The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

This looks like a scary story.  It is a shame RTD says it will not be ready in time for a Hallowe’en broadcast.

Talk of the 1980’s in the previous article reminded me just how dire that particular decade really was.  However, some young people, especially  teenagers, seem to think they were some sort of Golden Age.  A few weeks ago, I was talking to someone in her late teens who was telling me how great the clothes from the ’80’s were, and how she and all her friends loved wearing them, and what a great decade it must have been.  I was at a loss for words, I mean I was there, I knew how awful people looked back then.  I remembered listening to bands like  A Flock of Seagulls on the radio because there was nothing else on.  Then it struck me, when I was her age, I thought that the Sun shone from the 1960’s, which must have been the hippest time ever.  There must be something about the decade of your birth that makes you want to idolize it when you are a teenager.  It was not until I  get to your my mid twenties that I realised that whilst there are some notable things about the 1960’s that are worth praising,  so much of the naff also survives.    By this time I had been living an adult life for a few years (in the 1990’s which was, truth be told another naff decade), I realized that it was better to enjoy the place in time you were actually living in, and not to yearn for some mythical Golden Age that never really existed.

With Spoilers.  You have been warned.

Today saw the start of filming on the fifth series of Doctor Who since it returned in triumph to television.  It is the start of the reign of Matt Smith as The Doctor.  Yes after six months, we finally get to see what will look like in the role.  My first thought on seeing the photo was Indiana Jones, no not the leather jacket and bull-whip Indy, I mean the respectable archaeology lecture Dr. Jones  we see at the start of each movie.  You know the one that looks so boring and predictable, the one who is just waiting to get out there and give those Nazis/Commies a good kicking.  Doctor#11 is the personification of Uncool, in his tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and red bow tie.  Someone who looks that young should not be so fuddy-duddy, but we know that despite his outward appearances, he really is not young, he is a 950 year old Time Lord and he is the cleverest person in the room.  Below is the picture that the BBC has released.  Not the most interesting of shots from Aunty, I should imagine that there will be more to follow soon.

The Sun had a much more interesting photo, featuring Alex Kingston.  Yes, River Song is back.  Not my favourite of characters, but she is a Moffat creation, and given the “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey” nature of the series, going back to before she died, possibly when she first meets The Doctor is not surprising.

Anyway, appart from the return of River Smug, today saw the announcement of more details of Karen Gillan’s charcter.  Apperently she is called Amy Pond and is speaks with Karen Gillan’s natural Scottish accent.  The outfit that she is wearing in the various photographs that the paparazzi have sold the various newspapers  just screams 1980’s at me.  All that was missing was a pair of wollen leg-warmers.  It would be nice to have a non-contemporary companion this time around, and the 1980’s is still close enough to the present day as to be comfortable in the modern world.  But we still know prescious little about Amy Pond, like if she has a family that she visits regularly and what she does for a living.  Now if she were a nurse, then she would be from the era when nurses still looked like nurses, in shapless dresses with big belts, black stockings with sensible shoes and silly hats on their heads, like the photoshopped image on the left.

And I have to say just how much I hate the new TARDIS prop.  I know that the spods out there hated the prop that used to be used on the current run because it did not look enough like a MacKenzie-Trench Mark III GPO/Metropolitan Police Telephone Box.  At least they had made an effort with that prop.  The new one looks terrible, like a child’s drawing of a Police Box.  Just plain awful.

Mae saith diwrnod mewn wythnos.  Felly, pam ydy e’r gair ar gyfer “week” yr WYTHNOS yn Cymraeg, yn llythrennol wyth o nosau, ?  Ydych chi’n adnabod unrhyw sy’n gwybod?

There are  seven days in a week.  So, why is the word for Week “Wythnos” in Welsh, litterally eight nights .  Does anybody know why this is the case?

If the broadcast of Planet of the Dead back in April had been the start of a normal series of Doctor Who, not just a one of special for Easter, and there had been a one week gap in May for the Eurovision Song Contest, then last night would have seen the broadcast of the last episode of that series.  This means that what some fans have been calling the “Gap Year”, a year with no regular series of Doctor Who is now over. To my mind, it has not been a “Gap Year”, as that would imply twelve months with no Doctor Who related material at all.  As well as the already mentioned Planet of the Dead at Easter, there was the wonderful The Next Doctor at Christmas, a whole series of The Sarah Jane Adventures last Autumn and of course the magnificent Torchwood : Children of Earth last week.

Work is about to begin on the actual Series Five [31] of the current run of Doctor Who, for broadcast between April and July 2010, with Matt Smith taking over as The Doctor and Karen Gillan joining him as his as of yet unnamed Companion.  And the fact that her character’s name has yet to be released has played into the conservatism of many Doctor Who Fans:

• Some say because she has red hair, she must be playing a rejuvenated Donna Noble.  No, that is just a coincidence, what if they had cast a blonde actress, how would that fit in with a rejuvenated Donna.
• Others say that because she has red hair and Alex Kingston had reddish hair in Silence in the Library, that she is playing a young River Song, and all the unexplained back story of that character will be explained.  No, Mr. Moffat designed that character to be an enigmatic one off, who like the Time War will never be fully explained.
• That she is Romana/The Rani/Susan.  One of the female Time Lords that have previously appeared in the series.  No, all the Time Lords were destroyed when Gallifrey burnt, during the Time War.

What the Fans forget is that in every one of the stories Steven Moffat has written for Doctor Who, there has been a female supporting character who have proven so popular with the Fans that in the weeks after their first appearance, there have been threads on the various online discussion forums begging the production team  to somehow incorporate that character as the full time companion.  Well now Mr. Moffat is in a position to actually create the next full time Companion,  he will not recycle a character he has already created, or one that somebody else created.  He will create a brand new original and brilliant companion for The Doctor, who through Karen Gillan, we will all fall in love with.

Dw i eisiau ymarfer pob dw i wedi dysgu yn yr dosbarthau Cymraeg blwydd yma.  Byddaf i’n ysgrifennu rhywbeth yn Cymraeg pob wythnos, ar y We log yma.  Pam fyddaf i’n gweld gwallau, dywedyd fi, os gwelwch yn dda.

Mae’r tudalen we  http://www.geiriadur.net yn fendigedig.  Medrais i ddim sut dw i wedi ymdopi yr flwydd heb dyma gwefan.  Diolch yn fawr i’r Brifysgol Cymru Llanbedr Pont Stefan.

What I hope I wrote:
I would like to practice all I have learn in Welsh lessons this year. I will write something in Welsh each week, here on the Web Log. When I make mistakes, please tell me.

The web page http://www.geiriadur.net is brilliant.  I don’t know how I would have managed the year without this web site.  Thank you very much to  the University of Wales Lampeter.

There has been an excessive amount of brouhaha about the new Directory Enquiry service that is about to be launched.  It will connect you directly to peoples’ phones, both mobile and landlines.  There have been complaints that it is intrusive, invasive and one step away from Big Brother.  What a load of old horsefeathers.  I think that this new system is so much better than the old directory enquiries because in the long run, it is so much safer.

In the old days, anyone could ring up #192 and ask the operator for the telephone number for any address in the land.  The operator would then give the number out to the person enquiring.  This would be done without checking the identity of the enquirer of if the person whose number was being enquired about wanted the person enquiring to have their number.   That meant that a persons’ phone number could have been handed out to any old anonymous nutter with evil intent.  Yes I know there was exdirectory, but all that did was confirm the person being enquired about lived at a particular address. With the new system, the person enquiring has to give their name to the operator, who then rings the person being enquired about, who is then given the enquirer’s name and is asked if they want to receive the call from them.  The killer fact is that not only does this stop anonymous nutters getting peoples’ phone numbers, because the only person who ever sees the number is the operator.  A much better system.