All You Need is Love

          I have tried, in my short time in the blogosphere to keep this site pretty politics-free. In my personal life, I’m pretty politically aware, although not necessarily super politically active. But I felt that a day like today needed commenting on, if nothing else than for posterity and my own “where were you when…” memories. The Supreme Court of the United States today upheld same-sex marriage throughout the US. THROUGHOUT the country. EVERYWHERE! I’m a raging, bleeding heart liberal (which I feel is kind of obvious if you’ve read any of my stuff here) and I am just ecstatic about this decision. I have gay, lesbian and bisexual friends, some of whom are married, some are not, and I share their joy in this decision.

The Supreme Court building has inscribed upon it “Equal Justice Under The Law”. In a country where the news brings us examples of how our justice system is riddled with INequality on a daily basis, a decision like this from the Highest Court in the Land does my liberal heart good. I never did understand the opposition, to be honest. No one was being forced into a same-sex marriage; they weren’t going to be mandatory for crying out loud. People just wanted to love who they wanted to love. The field of Republican Presidential Nominees was quick to condemn the decision, and I honestly, hand on heart, just don’t understand. Marriages began as a civic and community based institution, one that later got performed by the church. It wasn’t invented by the church – and even if it had, it wouldn’t have been the Christian church, which seems to be the default position of these candidates.  Pretty sure that matrimony is older than Christianity. 

Boiled down, my feeling is this: two people being allowed to love each other has no true effect on me, the validity of my marriage, or anything else. Two people NOT being allowed to share their lives, would have affected me as an American and a human being. The country I live in was not formed to be divisive. This decision from the SCOTUS reinforces the equality that we as Americans believe to be the cornerstone of our country.

I’m unspeakably happy today. Happy and proud of my country. Love, love, love. Love is All you Need.

Time Stream #13 - The Web Planet

          I’ve started and re-started this entry about 4 times at this point. “The Web Planet” is that kind of a story. My thoughts before watching it were based more on its reputation than anything else, as I had not seen it in ages.  It was one of those DVD’s that still had the shrink-wrap on it, so the last time I had watched it was in the good ol’ VHS days. I expected to chuckle at the costumes and pretty much write it off. I just can’t though, and not necessarily for good reasons, but for a multitude of tangled up thoughts that I’ll try to straighten out as I write.

           The story starts out really quite promisingly – the TARDIS is forced to land on a mysterious planet, Vicki is able to hear some strange sounds that the others cannot, and the Doctor and Ian go outside to investigate. There is a fair amount of pseudo-science on display here with “atmospheric density jackets” to help them breathe, the ever popular pool of acid, and for some reason people think giving Vicki an aspirin will make her sleep. The Doctor is really enjoying himself here, giggling non-stop and making light of the destruction of Ian’s Coal Hill School tie in the acid pool. Design-wise, the use of echoes as part of the soundscape is quite effective (and doesn’t sound like an echoing studio either), and the special lenses, as well as the possible smear of Vaseline, help add to the unworldly, alien surface of Vortis.

          If only it had stopped after the first episode. I was willing to give a LOT of leeway in terms of costume design, the Menoptra voices, even the Zarbi themselves. But the story seemed to flounder almost immediately and simply became hard to watch. I’ll continue to say it, I love this show and love when it pushes boundaries. I respect “The Web Planet” for trying, but I just can’t like it. It’s de rigueur to dump on the story, and I don’t want to do it, but there was so much more that I disliked about it than liked. A few moments:

1) Yes, a Zarbi walks right into the camera. Unlike the Star Wars Stormtrooper bumping into a door, this one is hard to miss – it’s Camera 1, front and center.  All that’s missing is a cartoon “BOING” noise when he bounces off.

2) EVERY SCENE WITH THE OPTERA. Oh Lord, they were horrible. Poorly designed, abominably acted. They were a last minute addition to the script and it shows. Whenever they were onscreen I needed to look away.

3) Speaking of the script… Look, the troubles with making Doctor Who in the sixties is well documented. If you’re a fan of the Classic Series (otherwise why would you read my little rambles, eh?) you probably know this. If you’re relatively new to older Doctor Who, suffice to say that there were always short of money, time, and just about everything else back in the day. Early in season one, a story fell through which brought us the fantastic “Edge of Destruction”. “The Web Planet” had no call to be six episodes. Four would have been tolerable and probably would have done the show a world of good. Those extra two episodes could have been another side-step standalone story. This, I think, is one of the biggest problems with the story in a nutshell – it’s too long and is paced far too slowly. There were moments that I chuckled, but it was “at” and not “with”. I don’t like laughing “at” my favorite show.

          This entry was the hardest Time Stream for me to write so far. I’m still of the opinion that “Keys of Marinus” is as bad as the show has gotten, but even that didn’t disappoint me the way “The Web Planet” did. I just didn’t want to watch it before I was even halfway through. Thanks for trying Production Team, but “The Web Planet” just doesn’t work.

NEXT EPISODE: The Crusade

Please leave comments if you could.  I'd really love some feedback.  Thanks!!

Time Stream #12 - The Romans

          Doctor Who is funny. I don’t mean that in a deep, philosophical kind of way like “Isn’t it funny that…” I mean Doctor Who makes me laugh. Often. Whether it’s a dry wit or a bit of slapstick or just a one-liner that makes me smile, one of the things I love about this show is that it is funny. “The Romans” is often billed as the series’ first attempt at comedy, which strikes me as a bit unfair to the eleven stories which preceded it. What “The Romans” does is present Doctor Who’s first attempt at farce, but with all the standard trappings of a Doctor Who story. I mentioned in the Time Stream entry for “The Rescue” that I was looking forward to this next story, and I was by no means disappointed.

          The cliffhanger from the end of The Rescue is repeated at the beginning of the story, and once we find the TARDIS crew we are told they’ve been squatters at a Roman villa for about a month. Conveniently, it’s at this point they start to worry about retrieving the TARDIS from where it fell at the end of “The Rescue”. I find it hard to believe that the Doctor would take a month before visiting Rome when he is so close, but so be it. He and Vicki, who seems to have gelled well with her traveling companions, head off to Rome, leaving Ian and Barbara to their own devices. This sounds innocent, and at first I thought all the fan knowledge of the years was reading WAY too much into this, but Ian and Barbara are so obviously a couple here. And they are adorable. Get a little wine into them, and the staid teachers from Coal Hill School know how to have a good time. Until they’re captured and sold into slavery of course, but really, that’s just an excuse to get Ian all sweaty and heroic, and for Barbara to get drooled over by “Wacky Nero”.

          The Doctor’s masquerade as Maximus Petullian is enjoyable, making him think on his feet and be the clever, witty Doctor he doesn’t always get to be. I literally laughed out loud whenever the Doctor referred to “our hissing friend” – especially when he hissed back! – because it was a bit of humor I hadn’t been expecting. Something else I wasn’t expecting was the sight of a shirtless Hartnell as he took a steam with Nero. That, admittedly, caught me off guard. 

I didn’t find Nero’s pursuit of Barbara to be as humorous as it may have been intended, but that could simply be twenty-first century values being placed on a 1964 production. Even with her being the focus of a quarter of the narrative, I don’t think this was Barbara’s strongest story, although she does have some good moments. Making her the damsel in distress, even for comic value, just didn’t work for me.  Ian appears to have picked up a lot of valuable practice in armed combat ever since “The Aztecs” and has an awful lot luck in being able to pick up Barbara’s trail in Rome. He also gets a good line about the Doctor, and one that I hadn’t been familiar with, but it’s about as good a description as I can think of: “Perhaps, but I've got a friend who specializes in trouble. He dives in and usually finds a way.” That’s the Doctor, through and through.

As I said in the beginning, Doctor Who makes me laugh. There are dramatic bits, scary bits, exciting bits, but there are always funny bits. “The Romans” is four episodes of fun, wit, farce and comedy. There are some weak points to be sure, and the plot itself is so thin as to be translucent, but I spent my time watching this story with a smile on my face. Frankly, there’s not much better praise than that.

NEXT EPISODE: The Web Planet

Please leave comments if you could.  I'd really love some feedback.  Thanks!!

Ch-Ch-Changes

          I believe it was the 1980’s philosopher Bueller who said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Life here at the Cat Ranch/Casa del Nerd has being moving apace, as it does. The school year finishes up in about two weeks for the three C’s, with C1 officially becoming a high school freshman, whilst C2 & C3 move up to grades 4 & 3 respectively.

Speaking of C1, he had his 8^th Grade dance, semi-formal, last week. He went with a girl he’s known since Kindergarten, which is nice. Then a bunch of them hung out at a friend’s house until midnight-ish. Where apparently he made plans with a different girl to go to the movies (whilst still trying to reschedule a movie date with someone else). I’m not sure if I’m ready for my 14 year old to become a Romeo, but neither do I want him to move comfortably into the friend zone. I was mayor of the Friend Zone for a number of years, and while I made and continue to have some great friends, at the time it was ridiculously frustrating. All that said, I’ll boast for a moment here how he looked FANTASTIC dressed in his new suit for the dance. The kid’s got some good material to work with, I’ll grant him that!

          C2 and C3 are just looking forward to the summer. C3 is continuing with her martial arts class, getting her yellow belt next Monday, while C2 just auditioned (as did C1) for the township’s summer musical. Makes this former theater geek proud, it does. They’ll be here for a week later in the summer, where if we don’t actually take a full vacation somewhere (some years we do, some we don’t) we’ll hopefully do one or two day trips. C3 has her birthday during that week, so we’ll be celebrating that as well.

          Other changes going on here? I mentioned a while back about a new job I was in and awaiting a greater prize this summer. That prize is in hand and I could not be more thrilled. I was accepted into a program offering an alternate path to teacher certification. My undergrad is in communications, and my (still incomplete) graduate work is in English. Becoming a teacher is something I’ve wanted to do for a while now, but didn’t know if I had it in me. With the incredible support from The Wif ™, I’m now in this program and will hopefully be in a high school teaching English this Fall.  There’s plenty of work to get through first, but I think I can do it. On a related note, the low-paying retail job I mentioned before is now a thing of the past (as of yesterday). With this school program and its work taking up most of my time, it just wouldn’t be feasible to try and keep working at a job that barely scheduled me anyway, and when it did, those hours would conflict with my teacher training schedule. It was an OK job, but I never felt that I warmed up to my co-workers or they to me.  That could simply be insecurity on my part (most likely) but I simply wasn’t enjoying it as I had a similar job in the past. Parts of it I’ll miss, but the Wif ™ is happy to have her at-home husband back. If nothing else, I can do the grocery shopping – she hates doing it LOL.

          Doctor Who fandom wise? Not too much going on. Waiting for the new season to start this fall, and I’m enjoying the filming pictures I see online.  Capaldi is really starting to channel his inner Pertwee, isn’t he? I have my tickets booked for Long Island Who 3 in November. This will be the first year I go by myself, so it’s going to be strange. If anyone out there is also going, please let me know – I’d love to meet up!! I’m considering also going to (Re)Generation Who 2 in Maryland next March, but not sure yet.  Anybody who went last year – suggestions? Opinions? I’ve got a Time Stream on The Romans ready to post within the next day or so, but I wanted to get back to a general life update before things started moving way too fast and I began to miss things that are truly important. Be well all. Save Ferris!