strange and random happenstance

The Hounds of Baskerville
Based on the book by Arthur Conan Doyle
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Una Stubbs, Russell Tovey, Chipo Chung, Gordon Kennedy, Kevin Trainor, Stephen Wight, Sasha Behar, Will Sharpe, Simon Paisley Day, Amelia Bullmore, Clive Mantle, Rupert Graves, Mark Gatiss, and Andrew Scott
Release Date: January 8th, 2012
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Sherlock is bored and on edge, he needs a case to distract him from his nicotine withdrawal. It's been hours since he closed his last case with a rather dramatic incident with a harpoon and little Kirstie's luminous pet rabbit who's gone AWOL isn't going to take the edge off. Thankfully for Dr. Watson's sanity a knight in dilapidated armor appears; Henry Knight. Henry has been haunted his entire life by the death of his father who was murdered by a giant hound twenty years earlier. Young Henry was discovered wandering the moors but his father's body was never found. Henry has recently returned to Grimpen in Dartmoor and he wandered to Dewer's Hollow only to be greeted by the hound of his nightmares. Dewer's Hollow's proximity to the government research facility Baskerville means Sherlock is even more likely to dismiss Henry's nightmares. In fact he would have gladly set Henry on his way back to his psychiatrist if it wasn't for his repeated use of the word Hound. But there's the need for a speedy resolution as Henry's grip on reality is quickly failing. So who is to blame? The villagers keen on embracing the legend of the hound in order to lure in the tourists? The military base which is clearly up to nefarious deeds? Or is there really a giant hound with glowing red eyes? And can Holmes trust his own senses when he believes he's seen the beast himself?

The thing about truly loving something is knowing that it isn't perfect. You can see the flaws but still love it. To blindly love say a TV show means you're not a fan, you're an acolyte. Perfection in this world is rare and a TV show achieving that? Well, it's kind of a miracle. So it sometimes even helps to vent these feelings. To come right out and say "I love you but...." That's how it is with me and Sherlock. In fact, that's how it is with me and every show that Steven Moffat does and Sherlock has the least "buts" of all. I love Sherlock, I really do. It's putting a modern twist on the Conan Doyle canon without being overly predictable like Elementary is and Sherlock is top notch. But... the fact is for a show that has only three episode per season having one dud episode each season is a bit problematical. Yes, I have over time come to grudgingly like these middling episodes, but seriously, is there anyone ready to really go all in on "The Blind Banker?" And let's not even talk about some of the absurdities of this season's "The Final Problem."

What I'm getting at is that "The Hounds of the Baskerville" is distinctly in this lesser than category. Perhaps I had hopes that were too high. I sometimes really need to dial my expectations back. The problem was this is one of the classic Holmes stories combined with Russell Tovey and I let things go to my head a little. I think one of the problems might have been Russell... yes he's perfect, but he's also, in my mind, "a name." He's a great actor but there's also a sameness to the roles in his CV, damaged yet lovable could be his descriptor. So I didn't really see Henry Knight, I saw Russell. This was also problematic with Lara Pulver as Irene Adler in the previous episode. You need to have an actor capable of making you forget who they really are. Which is the genius of Benedict and Martin, I actually see them as the characters. Russell... not so much. But repeated viewings of the episode have gotten me over this issue to focus on more specific problems, like that hound! Seriously, it looked like Zuul from Ghostbusters, and the CGI somehow looked WORSE than a film made in 1984!

But this newest viewing brought a new admiration for this episode, Zuul exempted because there is NO fixing that. Having just read The Hound of the Baskervilles I got to see how Mark Gatiss took the source material and reinterpreted it. Sherlock is all about reinventing what is basically a set of stories that have been told hundreds of times and making them new again. The call backs to the book, which are sometimes just an aside, a single line, to more integrated plot twists are kind of dazzling to watch. You're waiting with baited breath to see what Gatiss will pull out of the book next. From Sherlock's perfume analysis, to Lestrade getting the London out of his lungs, to Dr. Mortimer being Henry's psychiatrist in this iteration, to the dangerous Grimpen Mire becoming the even more dangerous Grimpen Mine Field, phosphorescent animals, John's inferior mind being a good sounding board, Sherlock claiming he's too busy for this case, the episode is just peppered throughout with these lines that are seemingly throw aways, but are SO much more. 

Though just incorporating what was into what is isn't nearly as fun as taking what's in the book and reinventing it, like Gatiss did with the Grimpen Mire. He refocuses on different aspects of the story while using other aspects to throw us off the trail. Instead of Henry being based on the new heir to the Baskerville estate his personality is taken more from the previous... the one driven to death by the apparition of a hound. Add to this a little of the breakdown the new heir suffers after the events of the story and you have a central figure who is far more flawed and therefore far more interesting. Yet what I really love is the red herring of Dr. Stapleton. Spoiler alert, despite whatever you think she's just a red herring. An ingenious red herring, because in the original tale the killer is using the name Stapleton! But the things that brought me the greatest joy was the insertion of two very modern ideas into this very Gothic tale but having them still relate to the story. That's the fact that obviously the small town of Grimpen would try to capitalize on the hound to lure in tourists, even if they do it in a ham handed way... the other is that the mysterious lights that Watson sees are a couple in a car having sex while others watch. This, this would be called dogging.

What I think I took most issue with the first time I watched this was when Sherlock uses Watson as a lab rat to test his hallucinogen theory. Yes, it's scary, but it's more uncomfortable that he would use his only friend in such a heinous way. I mean, seriously!?! If someone did this to me, no matter how much of a genius or how close a friend I viewed them, this would have been the end of the line. But thinking of it analytically I think it makes a point about the bigger horrors that Gatiss discusses in the episode, mainly animal experimentation. No matter which way you spin it animal experimentation is a tricky issue. As Dr. Stapleton says, if you can think of it someone is doing it, and she was just making a luminous bunny rabbit! But there are so many people who justify what they are doing to these poor defenseless animals using the name of science. And you can't deny that valuable data has been collected with regard to these studies. Therefore, how does one come out firmly on the side of the animals and not the scientists? By taking a character we love and turning him into the experiment. By turning Watson into that poor bunny Gatiss has made the strongest possible point against animal experimentation, on any form of animal. And that's why I love this show, warts and all. An old story can be spun into something new and illuminating; literally in the case of Kirstie's bunny.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Benedict Cumberbatch, Benediction, Irene Adler, Mark Gatiss, Martin Freeman, Russell Tovey, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, Steven Moffat, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Hounds of the Baskerville

The Lake House by Kate Morton
Published by: Atria Books
Publication Date: October 20th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 512 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Midsummer has always been celebrated at Loeanneth with a grand gala. The lake house is strewn with lanterns and gondolas float on the river with fireworks dazzling the night sky above the great bonfire. While the Edevane family might enjoy their solitude in Cornwall, they still keep this tradition alive. It is 1933 and this will be the last year the family holds this celebration. Soon the house will be shuttered and it will be a time capsule of that night; the night everything changed. Young Alice Edevane would usually be reveling in these festivities, but this year is different. She no longer has time for Mr. Llewellyn, artist in resident and family friend, or her mother who wants her to help with preparations. She only has time for two things, plotting her first mystery novel and Ben. Ben is the gardener and she fancies herself in love with him. He listens raptly when she tells him about her book and talks to her like an equal. But could her book be what destroyed everything? Because in the wee hours of the night her baby brother Theo was taken from his crib. Seventy years later the case remains unsolved. Alice is now a successful mystery writer but she has never resolved what happened to her baby brother. Enter Sadie Sparrow. She's on leave from the MET with a forced vacation in Cornwall at her grandfather's house. Yet she can't sit still. Sadie stumbles on Loeanneth and the cold case consumes her. Will a fresh set of eyes find the truth of that long ago midsummer night?

There are times in your life when you just need to get away from reality and hide in a book. Sometimes it works and you fall into the story and it consumes you. Other times it backfires on you and all the troubles you were trying to escape are reflected back at you through this medium. Not only is the book too close for comfort, but once you put it down you'll be faced with reality again. Which is the situation I found myself in with Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, leading to me not being one of the worshipful majority. But that's another story for another time. When I finally picked up The Lake House it was precisely the book I needed at just the right time. It had just enough mystery with just the right level of predictability that I wanted to stay there as long as possible. I usually devour a book in a matter of days, but here I spent a week, taking my time and having a well deserved respite from reality. I languished at Loeanneth. The book became so much a part of me that I dreamt of Cornwall. I remember quite vividly being in the half-dream state where I wasn't quite fully awake but I had already started to leave my dream behind and hearing the garbage trucks making their morning rounds. The beeps were confusing and incongruous to me. There was still a part of me that knew they were garbage trucks, but my thoughts were consumed with the fact they didn't belong. The technology didn't exist yet and they would never spoil the idyll that was the lake house, because that is where I was. I haven't had this kind of dream disassociation since years ago when I thought some crop dusters were Messerschmidt's, again another story for another time.

Kate Morton's books aren't for everyone. In fact they only occasionally work for me. They spend loving detail on atmosphere and if you are more interested in narrative, well you can feel like you are languishing in a story with no forward momentum. The mysteries Morton concocts are very pedestrian. Her own creation, Alice Edevane, would weep for their simplicity. In fact the only thing that didn't ring true to me in The Lake House is that Alice Edevane is this grand dame of mystery writers the likes of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell yet she was never able to solve this mystery in her own life. Yes, you could say it's because she didn't want to know the truth, but that seems cliched. But the truth you need to remember in Morton's book is the mystery is always secondary. Yes, she did a better job this time of spacing out the clues so just when you thought nothing would progress, bam, new evidence showed up on the scene. That doesn't mean I didn't figure it out hundreds of pages earlier, but I liked the pacing. I also liked the characters, I felt like they were more fleshed out in this tale. Morton likes to have the old lady with these wonderful stories and secrets that must be passed on or solved by younger generations. It's her thing, it's her trope. But here Alice was so alive. She was the spark that kept things together. She's a spunky old lady who plays her cards close to her chest, and I just loved that. Instead of a dead aunt, a mother on her deathbed, or an old lady in a nursing home, the elderly lady this time around was active not passive and it made a huge difference.

While having the disappearance of the one Edevane son as the fulcrum this book is really about women. Particularly the bond between mothers and daughters and all the shapes and forms these bonds come in. I liked that we had mothers who knew the best thing for their child was to let them go, while also having mothers so selfish they pushed their daughter away for the sake of their own appearance. It really cast a light on the fact that there's not just one single and simple way that mothers and daughters interact. People are so different and to assume that their relationships are all the same is folly. What is also interesting is to see how the mother daughter relationship is formed by experience and also by society's conventions and how those conventions have changed over time. The relationship between Alice's mother and grandmother, women of the previous century, was more staid and reserved, because of the time and also a tragedy Alice's grandmother endured. Going forward Alice's mother wants to have a better relationship with her own daughters but realizes that her husband stands in the way of her being the "fun" parent and therefore sadly accepts her fate. Then we look to Sadie and how her own mother threw her out because Sadie got pregnant and opted to give the baby up for adoption. Just a few women, and yet their relationships are so complex and we are given insight into each one, we get to understand if not empathize with how they lived and loved.

But if I'm honest what really intrigued me with The Lake House was the real life parallels. Theo's disappearance has parallels to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, which the book doesn't shy away from pointing out. There's something about these unsolved crimes that echo down the generations and draw us in and therefore make for great inclusions in fiction. As for my Lindbergh baby obsession, it's not as bad as my Jack the Ripper obsession, though both make me wish I could time travel just to solve unsolved crime. The thing is Lindbergh went to the same university as me and I can actually see the house where he lived from my office window. As for the kidnapping, I saw a riveting one person play on the convicted kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann that has always stuck with me. Though it wasn't just the Lindbergh allusions that I loved. Mr. Llewellyn and his children's book based on Alice's mother had so much Lewis Carroll in it I could sqwee for joy. Plus Morton played with our preconceptions based on this real life connection. She threw suspicion on Mr. Llewellyn but also called into question his relationship with the family, much as Carroll's was with the Liddells. Oh, and to hark back to those great dames of detection, there's more than a little Anne Perry in Alice Edevane. Of course Anne Perry's childhood crime of murdering her best friend's mother prior to becoming a bestselling crime writer was immortalized in the wonderful film Heavenly Creatures. This crime occurred in New Zealand, a stone throws from Morton's Australia. The idea that Alice might somehow be guilty and therefore an unreliable narrator, I can't tell you how much I loved this. Also the Mitford parallels, with Deborah, Alice, and Clemmie Edevane mirroring Diana, Nancy, and Jessica Mitford respectively was just the cherry on top of the sundae.

The only real problem I had with the entire book was Sadie Sparrow. While you might think it's a hatred of her pigheadedness and her just not really listening to people, it has nothing to do with that, I could overlook that as character flaws. My problem is her name: Sadie Sparrow. I'm sure when everyone first saw the Doctor Who episode "Blink" written by Steven Moffat they all thought that Sally Sparrow was the coolest name ever and were wishing that they had thought of it first. I know I did and I'm a reviewer not a writer! In fact my handle on my knitting site actually is Sally Sparrow, I am unashamed of my geekiness and I fully admit it. It's such a unique and distinctive name that once you hear it you can't ever forget it. Now here we have Sadie Sparrow. She's like a weak imitation, a bad knock off, a wannabe Sally but alwaysbe Sadie. Why would you EVER choose this as your characters name? Why would an editor ever let you do it? Yes the name might seem perfectly acceptable to you, the author, but it's not. This name wasn't your invention. To make matters worse Sally and her friend Kathy joke about being investigators, Sparrow and Nightingale! A bit ITV, but I'd still watch it. And here's "Sadie" being all investigative and then a PI! I'm sorry. This is just unacceptable. You could argue it's coincidence, that Kate Morton has never even seen Doctor Who. Guess what? I don't care. Yes her book has lots of real life connections and allusions, but she makes them her own. If it was a original thought or Sally just became Sadie, it's too close and MUST be changed. This isn't Moffat, it's Morton. And the last thing any writer wants to be is Moffat.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Perry, Blink, Charles Lindbergh, Cornwall, Doctor Who, Downton Denial Denouement, Fangirl, Heavenly Creatures, Jack the Ripper, Kate Morton, Lewis Carroll, Mitfords, P.D. James, Steven Moffat, The Lake House

The Lake House by Kate Morton
Published by: Atria Books
Publication Date: October 20th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 512 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Midsummer has always been celebrated at Loeanneth with a grand gala. The lake house is strewn with lanterns and gondolas float on the river with fireworks dazzling the night sky above the great bonfire. While the Edevane family might enjoy their solitude in Cornwall, they still keep this tradition alive. It is 1933 and this will be the last year the family holds this celebration. Soon the house will be shuttered and it will be a time capsule of that night; the night everything changed. Young Alice Edevane would usually be reveling in these festivities, but this year is different. She no longer has time for Mr. Llewellyn, artist in resident and family friend, or her mother who wants her to help with preparations. She only has time for two things, plotting her first mystery novel and Ben. Ben is the gardener and she fancies herself in love with him. He listens raptly when she tells him about her book and talks to her like an equal. But could her book be what destroyed everything? Because in the wee hours of the night her baby brother Theo was taken from his crib. Seventy years later the case remains unsolved. Alice is now a successful mystery writer but she has never resolved what happened to her baby brother. Enter Sadie Sparrow. She's on leave from the MET with a forced vacation in Cornwall at her grandfather's house. Yet she can't sit still. Sadie stumbles on Loeanneth and the cold case consumes her. Will a fresh set of eyes find the truth of that long ago midsummer night?

There are times in your life when you just need to get away from reality and hide in a book. Sometimes it works and you fall into the story and it consumes you. Other times it backfires on you and all the troubles you were trying to escape are reflected back at you through this medium. Not only is the book too close for comfort, but once you put it down you'll be faced with reality again. Which is the situation I found myself in with Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, leading to me not being one of the worshipful majority. But that's another story for another time. When I finally picked up The Lake House it was precisely the book I needed at just the right time. It had just enough mystery with just the right level of predictability that I wanted to stay there as long as possible. I usually devour a book in a matter of days, but here I spent a week, taking my time and having a well deserved respite from reality. I languished at Loeanneth. The book became so much a part of me that I dreamt of Cornwall. I remember quite vividly being in the half-dream state where I wasn't quite fully awake but I had already started to leave my dream behind and hearing the garbage trucks making their morning rounds. The beeps were confusing and incongruous to me. There was still a part of me that knew they were garbage trucks, but my thoughts were consumed with the fact they didn't belong. The technology didn't exist yet and they would never spoil the idyll that was the lake house, because that is where I was. I haven't had this kind of dream disassociation since years ago when I thought some crop dusters were Messerschmidt's, again another story for another time.

Kate Morton's books aren't for everyone. In fact they only occasionally work for me. They spend loving detail on atmosphere and if you are more interested in narrative, well you can feel like you are languishing in a story with no forward momentum. The mysteries Morton concocts are very pedestrian. Her own creation, Alice Edevane, would weep for their simplicity. In fact the only thing that didn't ring true to me in The Lake House is that Alice Edevane is this grand dame of mystery writers the likes of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell yet she was never able to solve this mystery in her own life. Yes, you could say it's because she didn't want to know the truth, but that seems cliched. But the truth you need to remember in Morton's book is the mystery is always secondary. Yes, she did a better job this time of spacing out the clues so just when you thought nothing would progress, bam, new evidence showed up on the scene. That doesn't mean I didn't figure it out hundreds of pages earlier, but I liked the pacing. I also liked the characters, I felt like they were more fleshed out in this tale. Morton likes to have the old lady with these wonderful stories and secrets that must be passed on or solved by younger generations. It's her thing, it's her trope. But here Alice was so alive. She was the spark that kept things together. She's a spunky old lady who plays her cards close to her chest, and I just loved that. Instead of a dead aunt, a mother on her deathbed, or an old lady in a nursing home, the elderly lady this time around was active not passive and it made a huge difference.

While having the disappearance of the one Edevane son as the fulcrum this book is really about women. Particularly the bond between mothers and daughters and all the shapes and forms these bonds come in. I liked that we had mothers who knew the best thing for their child was to let them go, while also having mothers so selfish they pushed their daughter away for the sake of their own appearance. It really cast a light on the fact that there's not just one single and simple way that mothers and daughters interact. People are so different and to assume that their relationships are all the same is folly. What is also interesting is to see how the mother daughter relationship is formed by experience and also by society's conventions and how those conventions have changed over time. The relationship between Alice's mother and grandmother, women of the previous century, was more staid and reserved, because of the time and also a tragedy Alice's grandmother endured. Going forward Alice's mother wants to have a better relationship with her own daughters but realizes that her husband stands in the way of her being the "fun" parent and therefore sadly accepts her fate. Then we look to Sadie and how her own mother threw her out because Sadie got pregnant and opted to give the baby up for adoption. Just a few women, and yet their relationships are so complex and we are given insight into each one, we get to understand if not empathize with how they lived and loved.

But if I'm honest what really intrigued me with The Lake House was the real life parallels. Theo's disappearance has parallels to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, which the book doesn't shy away from pointing out. There's something about these unsolved crimes that echo down the generations and draw us in and therefore make for great inclusions in fiction. As for my Lindbergh baby obsession, it's not as bad as my Jack the Ripper obsession, though both make me wish I could time travel just to solve unsolved crime. The thing is Lindbergh went to the same university as me and I can actually see the house where he lived from my office window. As for the kidnapping, I saw a riveting one person play on the convicted kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann that has always stuck with me. Though it wasn't just the Lindbergh allusions that I loved. Mr. Llewellyn and his children's book based on Alice's mother had so much Lewis Carroll in it I could sqwee for joy. Plus Morton played with our preconceptions based on this real life connection. She threw suspicion on Mr. Llewellyn but also called into question his relationship with the family, much as Carroll's was with the Liddells. Oh, and to hark back to those great dames of detection, there's more than a little Anne Perry in Alice Edevane. Of course Anne Perry's childhood crime of murdering her best friend's mother prior to becoming a bestselling crime writer was immortalized in the wonderful film Heavenly Creatures. This crime occurred in New Zealand, a stone throws from Morton's Australia. The idea that Alice might somehow be guilty and therefore an unreliable narrator, I can't tell you how much I loved this. Also the Mitford parallels, with Deborah, Alice, and Clemmie Edevane mirroring Diana, Nancy, and Jessica Mitford respectively was just the cherry on top of the sundae.

The only real problem I had with the entire book was Sadie Sparrow. While you might think it's a hatred of her pigheadedness and her just not really listening to people, it has nothing to do with that, I could overlook that as character flaws. My problem is her name: Sadie Sparrow. I'm sure when everyone first saw the Doctor Who episode "Blink" written by Steven Moffat they all thought that Sally Sparrow was the coolest name ever and were wishing that they had thought of it first. I know I did and I'm a reviewer not a writer! In fact my handle on my knitting site actually is Sally Sparrow, I am unashamed of my geekiness and I fully admit it. It's such a unique and distinctive name that once you hear it you can't ever forget it. Now here we have Sadie Sparrow. She's like a weak imitation, a bad knock off, a wannabe Sally but alwaysbe Sadie. Why would you EVER choose this as your characters name? Why would an editor ever let you do it? Yes the name might seem perfectly acceptable to you, the author, but it's not. This name wasn't your invention. To make matters worse Sally and her friend Kathy joke about being investigators, Sparrow and Nightingale! A bit ITV, but I'd still watch it. And here's "Sadie" being all investigative and then a PI! I'm sorry. This is just unacceptable. You could argue it's coincidence, that Kate Morton has never even seen Doctor Who. Guess what? I don't care. Yes her book has lots of real life connections and allusions, but she makes them her own. If it was a original thought or Sally just became Sadie, it's too close and MUST be changed. This isn't Moffat, it's Morton. And the last thing any writer wants to be is Moffat.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Perry, Blink, Charles Lindbergh, Cornwall, Doctor Who, Downton Denial Denouement, Fangirl, Heavenly Creatures, Jack the Ripper, Kate Morton, Lewis Carroll, Mitfords, P.D. James, Steven Moffat, The Lake House

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Published by: Book-of-the-Month Club
Publication Date: 1887
Format: Hardcover, 131 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Doctor John Watson has been invalided out of the army and is looking for a place to call home. He runs into an old colleague, Stamford, who says that he knows someone else who is looking for a roommate, having found the perfect place at 221B Baker Street. He warns Watson that Sherlock Holmes is a little odd. Watson readily agrees to room with this intriguing man, who knows so much about certain sciences, yet doesn't know the earth goes around the sun. One day over breakfast Watson reads an incredulous article in the paper about the science of deduction and thinks it is pure bunkum. Holmes is a little miffed, he wrote the article after all and decides to prove the truth of it by having Watson tag along when he leaves the house on one of his mysterious errands. It turns out that Holmes is the world's only consulting detective and he has been summoned to a crime scene by Scotland Yard. There lies the body of Enoch Drebber. Dead but without a mark on him. Written on the wall in blood is the world "rache." A close examination of the crime scene, a visit to the officer who was first on the scene, a few telegrams later, and Holmes knows who the killer is. Not only that, he is able to produce the killer in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street for the police officers. The explanation as to how he came to his conclusion is a much longer story and involves love, marriage, and Mormons.

Despite watching so many adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories, other then possibly reading The Hound of the Baskervilles in grade school, I had never picked up any of Arthur Conan Doyle's books to read. So quite a few years back now I picked up A Study in Scarlet and I couldn't actually believe that this was how the greatest consulting detective of all time started out. Firstly, I was bored. But more importantly it seems more like a treatise against Mormonism than anything else. I mean, in all seriousness, what was Arthur Conan Doyle's issue with the Mormons? Because there isn't just dislike, there is hate emanating out of these pages. Fiery, burn in the hottest circles of hell hate. I couldn't really get past the fact that so little of the book was the actual mystery and so much of the book was a rallying cry against religion that I quite quickly decided to not read any further in the Sherlockian oeuvre until I could rectify my expectations with reality. So, obviously that took a few years, and my newish addiction to Sherlock coupled with the dearth of new episodes made me realize that perhaps the time had come to read all the Sherlock Holmes books. All of them! At least I was prepared for A Study in Scarlet this time around, so there wasn't going to be any surprises. Or so I thought. I was actually surprised that I really liked it.

This second reading of the book produced an unexpected enjoyment and it is all down to Sherlock and Benedict Cumberbatch. I literally can not count the number of times I have watched the nine episodes that currently exist in this series, but that first season, and that pilot episode are easily the ones I have watched the most. From what I remember of all the stories Conan Doyle had written, this modern retelling is a loose interpretation. They pick out details here and there and spin them into something new and exciting. Having forgotten everything in A Study in Scarlet, minus the Mormon hate, I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the original story was actually incorporated into "A Study in Pink." The reinterpretation of the source material made me appreciate it more. The adaptation had streamlined the story into a more taught narrative, yet at the same time it helped me understand the original more. Plus, the little reversals are extra funny. Holmes pointing out "rache" as the German for revenge in the original story, while in the TV episode he smacks down Anderson for the deduction as simplistic. Though it was the cabbie as killer combined with the two pills, one that was deadly, that made me shiver. Oh Gatiss and Moffat, sometimes you really piss me off, and other times, man, you nail it. Also, thank you for not testing the pills on a dog and killing it. I think that is where Conan Doyle went a little too far.

Yet just because I enjoyed A Study in Scarlet more this time around does not mean I was blind to it's flaws. The main flaw is that the mystery is written in such a way that you as the reader can not solve it. Part of the fun of mysteries is seeing if you can follow the clues and the red herrings and come to the same deduction as the detective, and perhaps beat him or her to the punch. The way the story is set up Holmes figures it all out and arrests the culprit. Then there's the long and hateful flashback to America and the Mormons, in which Conan Doyle proves his ignorance, mainly about American geography, I can't speak to the Mormon part, and then everything is handed to us on a plate as a fait accompli. I don't like this kind of storytelling. On a re-read it isn't so bad because you already know who the killer is, but on a first read it just angers me. The god like pretension of an author to think that they can change storytelling convention to appear more intelligent by being the only ones who could solve this crime. Of course you're the only one who could solve it, you wrote it so the reader wouldn't know! And this is why I hate Josephine Tey. She is noted for her interesting and modern narrative structure, otherwise called bullshit by me. Her book The Man in the Queue was one of the worst books I've read, and guess what, you're lack of adhering to conventions wasn't original, here is Conan Doyle doing it forty-two years earlier!

What I still find interesting is that when I first read this book the youth of Holmes and Watson struck me. Over time you get this fixed idea of what they look like, the staid middle aged Victorian gentleman. But this isn't the case at all! Given the supposed date of Holmes's birth and the date of the events in this story, Sherlock would only be twenty-seven years old! I mean, I know you were viewed older sooner then, what with younger mortality rates, but still, twenty-seven is damn young! While I'm not going to bother looking up all the ages of the copious actors who have played Holmes over the years, one thing can be deduced readily, and that they are never as young as he is in his first adventure. While most cases can be put down to the fact that for a series you need an actor who can play Holmes at a variety of ages, so casting older helps. But still, I wonder if it's just psychological. That we, as the audience, wouldn't take such a young man seriously. That he would have the gravity that is expected of Holmes. I of course call foul, if just for my undying love of the Young Sherlock Holmes. But on the whole, Holmes is played as the audience expects him to be. I bet if you asked the random Sherlockian Holmes's age in the first adventure, they'd place him in his mid to late forties. And they would be oh so wrong.

A point of interest that brings about much contemplation to me is that this story, which contained a murder whose like was never seen prior, was serialized exactly one year prior, and published in book form the same year as the first Jack the Ripper killings, in particular the canonical five. In fact, Jack the Ripper is often fused with multiple genres, Sherlock Holmes being one of them. I wonder, did A Study in Scarlet inspire a man prone to killing to commit a crime the likes of which had never been seen? It's almost as if Conan Doyle was egging someone on to take up the challenge Holmes laid at the feet of his culprit. Or was Conan Doyle that in touch with the changing times that he knew this violence, these types of horrific acts of murder, were the future of crime and he caught the spirit of these times in his stories? Because both Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes fascinate us to this day. Did one influence the other in any way or was it just the society of that time? Yes, I might be a bit of a ripperologist, but I had never really thought about the confluence of these two very famous Victorians. It is no wonder that people have been creating mashups... it's something to really get those little grey cells working, as another famous detective would say.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:01 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Study in Pink, A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jack the Ripper, John Watson, Josephine Tey, Mark Gatiss, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, Steven Moffat, The Young Sherlock Holmes

I seriously don't know why or how I knew Doctor Who was returning. At this time I didn't really use the internet for much, other then to do homework (see, I can't escape school now that it's sucked me back in, and in fact this fall is the first time since 2006 I haven't had classes) and to play online games with my friends. But there, in the back of my mind, I knew that there was a new series and that, well, obviously, I had to see it. The one thing I did know, from my various British addictions, was you could be sure, whenever the show showed up in the US, it would be a long time since it had aired in England. In fact it was almost a full year from the airing of "Rose" on the BBC till it aired on Sci-Fi (or Syfy as it now ludicrously is). As it turns out, I didn't have to wait that long...

In the spring of 2005 I was done with college (round one) and at a bit of a loose end, thinking maybe grad school, maybe not. My friend Sara had gone to graduate school in Halifax, Nova Scotia at NSCAD. She was graduating that spring and having a big gallery show/thesis/dissertation combo event with mashed potatoes on the side (seriously, there were mashed potatoes at the opening). Her whole family and a few of her close friends, me included, decided to descend on Halifax. Cold and wet and bleak and full of children wielding led pipes... the drug capital of Canada... needless to say, I didn't go out much. After most everyone else had returned to their respective homes, I stayed in Canada for another two weeks or so. I spent most of my time in Sara's little cramped apartment. She had one roommate, Kenny, and no spare space. The kitchen was minuscule, the bedrooms were tiny, the bathroom was somewhat large, but the hallway was non-existent as it kind of merged with the stairwell and the ceiling in this stairwell was mildly psychedelic, as the landlord had plastered the ceiling with these swoopy wave patterns. It was white, but there was like glitter mixed in. This ceiling fascinated me, because all I could think of was who would spend that much time on a ceiling? It would have actually fit in quite well with a few of the TARDIS interiors over the years.

Her roommate Kenny was also doing his performance/thesis/dissertation, so he was gone much of the time. He was gone and in return for keeping the tiny kitchen clean (not that hard) I had full access to his tv. I was instantly addicted to Canadian television, mainly because it's like all the big shows are on one station and some of it is in French. There was no flipping back and forth between ABC and CBS and Fox, it was all there on one channel. And while watching that one channel of an evening they said something that really caught my eye... on April 5th, a mere ten days after "Rose" aired in the UK, the CBBC was showing the first episode of the new Doctor Who! Even though Kenny had basically given me carte blanche over his television, I made sure to ask him as soon as I saw the ad that I would have the tv that Tuesday night. He said there was no problem and my heart leaped.

Here I was, far from home and my cat, in another country, but I was going to watch Doctor Who! Not just any Doctor Who, the newly rebooted series! I remember the Sunday night before there was a horrid cold front that moved in. Sara and I were driving back from PEI and it was so windy the car was struggling the whole way back to Halifax. And then the wind that night. It howled and howled. I started putting on more and more clothes in an attempt to keep warm. The next day the whole apartment was frigid, because of the fact the landlord turned down the heat during the day. The cold continued into Tuesday, but I didn't care, I had a fire in me to keep me warm, I had The Doctor. I remember it was still a little light outside the window as I sat down on the edge of the orange plaid blanket that covered Kenny's bed. I was instantly hooked as soon as Christopher Eccleston said "Run!" I mean, the first episode sure had it's flaws, but, well, that was to be expected. Mickey was the main flaw, but then, well, Rose left him in the dust didn't she? When the episode ended and I realized that come the next Tuesday I would be in New York again and not able to watch "The End of the World" I was beyond depressed. When Christopher Eccleston's face lit up in that wide smile surrounded by the London Eye, well, I knew I couldn't wait till this show came stateside.

I still think how naive I was to the ways of the internet. I didn't know about downloads or torrenting. I knew about Amazon UK, and so, I pre-ordered the DVDs, which came out in batches of three episodes every so often and then took about a month to get to me. So over the course of 2005 I slowly watched all the series. Each episode making me more and more a Whovian. In fact, that Christmas when they aired David Tennant's first episode simultaneously in Canada and England, I told Sara all I wanted for Christmas was for her to tape that episode, she did and I was ever so grateful, it was like being back in Canada again!

Step two was to get others addicted. When I went back to New York in Fall 2005 to look at a grad school, I bought tons of Doctor Who tie-in books at Forbidden Planet. When I was back again in Spring 2006, well, then the inculcation of my friend Miss Jessica began. We had returned to her apartment after a long night seeing Alan Cumming in The Three Penny Opera, and then several hours outside to meet him (which we did!) Then there was the train ride back to Queens, so it was long after midnight when I popped in disc one and said, "just one episode." Soon it was episode two and we were singing along with the 9th to "Tainted Love." Over the years, whenever me and Miss Jessica get together, well, there is always Doctor Who involved somehow. When she came to visit me shortly after David Tennant became The Doctor, a certain line from "New Earth" was used repeatedly while bowling. "Ooh. Curves. Oh Baby! It's like living inside a bouncy castle!" (Say while caressing a bowling ball, or other round parts of your anatomy. Oi! Not so dirty, we were at a bowling alley! They allow small children in bowling alleys and they get the cool bumpers).

Since then, the addiction has only gotten more rooted and with my increasing knowledge of technology, my addiction is fed on a regular and timely basis. Though I will admit to not watching the end of Rose's time on Doctor Who till I read some spoilers... I was really worried they were going to kill her and I knew I couldn't take that (and right there is where I lose my friend Moxie's sympathies, Rose hater that she is). Ever since that fateful Tuesday evening in Canada, I have become a Whovian in every sense of the word. And you know what? I wouldn't change a thing! Meeting new people, falling in love with new Doctors and companions, having recurring jokes with friends. Every single second of it has been awesome. Though if Moffat makes me cry again this Christmas as much as I did during the Michael Gambon Christmas special... I may go slam his hand in a car door so he knows the pain he has caused me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alan Cumming, BBC, Canada, Christmas, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Michael Gambon, New Earth, New York, Nova Scotia, Rose, Steven Moffat, TARDIS, The 10th Doctor, The 9th Doctor

I love Steven Moffat. He takes part one in this huge, epic, Russell T. Davies holiday spectacular direction where every villain ever is on hand and then he brings it in and makes the final part just about the core characters. No Daleks, no Cybermen, just River, Rory, Amy and The Doctor. We get some nice wibbly wobbly timey whimy with a Fez no less and the most epic display of love ever. Rory watched over Amy for thousands of years!!! He's just perfect. Plus, we get both Amys together and penguins of the Sahara (really, just watch Confidential to see how funny those museum displays are, because otherwise it will pass you by.) But underneath all that, The Doctor weaves in his story like a fairy tale into the dreams of young Amy to secure his return and to fill her house full of empty rooms. Plus, next season we have a Mr. and Mrs. travelling aboard the TARDIS! I hope Arthur Darvill gets a bump up to regular, as in his name in a nice swirly time vortex, it's the least he should get after waiting all those years... but does Rory know about that if he was actually a robot at the time? Ah, questions, questions, and we still have the silence to contend with. Also we must not forget, The Doctor has some shopping to do, he after all wants another Fez.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Amy Pond, Cybermen, Daleks, Doctor Who, Fez, River Song, Rory, Russell T. Davies, Sahara, Steven Moffat, TARDIS

Ok, so apparently every baddie in time and space is decending on the Pandorica which is under Stonehenge, aka "Underhenge", because it's been built to trap The Doctor, which I kind of saw coming. But you've got to give it to Steven Moffat, he's told to bring in the baddies, he does it in style. Every baddy EVER, from Torchwood to Sarah Jane, they are all there. There are Weevils in their jumpers in Underhenge! It kind of warms the cockles of my heart. But really, with all these Romans and Rory's reappearance, because of course he had to reappear, because otherwise, I would be hunting down Steven Moffat across all of time and space myself, nothing, and I repeat, nothing, compares to River Song convincing some faux Romans that she's Cleopatra, despite Cleopatra being dead in Rome. Well... maybe her defacing the oldest cliff face in existence to get The Doctors attention. But with all two parters, we'll have to see... you can't get much bigger of an ending than this, I mean every baddy ever? Plus, Amy's kind of dead, Rory's kind of made of Plastic and The Doctor is in a giant puzzle box... well it can only go up right?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cleopatra, Doctor Who, River Song, Sarah Jane Adventures, Steven Moffat, Stonehenge, The Doctor, Torchwood, Underhenge, Weevils

And Steven Moffat killed Rory! I get to like him, I mean really like him and then that's it!?! Me and Steven may have to have words. Plus not only that, in order to kind of "spare" Amy so that she can stay happy and perky and make The Doctor even more sad with more burdens to bare, he can remember him and she can't. Cause apparently Rory was part of Amy's timeline... but then why could River remember those who were part of her timeline that got sucked in... hmmm...The scene where he's getting Amy to hold onto the memory of Rory is heartbreaking. I think The Doctor even liked Rory, unlike the 9th and Mickey (but could you blame him?) But I did feel that the whole, he's still alive as long as you can remember him was a bit Thursday Next trying to maintain her memory of Landen while he's been a) eliminate from ever existing and b) Aornis Hades working her voodoo so that Thursday will forget, which really made book three hard to get through and confusing. But props also have to be given to the set people, omg, this was just an amazing episode from a production standpoint, I never once questioned anything. Everything fit so perfectly with what an underground civilization would look like and no crappy CGI, all amazing! I want to go to there. I also love Nasreen, for her zeal, her love of science, and her man, and the fact that she did it all with her hair looking crappy, she never once thought about it. Now she would be a kick ass companion.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 2:45 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Amy Pond, Aornis Hades, Doctor Who, Landen, Mickey, Nasreen, Rory, Steven Moffat, The 9th Doctor, The Doctor, Thursday Next

So the second two-parter of the season and the second hard review, cause as I've said before, you can't judge a half, you have to judge the whole. And with the Weeping Angels, I think part two detracted from what could have been an awesome one-parter. With "The Hungry Earth" Steven Moffat yet again delivers on the promise to bring back monsters from the Doctors past that aren't the Cybermen and Daleks. The Silurian's have returned and the make-up is unbelievable. In fact, just that alone made the episode cool. But I also liked the return of the writer Chris Chibnall, who I know some fans are vehemently set against, mainly cause of the Cyberwoman episode of Torchwood, but that had Russell written all over it and Chris also wrote for Life on Mars, so he's cool in my book. I also like the kind of close knit, small group of people trapped Stephen King Under the Dome style and having to fight the ground beneath them in a small Welsh villiage. It was very spooky and eerie, and one of my fears when I was a kid was quicksand, and seeing Amy being pulled under the earth, totally creeped me out (and yes, they did pull her through the earth, into a car pit underneath). But again, this episode is all set up for the reveal of the "monster" at the end and the three hostages for one the Doctor proposes to the few Silurians he believes are hanging out under ground, otherwise called a few million... and cliffhanger to next week...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 2:54 PM 0 comments  

Labels: Chris Chibnall, Cybermen, Daleks, Doctor Who, Life on Mars, Silurians, Stephen King, Steven Moffat, The Hungry Earth, The Weeping Angels, Torchwood, Two-Parter, Under the Dome

Yes, I know it's Jane Austen month, but Doctor Who stops for no man... er woman, and also now I really wish there was a Jane Austen episode of Doctor Who, get on that Seven Moffat! This was a daring episode of Doctor Who, if just for the risk of having a very waddling and very pregnant companion, and another with a pony tail to rival any of the great 80s Metal bands. But the truth lies in that this episode is not as it seems, which would make sense with a villain capable of manipulating dreams, but it is the twist in the end that makes it sheer brilliance and makes you want to watch the whole episode all over again instantly. On the surface this appears to be just an elaborate excuse to make Amy choose between the two men in her life. Should she choose The Doctor, all flash and swagger and adventure, or Rory, the perfect lifemate. If the pregnancy reality were reality, you could see how Amy would be bored and how Rory would be happy. Then again, if the TARDIS is the reality then they're all about to die... so which to choose? The fact that Amy chooses the TARDIS in the end, not because of The Doctor, but because she can't live in a world without Rory is heartbreaking and perfect. The Doctor might show her the universe, but it's Rory who she wants by her side forever.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Amy Pond, Doctor Who, Dream Lord, Rory, Steven Moffat, TARDIS, Tawdry Quirk Shop, The Doctor

Hello sweeties, there's only one way to sum up this episode: Best opening EVER! River Song could easily hold her own with James Bond, perhaps even beat him... I want to float to a TARDIS backwards while blowing a kiss after sending a message in a dead language thousands of years into the future! But let's get to the episode itself, because, truthfully, River Song would just adore taking over this post. So River discovers a Weeping Angel and with the help of The Doctor and a bevy of troops, plan to take it out. Seeing as this is a two part, most of it is a build up to a cliffhanger of everyone in peril and the Doctor thinking of a way to save the day, of course a catch phrase thrown in, this is a Steven Moffat episode after all ("Are You My Mummy?" "Donna Noble Has Left The Library, Donna Noble Has Been Saved"). So in all fairness, this review can only be a partial review, because I won't know till the resolution how I feel about how this plays out. Because in the abstract, bringing back the angels, expanding on their mythology is really cool and scary. But at the same time, their one appearance in the scariest episode ever made them unique and interesting, and the idea of any statue could really be one, like the Vashta Nerada, is cool. But right there we're hitting on the problem I had with the episode. This really seemed like a refashioning of River Song's other arc. We have people, trapped in a place where the darkness is lethal and then the baddies start using the walkie talkies to communicate. Angel Bob, you're too much like other Dave... I'm sorry. But still, Moffat is able to get some amazing humor and horror working side by side. Amy being trapped with the image of an Angel... were it turns out the image is really the same thing, and then when her eye starts leaking sand... creepy. I also love the play River and The Doctor have of a married old couple, and I love that River is as enigmatic as ever and that this ship crash was mentioned in their previous adventure, even if it was River's last. Also I'm sorry, but Matt Smith doing the sound of the TARDIS, I forgive him for not being David Tennant just for that, as well as biting Amy to prove she wasn't stone, you're officially a Doctor, I shouldn't have doubted. But as for final judgement.... turn in next week...

As a funny aside, if you watched this in England, this episode caused controversy because of a Graham Norton cartoon promoting "Over the Rainbow" interrupting the big cliffhanger. Over 3000 calls and countless emails, really countless, I couldn't be bothered to find out. But Graham had a great comeback on his show, a sort of apology, as only Graham can do!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: Amy Pond, Blink, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Graham Norton, James Bond, Matt Smith, River Song, Steven Moffat, The 11th Doctor, The Time of Angels, The Weeping Angels, Vashta Nerada

Never judge a new doctor by his first episode, always judge them by their second. The first is all kind of new and maybe a little weird, the second is when they come into their own. I gotta say, I'm loving Matt Smith. Not my lustful worshipping of David Tennant, but in a quieter, he's goofy and works as a sort of Tom Baker Doctor kind of way. The second episode of a new companion always has to be a huge moment, the moment not when they meet the Doctor and deal with him on their turf, but the moment when he takes them out into his turf. His turf happens to be the British Isle floating in outer space. There are weird menacing mechanical carny booths, think Zoltar, in the 30s, but with a real hidden wicked streak and total control over the ships populous called Smilers. Theirs a complete distillation of all things British into one wickedly fun market, like Bladrunner with bunting. There does seem to be more of a children slant, could it be that they're actually going to not traumatize children forever? No, this episode would so have traumatized me. I already have an unnatural fear of elevators, if one of those Smilers went all evil and dropped me into the bowels of a ship for not doing my homework, I'm sorry, I would have totally lost it. It's that underlying menace of what the Smilers do and that no one stands up to them or even tries to change it that makes the Doctors arrival so important.

So we have an oppressed British people hurtling through space and a Queen, cause there always has to be a Queen, searching for a truth that she is not meant to find and when she does, it's a doozy. But it's the Queen that makes this episode the best. Sophie Okonedo as Liz 10 was a combination of Lara Croft and V. Flowing cap, guns at the ready, and lots of goblets of water laying about as if she were in the movie Signs. The eventual saving of the day happens, of course not from the Doctor but from Amy, who was very Arthur Dent and saved the world in her pajamas. But the Doctor being wrong, and not just slightly wrong, but majorly wrong, was interesting. This Doctor is willing to make harder decisions... he's willing to let there be a looser, versus all winners come hell or high water. But Amy tempers him. Too bad next week we have the stupid overused Daleks, because I like where Steven Moffat is taking us, new villains not the same old same old... well at least that's what I thought till I saw those freakin' Daleks!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 3 comments  

Labels: Amy Pond, Bladerunner, Daleks, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Lara Croft, Liz 10, Matt Smith, Signs, Smilers, Sophie Olonedo, Steven Moffat, The 11th Doctor, Tom Baker, V, Zoltar

As sure as the sun rises and sets there is sure to be another interpretation of Sherlock Holmes. With the recent big screen adaptation out today I thought it might be time for some pontification on that most memorable of detectives. While I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Downey Junior as Holmes with a cast rounded out by some wonderful BBC staples, I could always use another hit... though not the same kind as Holmes himself. I'm eagerly awaiting what, in the terms of geekdom, might be the most anticipated of collaborations. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are joining forces (yes that's me squealing in the background) to bring a new twist to Holmes. Sure they have been more recently tied up with Doctor Who, but that doesn't mean this will be anything like The Doctor... how about Moffat's Jekyll reimagining? Even if it is supposedly set in modern times, with Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and Rupert Graves we have a cast that I am certain to love. The three 90 minute films are in production now and I just could only wish for a Tardis to jump on into the future to catch an episode. But the real question is, how does Steven Moffat have the time? With writing the new Tin Tin movie, being the new show-runner for Doctor Who and now this!?! Sheer multitasking genius!

All this talks of the new Holmeses leads me to a very important thought... who really is the definitive Holmes? Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett... how do they stack up against each other. And are we to factor in parodies? Because then we have Michael Caine facing Peter Cook! Also what if we factor in Holmes' history and take into account Ian Richardson on Murder Rooms (which if you haven't watched, you really must)? The truth is, each actor brings something unique and different to the role and that one can not be compared to another or even to how we view Holmes in our minds. Of course, this being me, I do have a favorite... from a love of Egyptology and being in love with the star at an impressionable age, Nicholas Rowe as Holmes in The Young Sherlock Holmes will always be my favorite. He does not detract from the original, but adds a new layer of awesomeness. I'm sorry Elizabeth had to die... but I did like you saying my name over and over even if you did cause me to have an unnatural fear of pastries.

The history of Holmes is fascinating in and of itself. Doyle never wrote the Deerstalker, that was an invention of the Illustrator. And when Doyle had Holmes killed off, he was brought back to life by mass consensus. There are societies and spin offs and scholars and every manner of devotion possible, it's no wonder there are so many adaptations!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 3 comments  

Labels: Arthur Conan Doyle, Doctor Who, Ian Richardson, Jeremy Brett, Mark Gatiss, Martin Freeman, Nicholas Rowe, Robert Downey Junior, Sherlock Holmes, Steven Moffat, The Doctor, The Young Sherlock Holmes

And a sci-fi fangirls dream if it turns out to be true. But I'm not believing this rumor till I hear it direct from Neil Gaiman's mouth... or at least on his blog, oh, you know what I'm trying to say. The man himself must confirm the rumor to make me dance with joy. So to the rumor... This rumor has been swirling around for quite some time, and his been constantly fueled by Neil having had lunch with Steven Moffat or Neil making a comment about if he were to write for this show his episode would not be about that. In other words, Neil has been very good about sidestepping the issue as to if he is or isn't going to write an episode for the 11th Doctor. Whoa... that felt weird typing 11th Doctor, I'm not going to get used to that anytime soon. But yes, he has only ever issued statements to flatly deny things like rubbish titles, "I haven't denied that my Doctor Who episode "Faces in the Dust" will have Ice Warriors in it, because I'm not writing a Doctor Who episode called "Faces in the Dust" (which is a pretty rubbish title, who makes this stuff up?) and I've been having much too much fun not denying anything about Doctor Who, other than admitting to having enjoyed some nice dinners with Mr Moffat, as chronicled on this blog. (If I'd denied it, I would have denied it here, and as you might have noticed, I didn't.) But I'm denying this because it's said in that authoritative way that makes it look as if people know what they're talking about, when it's just people-making-stuff-up-bollocks."

But today an interesting twist. SFX claims that in a special message sent to them for Neil's acceptance speech, that Neil has confirmed he is writing an episode of the 11th Doctor (yep, still weird writing that): "As anyone who’s read my blog knows, I’m a big fan of a certain long-running British SF TV series. One that started watching -- from behind the sofa -- when I was three. And while I know it’s cruel to make you wait for things, in about 14 months from now, which is to say, NOT in the upcoming season but early in the one after that, it’s quite possible that I might have written an episode. And if I had, it would originally have been called “The House of Nothing”. But it definitely isn’t called that any more."

Hmm... could this be true? Or is it just people-making-stuff-up-bollocks? As I've said, due to lots of recent false information swirling, I'm not going to believe this till Neil tells me. After all, that New Yorker interview, not only badly written, but badly fact checked and misquoted. Also the news on the web that The Graveyard Book movie adaptation is DOA, totally false. There is so much out there that's not true about Neil right now I'm not going to get my hopes up till Neil goes: "Yes, I'm doing Doctor Who." Then, dancing will commence. Because what could be better? One of the greatest sci-fi writers writing for one of the greatest sci-fi shows... oh wait, if he had written for David Tennant. That would have made it perfect.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 2:51 PM 3 comments  

Labels: Blog, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Faces in the Dsut, Ice Warriors, Neil Gaiman, Scarves, SFX, Steven Moffat, The 10th Doctor, The 11th Doctor, The 4th Doctor, The Graveyard Book, The House of Nothing

I've barely come to grips with the fact that come 2010 David Tennant will no longer be The Doctor. So what do they do to me? Change the freakin' logo! I can honestly say I hate it. This is all shiney and sleek and totally reminds me of some of the earlier craptastic Doctor Who logos. When I heard Russell T. Davies was leaving Doctor Who and handing the reins over to Steven Moffat I was extremely excited. Here's the man behind some of the best episodes of Doctor Who in recent years...Timecrash or Blink anyone? Plus, creator of Coupling. I wasn't too worried about the future of the show. I would enjoy it, I probably wouldn't rabidly love it like I do my David Tennant, but there you go, change happens, change here is imminent. Now I'm starting to dwell on the bad...remember season 4 of Coupling anyone? Plus how naive was I to think just because Russell was gone that finally I'd not have to endure yet another Dalek or Cybermen episode, yet there were suspiciously Dalek-esque creatures near the set recently...this logo is just the most recent blow, and I don't know if I can take anymore. I even have fears for my beloved Tardis. They don't have plans to change the desktop theme do they? I can't not have my coral...just please Steven Moffat, don't mess this up. I know the logo probably had nothing to do with you, but don't make it all kid friendly, prewatershed, Sarah Jane Adventures, candy coated, la-de-da crap. I need my Doctor Who! Don't pull a Torchwood on me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:23 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Blink, Coupling, David Tennant, Dr. Who, Russell T. Davies, Sarah Jane Adventures, Steven Moffat, Timecrash