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At the moment, I can’t focus on anything with a more complex plot than "competitive baking" or "people calmly demonstrating their expertise in niche things," but once I’m off for Christmas break I’m going to pick up Doctor Who again. At the beginning of November I started re-watching it from the start of the reboot, mostly in order, and I got through the end of the second season by Thanksgiving. I loved Doctor Who in high school, so I expected to enjoy it mostly out of nostalgia, but I'd forgotten how genuinely delightful the early seasons were: silly and earnest and optimistic, rooted in the idea that people are essentially good and even the most mundane life has value. Which is a nice message at any time, but especially given *waves hands at current state of world politics* and also the stress of approaching graduation, finding a job, etc.
Ten was and always will be my favorite, but I can't believe how much I underappreciated Nine as a teenager. His goofy smile! His dad jokes! His deeply repressed trauma from being the sole survivor of his species fueling his willingness to throw down at any moment to protect others! I think I appreciated Rose more this time around, too. I especially liked the reoccurring theme in the first season, of Rose having a bonding moment with a random, "unimportant" person they meet on their travels, like the alien janitor in S1E2 or the maid in S1E3. Rose’s empathy and Ten’s wide-eyed gleeful exclamations about how much he loves us clever, curious, ridiculous humans make them a really good pair. (I'd still have to pick Donna as my favorite companion, though, because Catherine Tate and David Tennant are an unbeatable combination.)
Also, re-watching a TV show at 21 that I loved at 15— it's wild to me that Rose is nineteen. Nineteen! I think Billie Piper was actually in her early 20s, but it's always surreal to find that you're older than the characters you thought of as Grown Up when you first encountered them.
In other news, I'm currently reading Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday, which I found out about via pretty much every news publication's Best Books of 2018 list. I'm about halfway through. The novel started off as the story of a young woman's affair with a much older, famous author (apparently a very thinly disguised Phillip Roth, who I've never read and fortunately cannot picture, although I keep picturing Jeff Goldblum circa Portlandia which makes, uh, certain scenes both more awkward and unintentionally hilarious) before switching focus entirely, to the story of an Iraqi-American economist detained in a London airport and reflecting, in alternating past/present chapters, on how he ended up there. I have a guess as to how their stories are related, which apparently gets revealed in the last, one-chapter section. Not a spoiler, exactly, but I've included my theory below the cut:
( Read more... )
Ten was and always will be my favorite, but I can't believe how much I underappreciated Nine as a teenager. His goofy smile! His dad jokes! His deeply repressed trauma from being the sole survivor of his species fueling his willingness to throw down at any moment to protect others! I think I appreciated Rose more this time around, too. I especially liked the reoccurring theme in the first season, of Rose having a bonding moment with a random, "unimportant" person they meet on their travels, like the alien janitor in S1E2 or the maid in S1E3. Rose’s empathy and Ten’s wide-eyed gleeful exclamations about how much he loves us clever, curious, ridiculous humans make them a really good pair. (I'd still have to pick Donna as my favorite companion, though, because Catherine Tate and David Tennant are an unbeatable combination.)
Also, re-watching a TV show at 21 that I loved at 15— it's wild to me that Rose is nineteen. Nineteen! I think Billie Piper was actually in her early 20s, but it's always surreal to find that you're older than the characters you thought of as Grown Up when you first encountered them.
In other news, I'm currently reading Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday, which I found out about via pretty much every news publication's Best Books of 2018 list. I'm about halfway through. The novel started off as the story of a young woman's affair with a much older, famous author (apparently a very thinly disguised Phillip Roth, who I've never read and fortunately cannot picture, although I keep picturing Jeff Goldblum circa Portlandia which makes, uh, certain scenes both more awkward and unintentionally hilarious) before switching focus entirely, to the story of an Iraqi-American economist detained in a London airport and reflecting, in alternating past/present chapters, on how he ended up there. I have a guess as to how their stories are related, which apparently gets revealed in the last, one-chapter section. Not a spoiler, exactly, but I've included my theory below the cut:
( Read more... )
