily qualify him for anything. He only won one round. Running heats, quarter and semi-finals and then a final round might have worked a bit better. The YED could have manipulated just about any of the psychics into doing his bidding if he really turned his mind to it. I think he just enjoyed watching them tear each other apart. I mean, it's easy enough for him to bend Jake to his will, and it really pains me how easily Jake is persuaded. His career in exchange for preventing war on an apocalyptic scale? Any one of the Winchesters would have taken that deal. So would Bobby, Ellen…any number of other good people we've met on this show. But Jake gives in to the intoxicating combination of greed and fear, and pays for it with his life – coming close to unleashing Armageddon in the process.
What else? Oh, yeah. I love Bobby, more and more every time we see him. He is completely awesome, and if anyone ever doubted that he loves those boys, there can surely be no doubt at all now. With Sam dead he is sorrowful and shocked, trying hard to do what he can for Dean. And then when he realises what Dean has done to get Sam back…he's so openly angry and emotional, actively grieving right there for what Dean has got in store for him, and so upset at realising just how badly messed up in the head that boy truly is.
Bobby: "What is it with you Winchesters, huh? You, your Dad – you're both just itching to throw yourselves down the pit?"
Dean: "That's my point. Dad brought me back, Bobby. I'm not even supposed to be here. At least this way something good can come out of it. You know – it's like my life can mean something."
Bobby: "What? And it didn't before? Have you got that low an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head?"
This, this is Dean's character arc for the entire season come to fruition. He believes he should be dead already, that his life was not worth John's death, that he is completely expendable, especially compared to Sam, whose life he has always valued above his own. He's never really come to terms with John's sacrifice for his sake, and that made the thought of outliving Sam, as well, all the more unbearable. And Bobby's hit the nail right on the head, because yes – Dean does have that low an opinion of himself, and he is that screwed up in the head, and John did that to him. Not on purpose, but all of Dean's self-image issues can be traced back to the way his father behaved toward him and over-relied on him when he was growing up. Dean has been putting Sam's and John's needs ahead of his own since early childhood, since he was far too young to be burdened by that level of responsibility, and it has scarred him deeply – the show has told us this time and again, for two seasons now.
Nice to have Ellen back. I've never been entirely sure she could be trusted completely, but it's still nice to know she survived the Roadhouse inferno.
Some of the special effects are a bit crappy, but some of them are absolutely stunning – that gorgeous aerial shot of the demons escaping from the devil's gate, with the iron lines of the mammoth devil's trap lighting up from the impact. Awesome.
I'm very happy that the Colt proved to have a very specific purpose. It never made sense to me that the YED would care so much about a gun, even a gun capable of killing it, because it would be so very easy to arrange to waste all the remaining bullets. So I'm all kinds of delighted that the gun has turned out to have another purpose – the key to the devil's gate. That's very clever. Careless, really, of the YED not to have got rid of the last bullet, though: careless, arrogant over-confidence.
It is enormously fitting that Dean should be the one to finally kill the Yellow-Eyed Demon, once and for all. And as cheesy as John's ghostly reappearance is, that also feels very fitting and only right, and a very satisfying closure for his character. Sam is all kinds of adorable and adorkable when it's all over – like a very, very tall and over-excited six-year-old!
I like Sam's reaction to realising what Dean did for him. He's suspicious right from the start, and once Jake has spilled the beans about the absolute fact of his death, it doesn't take a genius to work out the rest. He doesn't let it lie, challenges Dean as soon as they are alone, and then they are both upset and it is all kinds of heartbreaking, and also very beautiful. Sam's reaction to Dean's sacrifice for his sake is so very different to Dean's reaction to John's sacrifice. They are such different personalities. Instead of getting angry, Sam just gets resolute – Dean has sold his soul in exchange for Sam's life, so Sam is determined to save Dean in return.
Seriously, though, I can't help thinking that right now Dean would take his one year and go quietly at the end of it. There's a finish line in sight, and he's been so desperately tired this season, honestly doesn't believe he should be alive anyway. Sam is alive and well. John is finally at peace. Their lifelong enemy has been destroyed. Yeah, I think he'd go quietly and be satisfied with all of that. Plus, there's a specific mission to work on during that one year he has left to live – and that revolves around mopping up the several hundred demons that escaped while the devil's gate was open. The war has just begun!
Damn, it's going to be a long hiatus, and yet somehow a lot more bearable than last season, after that deadly cliffhanger. This was such a satisfying end to such an emotionally powerful season.
There's loads more I could say, but I've already rambled randomly enough for way too long, so anything else I've got to say can wait for the recap!
I'm really enjoying the current season of Doctor Who.. It's all kinds of fun. Okay, so I have to completely shut down the part of my brain that starts yelling science! at me every episode, but the plot really isn't the point of Doctor Who. They aren't trying to create scientifically plausible scenarios – they are telling stories about people. And as a story about people 42 was a non-stop, action-packed ride, start to finish. It was essentially a bottle show, with most of the guest characters merely there as red shirts to be picked off one by one, but those that lasted the distance were engaging enough to care about, and the tension of the scenario worked. And I really love this kind of vision of space travel – none of that squeaky clean Star Trek style engineering. This version space travel is mechanical and grimy and hands-on, and somehow far easier to believe in.
And we got to see the Doctor genuinely scared, which almost never happens, because his body had been invaded by a malevolent force he simply couldn't fight off and which wanted to use him for evil, and he was terrified. And Martha continued to be pro-active and gutsy, and I just really enjoyed it.
Plus, the ongoing Saxon sub-plot feels refreshingly uncontrived after the Torchwood mess that was last season, having been woven into the fabric of the plot, rather than tagged on as a mere advert for another show. Great stuff.
Also on my TV at the moment are House and Hustle. Oh, and New Tricks, which I don't have on my LJ list, I notice. I honestly don't know why I haven't watched New Tricks before this season, because I'm enjoying it so much. It's gentle, quirky and funny, the characters tickle me in all the right places, and the actors are fabulous. Can't ask for more than that.
Hustle continues to fall under the heading of bubble-gum entertainment, but has more character development this season than usual, and is always great fun to watch. House isn't so much fun, but does tend to be compelling, despite the extreme formulaic-ness of the medical plots. I do get frustrated by the lack of development of most of the characters, who exist purely to showcase House himself, but he is always worth watching, just to see how out of control he can spin.
I got tagged by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kelzies
Here are the rules:
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
1. I won the Viscount Tonypandy award for creative writing when I was 13, and then didn't write creatively again for another ten years or more.
2. I tend to be enormously wordy once I start talking about shows that I like, and unless I restrain myself am prone to going into exhaustive detail about just why I love them so much. I have too many thoughts!
3.I have a truly enormous family. Seriously. The extended family is massive, and sprawls hugely, and remains remarkably close and in touch. When we have a serious get-together for some big event – like Great-aunt Ivy's 85th birthday – there can be anything from 80-100 people there, and it is a different combination of relatives every time. So we spend a lot of time mingling amongst these random relatives trying to work out exactly how we all connect!
4. I can curl my tongue.
5. The littlest finger on each of my hands is bent inward at a 45-degree angle at the top joint, because the middle bone of each is a kind of triangular shape instead of oblong like they should be.
6. I'm not wonderfully tidy around the house, but I am very fussy about cleanliness in the kitchen in work, almost obsessively so, and get very frustrated when the people I work with are slovenly about dirty cups and dishes.
7. I am ridiculously fond of my friends, both Real Life and Virtual ;-)
8. I'm too brain dead to come up with another random fact about me!
I don't really do tagging of other folkses, though, so I'll just leave this lying around for anyone to pick up who feels so inclined!
Rather than waffle on about boring life stuff, I think I shall just make a big show post and catch up on some stuff I've been watching lately.
Caught up-to-date on Grey's Anatomy just in time for the season three finale this week. I've never been a die-hard fan of this show, but always found it entertaining bubble-gum viewing. But this season I've increasingly found myself enjoying it less and less. I know there's been a lot of complaining about GA, and I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but…well. It kind of feels like the bubble has burst for me. It was never a show to take entirely seriously – bubble-gum entertainment, like I said – but I've realised in the last few weeks that I no longer believe in any of the characters as professionals, or even as adults half the time. It's gone from being a show about real people juggling a demanding career with some semblance of normal life to being a glossy soap opera set in a hospital, and that isn't what I want to see. ER has been way, way superior this season, because it is what it claims to be: a medical drama. Plus, the cast represents all the levels of staffing you'd expect to find in a hospital, which GA never has.
I hope GA improves next season, but I can't see me watching it.
As for the Supernatural finale... Oh, boys!
I don't actually have any more coherent thoughts than that at this stage. Between them the two parts of the season finale have melted me into a gooey puddle of love, so most proper thoughts are going to have to wait for the full recap, but I'll try to drag a few of them together now. Um, this is probably going to get rather long and waffly, and may not make much sense, because I'm tired and incoherent and have too many thoughts!
It's kind of awesome to look back over this season as a whole and see how beautifully all the pieces fit together – I can't describe how impressed I am with the writers. So many random and disparate details had been tossed out over the course of the last two seasons that I'd started to think they might start to quietly sweep a few under the carpet, but no – it seems everything has been planned very carefully from the very start. The two-part finale has answered so very many questions, and yet also left more questions unanswered, allowing future plot development to develop out of what has already happened and been revealed. Fabulous.
It's also fabulous that the Big Bad YED has been killed off now. So many shows decide they are onto a good thing with one particular plot strand and then drag it out to infinity and beyond, rather than letting it run a natural course. Not SN. Killing off their Number One Big Bad after only two seasons is a bold move, and opens up all kinds of possibilities for the future.
Oh, and the boys, the boys. Dean! It was fairly predictable that Dean would make a deal to get Sam back, and so a season that started with a sacrifice ends with a sacrifice, which is nice and cyclical and all. Dean has believed he should be dead already all season, and that fed into his despair over Sam's death. He told Sam at the end of What Is And What Should Never Be that since John's death all he could see was how much they'd lost – how much more so now? It was always only a matter of time before the sacrifice demanded of him became too much to give, and the breaking point was always going to be Sam.
Dean has dedicated his entire life to trying to keep his family safe, never had any plans or grand ambitions for himself beyond that. So, take his family away from him and this raw desperation is the inevitable result, because he has absolutely no idea who he is without them, no idea how to let go of that purpose that has driven him almost his entire life. With Sam gone, and believing he should himself be dead already, Dean has nothing left to lose – his entire life has been collateral damage in someone else's war. And it was also pretty inevitable that he'd blame himself completely for not being able to save Sam, no matter that there was nothing he could have done. Dean always takes responsibility for anything that goes wrong and tends not to believe that anything could be out of his control, but rather that he just wasn't good enough, should have done better. Making that deal to bring Sam back is less about Sam and what's best for him, and more about Dean needing to salve his own pain. He's not prepared to live alone with the knowledge of his perceived failure, and this is the only way he knows to set it straight.
But that desperation makes him easy prey for the Crossroads Demon. He's just too raw and too desperate to think it through – he's got no insurance, no backup and no Plan B. His life, his soul – it's the only thing he has to barter with, and the demon knows it. He's got no leverage. All the power in the negotiation belongs to her; no doubt Dean's soul would be a tasty prize for her to capture, but she doesn't need it the way he needs what she can give him. And he did snare her in a devil's trap and almost exorcise her the last time they met. Watching him squirm, seeing how far she can push him…it's all part of the game for her.
So she haggles him down to one year, and the chances are that'll be next season's finale. Although the writers could be cunning and resolve this storyline earlier and come up with something completely different for the finale. The one year thing would tie in very neatly to a season finale, though.
I love seeing the boys interacting, and we haven't seen much of that in the last couple of episodes, so it is fantastic to see them back together at last in this one. They even hugged! Maybe next season Sam might even hug back…
Sam doesn't tell Dean everything about what happened while they were separated. Specifically, he doesn't tell him what the YED showed him about their mother's death, that Mary recognised the Demon, that Sam's infant self had demonic blood dripped into his mouth. It's almost like old times, with secret-keeping between the boys after they've started sharing absolutely everything this season, and another tantalising little snippet of information to leave hanging ready for season three.
Sam has a pretty bloodthirsty attitude toward Jake right from the first moment Dean tells him about the stabbing. That's worth noting, because in every other respect he is exactly as you'd expect Sam to be. But the anger against Jake is there from the start, and of course culminates in Sam murdering him pretty much in cold blood – not just shooting him, but emptying his entire clip into his body. As the YED said to Dean, that was pretty cold. And what's so great about that is that there are perfectly human reasons for Sam behaving that way toward the man who killed him – who he'd only just found out had murdered, rather than just tried to murder him, with the inevitable accompanying realisation that Dean had to have done something truly desperate and stupid in order to get him back. But, as the YED implied, there could also be something far more sinister going on beneath the surface. The YED set up his cagefight in order for the psychics to kill one another off until there was only one left. And now, thanks to Dean, Sam is the last man standing of his generation of psychics. Opening the gate to hell was only the first job the YED had lined up for his human general. Now that the YED is gone, of course, he won't be dishing out any more chores. But you've got to wonder if one of his underlings will attempt to pick up the reigns of his battle plan, if there isn't more in store for Sam.
You've also got to wonder if Sam's powers will start to develop now, if he'll actively not develop them as he always has previously, or if they will become completely dormant now that the YED is dead.
I have to say, though, that I really don't think that cagefight was the best way to determine the strongest of the psychics. Seriously. I mean, Ava lasted for months, honing her abilities, only to get taken out right at the last. Jake was a novice in comparison. Being the last man standing doesn't necessarily qualify him for anything. He only won one round. Running heats, quarter and semi-finals and then a final round might have worked a bit better. The YED could have manipulated just about any of the psychics into doing his bidding if he really turned his mind to it. I think he just enjoyed watching them tear each other apart. I mean, it's easy enough for him to bend Jake to his will, and it really pains me how easily Jake is persuaded. His career in exchange for preventing war on an apocalyptic scale? Any one of the Winchesters would have taken that deal. So would Bobby, Ellen…any number of other good people we've met on this show. But Jake gives in to the intoxicating combination of greed and fear, and pays for it with his life – coming close to unleashing Armageddon in the process.
What else? Oh, yeah. I love Bobby, more and more every time we see him. He is completely awesome, and if anyone ever doubted that he loves those boys, there can surely be no doubt at all now. With Sam dead he is sorrowful and shocked, trying hard to do what he can for Dean. And then when he realises what Dean has done to get Sam back…he's so openly angry and emotional, actively grieving right there for what Dean has got in store for him, and so upset at realising just how badly messed up in the head that boy truly is.
Bobby: "What is it with you Winchesters, huh? You, your Dad – you're both just itching to throw yourselves down the pit?"
Dean: "That's my point. Dad brought me back, Bobby. I'm not even supposed to be here. At least this way something good can come out of it. You know – it's like my life can mean something."
Bobby: "What? And it didn't before? Have you got that low an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head?"
This, this is Dean's character arc for the entire season come to fruition. He believes he should be dead already, that his life was not worth John's death, that he is completely expendable, especially compared to Sam, whose life he has always valued above his own. He's never really come to terms with John's sacrifice for his sake, and that made the thought of outliving Sam, as well, all the more unbearable. And Bobby's hit the nail right on the head, because yes – Dean does have that low an opinion of himself, and he is that screwed up in the head, and John did that to him. Not on purpose, but all of Dean's self-image issues can be traced back to the way his father behaved toward him and over-relied on him when he was growing up. Dean has been putting Sam's and John's needs ahead of his own since early childhood, since he was far too young to be burdened by that level of responsibility, and it has scarred him deeply – the show has told us this time and again, for two seasons now.
Nice to have Ellen back. I've never been entirely sure she could be trusted completely, but it's still nice to know she survived the Roadhouse inferno.
Some of the special effects are a bit crappy, but some of them are absolutely stunning – that gorgeous aerial shot of the demons escaping from the devil's gate, with the iron lines of the mammoth devil's trap lighting up from the impact. Awesome.
I'm very happy that the Colt proved to have a very specific purpose. It never made sense to me that the YED would care so much about a gun, even a gun capable of killing it, because it would be so very easy to arrange to waste all the remaining bullets. So I'm all kinds of delighted that the gun has turned out to have another purpose – the key to the devil's gate. That's very clever. Careless, really, of the YED not to have got rid of the last bullet, though: careless, arrogant over-confidence.
It is enormously fitting that Dean should be the one to finally kill the Yellow-Eyed Demon, once and for all. And as cheesy as John's ghostly reappearance is, that also feels very fitting and only right, and a very satisfying closure for his character. Sam is all kinds of adorable and adorkable when it's all over – like a very, very tall and over-excited six-year-old!
I like Sam's reaction to realising what Dean did for him. He's suspicious right from the start, and once Jake has spilled the beans about the absolute fact of his death, it doesn't take a genius to work out the rest. He doesn't let it lie, challenges Dean as soon as they are alone, and then they are both upset and it is all kinds of heartbreaking, and also very beautiful. Sam's reaction to Dean's sacrifice for his sake is so very different to Dean's reaction to John's sacrifice. They are such different personalities. Instead of getting angry, Sam just gets resolute – Dean has sold his soul in exchange for Sam's life, so Sam is determined to save Dean in return.
Seriously, though, I can't help thinking that right now Dean would take his one year and go quietly at the end of it. There's a finish line in sight, and he's been so desperately tired this season, honestly doesn't believe he should be alive anyway. Sam is alive and well. John is finally at peace. Their lifelong enemy has been destroyed. Yeah, I think he'd go quietly and be satisfied with all of that. Plus, there's a specific mission to work on during that one year he has left to live – and that revolves around mopping up the several hundred demons that escaped while the devil's gate was open. The war has just begun!
Damn, it's going to be a long hiatus, and yet somehow a lot more bearable than last season, after that deadly cliffhanger. This was such a satisfying end to such an emotionally powerful season.
There's loads more I could say, but I've already rambled randomly enough for way too long, so anything else I've got to say can wait for the recap!
I'm really enjoying the current season of Doctor Who.. It's all kinds of fun. Okay, so I have to completely shut down the part of my brain that starts yelling science! at me every episode, but the plot really isn't the point of Doctor Who. They aren't trying to create scientifically plausible scenarios – they are telling stories about people. And as a story about people 42 was a non-stop, action-packed ride, start to finish. It was essentially a bottle show, with most of the guest characters merely there as red shirts to be picked off one by one, but those that lasted the distance were engaging enough to care about, and the tension of the scenario worked. And I really love this kind of vision of space travel – none of that squeaky clean Star Trek style engineering. This version space travel is mechanical and grimy and hands-on, and somehow far easier to believe in.
And we got to see the Doctor genuinely scared, which almost never happens, because his body had been invaded by a malevolent force he simply couldn't fight off and which wanted to use him for evil, and he was terrified. And Martha continued to be pro-active and gutsy, and I just really enjoyed it.
Plus, the ongoing Saxon sub-plot feels refreshingly uncontrived after the Torchwood mess that was last season, having been woven into the fabric of the plot, rather than tagged on as a mere advert for another show. Great stuff.
Also on my TV at the moment are House and Hustle. Oh, and New Tricks, which I don't have on my LJ list, I notice. I honestly don't know why I haven't watched New Tricks before this season, because I'm enjoying it so much. It's gentle, quirky and funny, the characters tickle me in all the right places, and the actors are fabulous. Can't ask for more than that.
Hustle continues to fall under the heading of bubble-gum entertainment, but has more character development this season than usual, and is always great fun to watch. House isn't so much fun, but does tend to be compelling, despite the extreme formulaic-ness of the medical plots. I do get frustrated by the lack of development of most of the characters, who exist purely to showcase House himself, but he is always worth watching, just to see how out of control he can spin.
I got tagged by
kelziesHere are the rules:
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
1. I won the Viscount Tonypandy award for creative writing when I was 13, and then didn't write creatively again for another ten years or more.
2. I tend to be enormously wordy once I start talking about shows that I like, and unless I restrain myself am prone to going into exhaustive detail about just why I love them so much. I have too many thoughts!
3.I have a truly enormous family. Seriously. The extended family is massive, and sprawls hugely, and remains remarkably close and in touch. When we have a serious get-together for some big event – like Great-aunt Ivy's 85th birthday – there can be anything from 80-100 people there, and it is a different combination of relatives every time. So we spend a lot of time mingling amongst these random relatives trying to work out exactly how we all connect!
4. I can curl my tongue.
5. The littlest finger on each of my hands is bent inward at a 45-degree angle at the top joint, because the middle bone of each is a kind of triangular shape instead of oblong like they should be.
6. I'm not wonderfully tidy around the house, but I am very fussy about cleanliness in the kitchen in work, almost obsessively so, and get very frustrated when the people I work with are slovenly about dirty cups and dishes.
7. I am ridiculously fond of my friends, both Real Life and Virtual ;-)
8. I'm too brain dead to come up with another random fact about me!
I don't really do tagging of other folkses, though, so I'll just leave this lying around for anyone to pick up who feels so inclined!
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 08:30 pm (UTC)How can you be sure about this? You see Sam and Dean talk at the table, and you only see the end of the conversation: and then you and bobby showed up. We don't really know what Sam told his brother, do we?
other then that: fantastic review <3
no subject
Date: 2007-05-22 05:46 am (UTC)Four months is going to seem way too long!