Series B, Episode 08 - Hostage
JENNA: [To Cally] You know what all this is about, don't you?
CALLY: [Nodding] I think I can guess.
JENNA: It is a trap, isn't it?
CALLY: Avon thinks so.
JENNA: Well Avon always thinks so.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/208/321
Calamus 21 Music always round me
A celebration of life, the metaphor of music all around us if only you can hear it. The last line is what gives me pause, it suggests an interesting nuance of meaning.
I do not think the performers know themselves—But now I think I begin to know them.
I'm a little pressed to find a gay reading of this poem, it doesn't have the usual paeans to manly love. There is a pleasant exuberance and sensuality to it, "shuddering luciously" and all. But it's the beginning lines that really catch me:
Music always round me ... yet long untaught I did not hear,
But now the chorus I hear, and am elated,
It's like there's a secret world of pleasure that Whitman only recently has learned to enjoy himself. A feeling similar to the epiphany of coming out to oneself.
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied…
A wish granting god baby, granting Conrad's wishes in service of the Rani, turns London into a misogynist utopia and The Doctor into a good husband and insurance worker.
Hard to say why misogynists are so keen on the American 50s. Perhaps because it was before blacks had the vote and women could do banking.
And if anyone doubts this ridiculous tale, their table stops working and their family might call the doubt police, so they soon learn not to. All very oppressive and subversive.
Ruby manages to doubt anyway. And all the disabled people who simply never enter into Conrad's mind. Nice touch that. Great scene in the tent city filled with the dispossessed. They don't seem to have actually done anything so far but maybe they'll get more useful in part two.
Conrad is on TV telling a story about a man named Doctor Who.
Giant dinosaur skeletons walk the city, stepping over sky scrapers, and a bone palace towers above the city. Because I guess Conrad wishes for it to be so in order to give the Rani somewhere to live.
The palace is beautiful and Gothic.
But doubt is seeping in. Rogue is back, on the TV in hell, telling the Doctor that tables don't work like that. So he investigates. Gets himself reported to the doubt police who take him and Belinda to the bone palace.
The Rani's split from Miss Flood gives the pair of them a good chemistry. Queen and her maid of honour. Seems like Mrs Flood is likely to be the Rani's downfall. She doesn't like being told to make a sandwich.
A lot of exposition going on, but they at least put a hat on it: "Isn't just exposition, I need you to doubt"
So that's the reason for the strange wishes: To make the doctor have doubts so severe that the reality collapses, and Rani can rescue Omega. Omega is the dude in a Mask from the first 3 doctors episode, who gave the timelords time travel and got trapped in the underworld in the process. Timelords forgot him and never mounted a rescue, but presumably Rani is now hoping he'll bring back Galifrey.
And with London collapsing into the underworld and the doctor falling from the sky, we get the episode break and have to wait until next week.
That's not a cliff hanger, that an already-falling-from-the-cliff hanger.
Poppy really is his daughter he's shouting as he falls. And you know what that means?
🤨🤔
Back in Space Babies, the worst episode of the Nchuti seasons, that space baby asked if he was her parents and he said he wished that he was their parents.
That wish has been granted somehow?
Is this space baby Susan's mother? They have very different skin tones, but that doesn't matter much in a regenerating species.
Never have found out much about The Doctor's child. When he traveled with his granddaughter everyone assumed he'd met his own kid, the grandchild's parent.
But that doesn't have to be true for a time traveler. Maybe he met the granddaughter before he met his own kid, and maybe his own kid was just wished into his family line 60 years later (or billions of years in his timeline I guess).
Pretty fun episode but not sure it makes much sense. Why doesn't the Rani just wish for Omega to be back instead of all this doubt and underworld bollocks?
Last one next week. Super long episode. Hope it's all cleared up. Good chance we'll meet Susan again I think. And maybe see Omega's mask once more.
Series B, Episode 06 - Trial
ZIL: To be alone must not be feared. The Host is slow to recognize one who is alone. Though there are many, all stay alone. [Clears off a patch of ground] Do you hunger? [Tears the ground open, scoops up some of the lining of the opening and eats it.] Do you hunger?
BLAKE: What is it?
https://
Nope. Not all sunshine.
If you miss a dependency on Slackware, specifically install it, reboot and still no go.
Zen helps you through the pitfalls of rage 🤪
TGIF and the beer is in the fridge already 🍻
Nothing I’m trying to write is "flowing"...it's all laborious.
I'm encouraged by "Your labor isn’t a sign of defeat" from @… wherein she quotes Verlyn Klinkenborg:
"if you accept that writing is hard work, And that’s what it feels like when you’re writing, Then everything is as it should be. Your labor is…
The number of videos and articles on the internet calling Linux the "best" OS is mindboggling. I now consider anyone saying anything like this a moron. It is downright misleading to tell people Linux will solve all their problems. Linux is a good operating system - it has specific use cases where it excels. You may have those use cases. In which case, use it. Other OSs have their use cases where they Excel. Use them if you need to. Finally, don't be a moron.
Series B, Episode 06 - Trial
ZIL: To be alone must not be feared. The Host is slow to recognize one who is alone. Though there are many, all stay alone. [Clears off a patch of ground] Do you hunger? [Tears the ground open, scoops up some of the lining of the opening and eats it.] Do you hunger?
BLAKE: What is it?
https://