update of updateness

[ladymercury_10]

Via elisi: it appears the recent LJ modifications may not be as disastrous as they first appeared?  As summarized here, there will be some customizability, including the ability to switch off infinite scroll (thank goodness).  Also, paid accounts aren't really going away--if you have one, you'll still have one, it looks like, and if you don't have one yet, you'll be able to just buy the features you want, instead of a bundle.  If you have a paid account when that happens, it looks like you may also get some special privileges?

So that's good.  I think?  I hope.

In other news: I am very excited to get my Yuletide assignment, I don't understand permutation groups so I expect that at least one of the proofs I wrote up for my homework makes no sense (oh well), and I have once again gotten overly ambitious with the borrowing of library books and comics. (Batgirl!  Batman!  The Great Gatsby!  Wait, what?  Who thought it was a good idea to give me library cards?) 

Oh!  And I started poking at the nearly-infinite Doctor Who backlog.  I started watching in 2010, so I've seen all of Moffat Who, somewhere between half and two thirds of RTD Who, and two Fourth Doctor serials.  But I read Classic and Multi-era fanfic sometimes, and I was on an Ace/Hex fanfic binge the other day, and I thought, hmm, maybe I should, you know, actually watch some Seven-era.  So I watched Ghost Light, and I didn't understand a lick of the plot, but it was fun and spooky and Seven was great.  He is much calmer than the Doctors I am used to, and also very scary when he wants to be.  And Ace!  She was actually less big and tough, somehow, than I expected her to be, but she seems like a good companion.  Although--were the TV acting guidelines different in the 80s?  It seemed a bit melodramatic to me.  But the school library had Remembrance of the Daleks, so that's on my desk, waiting and hoping for my legendarily poor TV attention span to return to it. :P

Comments

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, were they early-ish Four serials? Because I have attention span problems with some Classic Who as well, only it's almost all in Three era--I just cannot get through Pertwee serials without a friend there to chat and keep me from wandering off, which is a shame because there's some fantastic stuff in there. And some parts of Four's first season, with Sarah Jane and Harry Sullivan, trip my ADD in similar ways, as though they're still trying to work out the pacing.

Would that be "in lesbians" in the Scott Pilgrim way, or in the regular way, or both? :P

Mostly the regular way, haha! Though there are some dudes in there. I second (third? fourth?) the Remembrance of the Daleks rec, btw, and would also add Curse of Fenric. Remembrance is just pure cracky fun all the way through, and Fenric is dark but brilliant. And no pacing problems there except that Fenric is bursting at the seams with all the themes and mythology it tries to pack into four episodes: it can roughly be summarized as "The Doctor plays live chess with absolute evil against a backdrop of WWII cryptography, Viking legends, chemical warfare, hot Soviet captains, Ace's timey-wimey mummy issues, and also zombie fish vampires from the future." Utterly mad but it somehow works.

And yeah, One era is magical. This is definitely not a show that becomes more and more dated and badly-paced the further back you go, in linear fashion; Hartnell serials still seem fresh and wide-eyed and all about experimenting and exploring, with a more open-ended format than just defeating a monster every week. And it helps to know that at the time, it was all being made by a crew of young upstarts who'd been shoved into a tiny studio with tin-can equipment and a shoestring budget by the BBC higher-ups, and were determined to sell it to the audience on sheer creativity and force of conviction. It's... very Doctor-ish, in a way. ("Oh, look at me, I'm going to save the universe with a kettle and some string.")

Hmmm, other recs... if you like River and the way she drives the Doctor up the wall by being at least as clever as he is, try Romana's introduction, The Ribos Operation. Also, I don't know how much of series 3 you managed to catch, but it's my absolute favorite ever and the series arc is phenomenal. I highly recommend doing at least a highlights version of it in order--as a baseline, Runaway Bride, Gridlock, Lazarus Experiment, and then everything from Human Nature to the end. (And if you end up wanting more where that came from, have a gander at Four's regeneration trilogy, The Keeper of Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva.)

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, were they early-ish Four serials?
Uh, I'm not sure where in his run they fall. I've seen Pyramids of Mars (the low-budget special effects in that were HILARIOUS) and City of Death (Romana is awesome). I have just have attention span issues with TV in general--I do better trying to focus on reading something than watching it--so that's already a problem before we even get into the pacing thing. Which is why I never finished RTD Who.

except that Fenric is bursting at the seams with all the themes and mythology
Ahhhh I love it when Doctor Who does themes and mythology. That's one of my favorite parts about Moffat Who. AND WWII CRYPTOGRAPHY OMG. Alan Turing is kind of my hero. How is watching classic Who out of order? Like if I see Fenric now and I've already seen Ghost Light, I know those come at the end of Ace's arc when they give her sort of her last-hurrah character development, and I've spoiled the character growth of a lot of companions by my hodgepodge out of order watching. Well, spoiled is too strong a word. But I did have stronger feelings about Amy and Rory in part because I actually watched their full arcs.

("Oh, look at me, I'm going to save the universe with a kettle and some string."
That's one of the really brilliant things about Who, how the things we love best came about because of poor budget and such. The police-box ship and the regenerating and all. :D What are good First Doctor episodes, out of curiosity? The first one in the junkyard?

Hmmm, other recs
Thank you very much for the recs! When I was watching RTD Who, it was all out of order, and I saw a fair bit of S3 because I liked Martha best. :D Oh dear, though, there is so much Who and so little time, and I don't know when I'll get around to watching half the things I want to watch. And then there are other shows to consider on top of it all, haha....

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

THERE'S A TURING EXPY IN CURSE OF FENRIC. And some, uh, very off-label uses of Enigma machines. And the writer originally wanted a subplot about how not!Turing got screwed over for being gay, but the BBC put their foot down about sympathetic portrayals of homosexuality, so it got shunted into a slightly awkward physical-disability metaphor.

Classic Who is, for the most part, meant to be watchable out of order, therefore "draw a random serial out of a hat" is a perfectly valid approach. Ace has a loose character arc, but watching the end first doesn't make the beginning less terrific--more that the climactic scene in Fenric is richer if you know what's gone before. And, honestly, Fenric is too rich already. It's like mythology cheesecake topped with a two-inch-thick layer of dark-chocolate subtext frosting, it doesn't really need the character-arc maple syrup drizzled on top.

First Doctor era is one of the few I've been doing in order, actually, and I'm only up through part of The Aztecs (which is really good so far). Definitely watch the very first installment of An Unearthly Child, though you can skip the other three if you want. I'm really tempted to say "just watch aaaallll the serials so you can see the show finding its feet" but that probably would not be practical. I have heard consistently good things about both The Aztecs and The Romans.

Also, Martha is in fact the best. :D *high five*

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE BEST EPISODE. And that kind of sucks about the BBC not letting them put in that subplot, but I can't say I'm surprised, seeing as it took the British government until, like, 2009 to issue a formal apology for what happened to the real Turing. :/

Definitely watch the very first installment of An Unearthly Child, though you can skip the other three if you want.
You can just watch part of the serial? Is the plot not very important?

Also, Martha is in fact the best. :D *high five*
*returns high five* :D