(no subject)

Today I:

- slept til half past eleven
- went to the library to get books
- got my bank card un-locked by telling Santander that I can't remember my PIN
- tried (and failed) to do all the reading for a 3000 word essay on the discovery of the individual in the Middle Ages as evidenced by various English lit from 1066 to 1348
- listened to Benny audios
- finished watching Image of the Fendahl

Image of the Fendahl was pretty good, even though it's heavily reminiscent of The Daemons and has aliens influencing human evolution, but I do like it when Who does witches. Also, satanist!scientist had weird homoerotic UST with good!scientist, which amused me. And Thea, the female technician who got sacrificed, had Sisterhood of Karn eye-makeup when she got transformed, which was cool. Four was also quite nice in this serial, there was even a moment when I thought, "Aw, Four, I like you".

I finished "The Sunmakers" yesterday, too, which took me a bit longer to watch because it wasn't as tense as Fendahl. I'm pretty anti-capitalist myself, but Sunmakers was as heavy-handed as you can get in terms of propaganda. Why make the Evil Capitalist an alien? Why call those aliens Usurians? It would have been much better if the bad guys had been all human because this kind of thing is totally something humans do to each other. Aside from that I did like Sunmakers, because I like over-the-top dystopias. It had a number of sympathetic extras, some good sets, and both Leela and K9 being badass.

Something I've noticed about Leela in her TV serials: she really identifies as a warrior - not just a person with fighting skills, but someone whose role is to lead others in fights and defend the defenseless, someone who works together with other warriors. In Fendahl there's the bit where she says "Come on," to Four and he tells her that the one who leads the way says "Come on", but clearly Leela thinks that's who she is. Both in Invasion of Time and in Sunmakers she surrounds herself with a motley crew of untrained fighters and leads them - quite sucessfully - into battle against a much more powerful enemy. She thinks on a small, tribal scale, but other than that, Leela isn't just a soldier, she's a general. It seems to me that this is something that's gotten lost in the Gallifrey audios (along with her generally open, curious and adaptive nature), where Leela is acting more like a lone huntress than a warrior. It seems wrong somehow that the Leela we see in DW would be so isolated on Gallifrey - to the contrary, from what I've seen now I'd expect her to make a bunch of loyal friends among the guardsmen, and be considered a leader by the Outsiders. I can only explain it by her being fundamentally unhappy on Gallifrey, down-trodden by its refusal to change, so much so that she rejects most of it apart from Andred (and later Romana).


Now I'm going to bed to listen to more Benny audios. I've consumed quite a bit of Who-related media lately, more (and more regularly) than I did for much of last year. Which is good, because I'm feeling very fannish about Who things again, and I was afraid I was starting to lose my interest in it. Expect a post on audios soon, mainly Eight and Benny :)

(no subject)

Today I:

- slept til half past eleven
- went to the library to get books
- got my bank card un-locked by telling Santander that I can't remember my PIN
- tried (and failed) to do all the reading for a 3000 word essay on the discovery of the individual in the Middle Ages as evidenced by various English lit from 1066 to 1348
- listened to Benny audios
- finished watching Image of the Fendahl

Image of the Fendahl was pretty good, even though it's heavily reminiscent of The Daemons and has aliens influencing human evolution, but I do like it when Who does witches. Also, satanist!scientist had weird homoerotic UST with good!scientist, which amused me. And Thea, the female technician who got sacrificed, had Sisterhood of Karn eye-makeup when she got transformed, which was cool. Four was also quite nice in this serial, there was even a moment when I thought, "Aw, Four, I like you".

I finished "The Sunmakers" yesterday, too, which took me a bit longer to watch because it wasn't as tense as Fendahl. I'm pretty anti-capitalist myself, but Sunmakers was as heavy-handed as you can get in terms of propaganda. Why make the Evil Capitalist an alien? Why call those aliens Usurians? It would have been much better if the bad guys had been all human because this kind of thing is totally something humans do to each other. Aside from that I did like Sunmakers, because I like over-the-top dystopias. It had a number of sympathetic extras, some good sets, and both Leela and K9 being badass.

Something I've noticed about Leela in her TV serials: she really identifies as a warrior - not just a person with fighting skills, but someone whose role is to lead others in fights and defend the defenseless, someone who works together with other warriors. In Fendahl there's the bit where she says "Come on," to Four and he tells her that the one who leads the way says "Come on", but clearly Leela thinks that's who she is. Both in Invasion of Time and in Sunmakers she surrounds herself with a motley crew of untrained fighters and leads them - quite sucessfully - into battle against a much more powerful enemy. She thinks on a small, tribal scale, but other than that, Leela isn't just a soldier, she's a general. It seems to me that this is something that's gotten lost in the Gallifrey audios (along with her generally open, curious and adaptive nature), where Leela is acting more like a lone huntress than a warrior. It seems wrong somehow that the Leela we see in DW would be so isolated on Gallifrey - to the contrary, from what I've seen now I'd expect her to make a bunch of loyal friends among the guardsmen, and be considered a leader by the Outsiders. I can only explain it by her being fundamentally unhappy on Gallifrey, down-trodden by its refusal to change, so much so that she rejects most of it apart from Andred (and later Romana).


Now I'm going to bed to listen to more Benny audios. I've consumed quite a bit of Who-related media lately, more (and more regularly) than I did for much of last year. Which is good, because I'm feeling very fannish about Who things again, and I was afraid I was starting to lose my interest in it. Expect a post on audios soon, mainly Eight and Benny :)