Mandy's Tumblr Thing

Part-time grumpy old woman, full-time geek girl. #doctorwho #linux #mecfs

[mtonksuk]

It was my birthday yesterday so I felt justified in wallowing in nostalgia with the greatest TV show ever created: Chorlton And The Wheelies.

[doctorpuppet]

Ever wonder where the puppets live? The answer is this very unglamorous desk drawer. And it’s getting a wee bit crowded…

[mtonksuk]

I love that there's tea and jammie dodgers in there with them!

[mtonksuk]

I'm watching Blake's 7 along with (actually, ahead of) Neil and Sue over at Adventures With The Wife And Blake. In truth, B7 is a lot like the girl with the curl: when it's good, it's very, very good and when it's bad it's horrid. Jacqueline Pearce, however, is divine whichever way you look at it. I was five when the show started and it had a profound effect on me... 1. I still can't work out why computers don't look and sound like Orac:

2. I still have a thing for morally dubious, short-haired women with a purpose and a white frock:

or a black frock

or a red frock

3. [Spoilers] I still expect every TV show to end in a massacre:

[tapeloader]

#31 Jetpac (1983)

[mtonksuk]

One of my favourite games even after all these years.  

When my father was clearing out the loft earlier this year and found a box of old Speccy games, the only ones I kept were Jetpac, Lunar Jetman and Jumping Jack.   That's pretty much my childhood in three little tapes.

There was also a pile of old Usborne books that I adored as a kid.   Most of them can be downloaded from the World Of Spectrum book archive now.

[mtonksuk]

I love the Vastra and Jenny characters in Patrick Ballesteros' wonderful Blink And Seek...

[mtonksuk]

This is how I feel when I look around Tumblr...

(Animated GIF from Jason Scott's Under Construction archive, Madame Vastra promo still from the Beeb.)

[moffat-rocks]

Confession...

I really hate the relationship between Vastra and Jenny. Jenny calls her Ma’am, does all the house keeping, and when she clearly is in distress (aka being murdered), Vastra says “It doesn’t matter”.

I know they live in another century and they are only fictional characters and Vastra is a lizard. But the Moffat haters’ main point is his supposed sexism - and yet I have never seen anybody be upset about Jenny and Vastra.

It makes me wonder whether Moffat was trying to make a point here.

[mtonksuk]

I thought about the outward inequality of their relationship before I started the Casebook stories.

I like the Gatiss Method: make Jenny as independent and bottom kicking as possible. I've made Vastra uncomfortable with Jenny's *choice* to adopt the outward appearance of a Mistress-servant relationship as well.

I'm not sure The Moff was making any particular point, though.   I think he had a fun idea -- a female Holmes-Watson duo -- and bolted everything else on from there.

And we've seen nothing to prove that "Jenny...does all the housekeeping".  Vastra could be a dab hand with a duster :-)   (Look surprised if that's a scene in the next story.)

[mtonksuk]

Alone on his planet, which is neither large nor small, but exactly the right size, Answerer waits. He cannot help the people who come to him, for even Answerer has restrictions. He can answer only valid questions. Universe? Life? Death? Purple? Eighteen? Partial truths, half-truths, little bits of the great question. But Answerer, alone, mumbles the questions to himself, the true questions, which no one can understand. How could they understand the true answers? The questions will never be asked, and Answerer remembers something his builders knew and forgot. In order to ask a question you must already know most of the answer.

My google-fu failed me yesterday while I was doing a bit of research for the Casebook series. It reminded me of Robert Sheckley's short story, Ask A Foolish Question (from Science Fiction Stories 1953). Above is the end of the story; the whole is well worth a read.

[mtonksuk]

I've been thinking about The Feminism Of Doctor Who's post discussing the possibility of casting a disabled actor as the Doctor. 

I'm not much fussed by the idea of a disabled Doctor (I speak as a cripple myself) but then I'm not 100% sure about a female Doctor (I speak as a woman myself); there's just so many things that could go, well, tits up in the execution.

[Aside: Being a Who fan, obviously I have cast a disabled actor, an actress and an actor of colour in my head : Warwick Davis, Sophie Thompson and Adrian Lester respectively.]

What I would love to see -- and have been hoping for since Doctor Who returned -- is a disabled companion.

Cerrie Burnell would be fun, though she's a bit busy being a mum, a writer, an actress, a speaker and a CBeebies presenter at the mo, and Nicola Miles-Wildin has some experience of playing to large audiences (a few hundred million or so).

  Given Who's woeful record with wheelchair-bound characters (and the complete lack of accessibility in the Tardis redesigns), I hesitate to suggest someone who can't walk at all but Liz Carr, formerly of the Ouch! podcast and now of Silent Witness, would make a great guest star.

Disability is the one big, gaping hole in New Who's generally diverse portfolio of characters (companions, guests and supporting cast), it would be lovely to see them address this.