Cuparius.com

Snow blankets the earth outside my house, and within my house I drink tea, eat chicken noodle soup, watch Coronation Street, and fight this damnable cold I caught from my old workplace, my new workplace, or Doctor Who knows where.

Speaking of two things at once, I am not pleased with the direction of the newly resurrected Doctor Who television series. It airs on CBC on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and I would ordinarily be happy about the return of the longest running science fiction television series in history (which is also one of my favorites), but the three episodes I have seen have been very uneven (a forgivable offense) and revisionist (unforgivable). Every incarnation of the Doctor has had its quirks, and that is one of the show's charms, but to trash the rich background story of the Doctor in order to invest him with an insipid aura of tragedy is nothing less than vandalism. Suddenly, the Doctor is no longer a rogue Time Lord who intervenes in events across time and space against the wishes of the government of his home planet, but a loner who is the last of his species from a planet that no longer exists. There goes a million possible plotlines! I don't mind that the science and backstory of the series are fabulous and comical (it's part of the appeal, frankly), but it should be consistent. If past writers could maintain it for about thirty years, why can't the current writers? Because they know better of course. Doctor Who isn't "cool" enough for today's audience (never mind the fact that millions of us are fans of the old series), so it needs that stereotypical dark "edginess" injected into it. I could go on about how the destruction of Gallifrey (the Doctor's planet) would render his TARDIS (time machine) inoperable, or how it would be impossible for a non-time traveler to know about the destruction of Gallifrey (since all time travel is in the past relative to a Time Lord's departure from Gallifrey when it was/will be the Time Lord's present, or how the interior of the TARDIS has been pointlessly redesigned, but I'll refrain for now. I really wish people would leave things alone if they have no intention or capability of maintaining or improving quality. That leads to the topic of remakes, which I shall postpone ranting against... for now. Actually, I may have already brought this up. I'll have to consult the archives.

I wrote the preceding in the early morning with the intention of continuing the update in the afternoon, but I was sidetracked by dinner and the Extended Version of The Return of the King, so here I am in the late evening made drowsier by cold medicine and mindful of the fact that I work in the morning and have errands to run before that. Therefore, I shall postpone further updates until a few days hence. The next update will be better; it will be free of Whovian commentary.

I SLEEP NOW.

"When you go to bed, you're tired. When you get up, you're not. It's a miracle!"