Blue Scream of Jeff: Doctor Who

Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Starting a new chapter, literally

You’d think that after spending over a decade trying to finish one novel, I’d be anxious to get it edited and published.

And you wouldn’t be wrong.

I am.

It’s just that now that’s its done, I’ve become more intrigued with the idea of finding out what happed to my characters after the story ended then revisiting events I’ve already written about.

When I grew up, most sequels to stories I loved always seemed to begin with the characters “reset” back to a state near to where we first met them. What they’d been through didn’t seem to change them much at all, so they were ready and willing to take on the next great threat or go out on a new set of adventures.

This was especially true of genre TV shows of the time -- “Star Trek,” the original “Battlestar Galactica” and classic “Doctor Who” as well as films featuring characters like Indiana Jones, James Bond or any comic book character.

Sure, sometimes the writers would pay lip service to the things characters went through in previous stories, but more often than not, it was only used as a plot device to propel the characters into the new story, then all but forgotten.

The problem is things don’t work that way in real life. People just don’t “move on” or reset themselves after experiencing life-threatening events. Just ask any military veteran or first-responder who’ve been through a harrowing event.

It changes them, whether they’ll admit it or not, and while my characters may not be real people to you, they are to me. I figured they’d be suffering some sort of PTSD, and what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t help them through it? So, for the last three months, I’ve been taking them to therapy, helping them explore what they must be feeling and trying to help them figure out how to live with what they’ve gone through.

I have no idea where this is going. I just have a couple of vague ideas banging around in my head, and a handful of characters I really enjoy spending time with. Like my first story, I’m just feeling my way through this, with no set plot in mind. I figure I’ll just keep writing and rewriting scenes until hopefully a coherent story emerges.

And if I get stuck -- which I know I inevitably will -- I can always go back to edit the first story until new inspiration hits.

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Change, my dear, and it seems not a moment too soon….

I never thought it would come to this.

But just days away from marking my 52nd year on this planet, I’ve come to the stunning and quite unexpected realization that I am old.

I don’t mean physically. I’ve been noticing those little age-related aches-and-pains for a while now. What I mean is mentally.

At first I thought it was just a nostalgia phase I was going through. I’d spend hours looking at old pictures of my home town and college in online archives and wishing I could go back to those times and places for a day or two.

Then I found myself noticing that time was flying by faster than I ever remember it doing in the past. Whole days now seem to disappear into the ether before I can even get to half the things I’d planned on getting done. It seems to me just a year or two ago, I could get multiple things done in a day while now I can’t seem to even accomplish one.

Even this summer has seemed to fly by. It feels like it has just gotten started and it’s already almost my birthday, which comes at the tail-end of the season. Where did those long, lazy, hazy days of summer go?

Then, just to cap things off, came the announcement of the new “Doctor Who.”

Okay, I know that sounds like a non sequitur, but stay with me for a moment.

You see, when I heard the announcement last week that Jodie Whittaker – a woman – would be playing the 13th incarnation of titular character in BBC’s long-running sci-fi series about a mysterious time-traveler and his – or should I now say her – oddly shaped time machine, I was upset.

Jodie Whittaker as the latest
incarnation of The Doctor.

My first thought was why do they have to go and change things! For its 54-year run, the part of The Doctor had always been played by a man!

Look, I’m not against gender equality and it’s not that I think that Jodie Whittaker won’t make a fine Doctor. I’m sure she will. Like all the other Doctors who came before her, I’m sure I’ll grow to like her and even miss her when it comes time to hand the role off to someone else.

It’s just that it was a huge and drastic change in my life which has recently been rocked with other unexpected and upsetting changes. And, as I’ve come to realize over this last week, I’m not as tolerant of change as I once was.

I only came to this realization when I found myself trying to justify my feelings by essentially saying: “but we’ve always done it this way!”

Have I mentioned to you that I hate that phrase?

It’s the been the bane of my existence as an IT guy, when trying to get people to adjust to updates and changes in technology. It aggravated me that people were so stuck in their ways that they couldn’t see that the new piece of equipment or software I was giving them would actually make their lives easier if they would just give it a chance.

And to my horror, I found myself being that cranky old-person who didn’t want to give up his “tried and true, old fashioned” way for something potentially better.

When the hell did this happen to me???

I remember as a kid being excited at the prospect of entering a whole new decade at the end of the 1970s and seeing what changes it would bring as we grew ever closer to the year 2000.

Even as an adult, I looked forward to living in “The Future” and getting to play with all the new sci-fi inspired gadgets we were sure to get in the new millennium. And with the exception of the flying car and robot maid, I haven’t been disappointed.

So why now, don’t I look forward to and accept change as readily as I did when I was younger?

The only answer, I can think of, is that I’m getting old.

And that depresses me because the last thing I want to become is that stereotypical cranky old man who complains about how things were always better “back in my day.” I still want to be that bright-eyed young man who still looks to the future with awe and is excited by all the wonderful changes it will bring.

So thank you BBC, Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker for rattling my world and making me aware of the road I was heading down before it was too late. I don’t want to become that old man. I want to stay young and it seems the only way I’ll truly ever be able to do that is by following the sage advice once uttered by another incarnation of your famous Time Lord:

“Change my dear, and it seems not a moment too soon.”

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

When time-traveling, always remember a doctor…

The second, fourth and tenth Doctor always ready to handle a medical emergency.

Science fiction is replete with ways to travel through time.

H.G. Wells Time Machine may be a Steampunk fan's

dream, but there's no room for a doctor.

From Victorian wonders made of a “glittering metallic framework” with parts constructed out of nickel, ivory and crystal to nuclear-powered DeLoreans, there seems to be a method to suit every style or taste.

But if I had my choice of how I got to travel through time, I’d choose an old, beat-up, British Police Box, piloted by a lonely, eccentric old man with the coolest case of Multiple Personality Disorder – er, I mean, Dissociative Identity Disorder – in the universe.

By now you’ve probably figured that I am referring to the TARDIS from the long-running BBC TV show “Doctor Who.” Sure it’s impossibly bigger on the inside than it is on the out, and style wise it alternates between looking like a ship made of cast off cardboard packing materials to a place constructed completely out of spare parts.

So why choose the TARDIS?

Because of the guy who flies it. His name is derived from the word we use to describe our healers: doctor. And in the 50 years he has been gallivanting around time and space on out TV sets, he’s shown he knows his fair share about medicine.

As I post this blog, I am still recovering from a pretty bad case of double pneumonia. You don’t hear much about pneumonia these days except around cold and flu time when doctors recommend you get vaccinated against both these diseases. Everyone thinks pneumonia is a minor illness now. Sure it used to kill millions, but with the invention of penicillin we’ve licked it! Today people think it’s no worse than a bad chest cold.

Okay, so this DeLorean comes with a doctor, but would you

trust a guy who steals plutonium from Libian terrorists to

treat you when your sick.

I can now tell you from first-hand experience that it’s not. It’s every bit as bad as it ever used to be.
And the most insidious thing about pneumonia is how quickly it sneaks up on you before almost totally incapacitating you.

On the Friday they captured the Boston Marathon bomber suspect, I came home from work with a mild-to-strongish headache, which I assumed had been triggered by my spring allergies. By Monday the headache had gotten worse enough that it actually drove me to see my doctor without anybody having to talk me into it first. By Wednesday I had to leave work early because my simple headache had grown about a thousand times worse and been joined by chills (and probably an intermittent fever), a cough that was bringing up mucus, fast heartbeat and as you’d expect, exhaustion.

By Friday I was back at my doctor’s office and was sent home with some antibiotics. I gave these new drugs some time to work, because for a while in the mornings I’d feel a teeny-tiny bit better. But by the end of the day, I’d feel even worse. By Tuesday I knew something was really wrong and by the time I actually got to see my doctor instead of one of his assistants, he knew I had pneumonia almost right away and admitted me to the hospital.

The Taredis may lack style, but at least

it comes with it's own doctor!

So what does all this drama have to do about time travel?

Well it gave me a lot of time to just lie around and think about thing
s. Things like what the town I live in looked like 100 years ago and what might have happened to me if I had caught pneumonia back then.
Among the time periods I’ve always wanted to travel back in time and experience was the era that began just prior to World War I and ended with the beginning of Prohibition. I always considered this period the real “start” of the 20th Century. In 1900 the United States was still primarily a nation of farmers. But right around that 1912-1914 mark something happened and America “turned the corner” and quickly began heading down the road that would make it the world’s leading industrial giant. In those few short years, America blossomed into the “modern” country we now recognize.

Part of this fantasy was walking down my current home town’s main street and seeing it appear not so radically different than it appears today. By 1914-1915 automobiles were already beginning to replace the horse, so I’d still see cars outside the shops and homes along Broad Street. They’d just be Model Ts instead of SUVs, minivans and sedans.

Also since electrification followed the railways out in the suburbs and my town used to be a major rail stop between New York and Philadelphia, it follows some of the many houses built in our town at this time were built with electric in mind rather than gas. Hence the electric poles would be there and perhaps even a few of the electric street lights I take for granted each night.

Even the fashions worn by my town’s men-folk wouldn’t be all that utterly unrecognizable. Sure their cardboard collars looked formal and stiff, but the business suits they wore weren’t really that radically different from what my dad used to wear to work each day when I was growing up in the 1970s.

I guess I thought experiencing this time period would be like walking through those old-timey sepia-toned photos we see in books about the second decade of the 20th century. And I guess that’s the fault of time-travel shows like “Doctor Who.” They seldom dwell on the darker-side of time travel, instead focusing their time on the fun and adventure of experiencing a bygone age.

We aren’t often reminded that the “good old days” came with things like the Pneumonia Pandemic of 1918 that killed 600,000 people in the United States and more than 25 million people worldwide. In 1918 there weren’t any antibiotics yet, as the discovery of penicillin was still 10 years away, so people who caught it, either burned with fever until their bodies developed an antibody to the virus, or died. Given how I felt during those first 14 days before I got to the hospital, I can easily understand why so many people died, and it wasn’t a pleasant way to go.

So fellow time travelers, you can keep your Steampunk flying chairs and fancy sports cars.
I’ll wait for the time machine that comes with its own doctor any day of the week.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

A girl and her TARDIS...

This video is by no means new, but I still can’t get over how awesome it is.

Or rather how awesome its creator is.

Going by the Youtube handle of Sillysparrowness, this “Doctor Who” fan from Germany decided to build her own TARDIS.

And not just any TARDIS.

She built one that she can knockdown, move about her home and reassemble on a whim.

Just because.

She’s had it “appear” in her garden, in her living room and even in her bathroom!

How awesome is that?

I’m not sure if she just made up her plans on her own or got them from somewhere else, but they are pure genius. She made foldable front, back and side panels that lock into four upright rails which in turn attach to a square base section with some wooden pegs. The roof with her home-made lantern light on top locks the whole thing together. Four long rectangular “POLICE BOX” signs that hang just beneath the roof add the finishing touch. Her system requires no tools for assembly/disassembly.

Her obvious love of the long-running BBC science-fiction show about a mysterious time traveler and his oddly shaped time machine may make her a geek, but she’s my kind of geek. She is smart and incredibly witty with an excellent problem solving skills and despite her self-deprecating humor, possesses some pretty mean DYI skills.

To me that’s just an awesome combination. Smart, geeky and a woodworker? I’m in love!

About the only thing I didn’t like about her project was the way she used her table saw (she calls it a circular saw in the video). Her freehand crosscuts without the use of a miter gage and with no blade guard made me cringe. As a woodworker myself who has had a one or two close calls using a table saw even with the proper safety equipment, I cannot stress how dangerous that was. Making freehand cuts is just a recipe for kickback which could have resulted in her hand being thrown into the moving blade. So if you are reading this Silly, please, please NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! Either stick with your jigsaw or contact me and I’d be happy to give you a few lessons on how to safely use a table saw. (I’ll trade you the lessons for your TARDIS plans).

Now you might think that most people droning on for 17-minutes about how they built a prop from their favorite TV show would make a boring video. And you’d be right.

Luckily for us, Sillysparrowness isn’t most people.

She’s several people.

Or rather several people who represent different sides of her own personality. And these other “selves” not only talk to us, the viewer, they talk – and sometimes even argue – among themselves. It’s a gimmick she uses to great effect not only in this video but in several of her other video blogs as well. I really like the interplay between all her different “selves” in her “Why I didn't make a 10,000 subscribers video.”

It’s a technique that doesn’t get old, because she doesn’t use it all the time. In some of her blogs she just examines the usage of language in her favorite poem or discusses why she thinks Schrödinger's Cat makes for the worst of metaphors. But then again, she’s what we’d call a “language arts” teacher, (she teaches German to German students, so I can’t really call her an “English teacher”) so what would you expect? But even in these non-“Doctor Who” videos, her intelligence and wit shine through. Makes me wish I had had more teachers as cool and as awesome as her when I was in junior high school.

But perhaps the thing I find most awesome about Sillysparrowness is that her real name is Astrid – which if you rearrange the letters spell out TARDIS!

You can subscribe to Silly’s video blogs here: http://www.youtube.com/user/sillysparrowness or friend her on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002668942390 And if you happen to know anybody at the BBC props department, please, please have them send her a copy of the light that belongs on the top of the TARDIS. It’s the least they can do for such an awesome lady! Or if you are a friend of current “Doctor Who” show runner Steven Moffat, please make sure he sees this video and beg him to give her a cameo on the show!

Because she is that awesome.