My first filk.

 

( With apologies to Tolkien, Boney M, and Rasputin; none whatsoever to Feanor )

I've just seen Robot and Dalek, and yet I'm strangely disappointed by Doctor Who at the moment. As the credits started at the end of Dalek, it showed the preview for The Long Game, and I've realised that was the closest they've ever come to giving us a proper version of future humanity/transhumanity (with the direct-to-brain downloading). It's a pity it was a fairly disappointing story, but it's still the closest I remember the show coming to acknowledging the fact that humanity is likely to change over the centuries, and the Doctor says that if it hadn't been for the Jagrafess' intervention they'd have been even more advanced. Then, of course, every other future society shown from then on just has humans (and occasionally cat-people), and the bait-and-switch in Utopia about humans having gone through several forms but always returning to the same unimaginative humanoid shape is really annoying because we're told this, not shown it. There's only one on-screen human-alien breeding couple (Gridlock), and no sign of any mixed-descent life forms anywhere else. Utopia failed spectacularly in that there was barely any sign of interspecies diversity - the only non-human in the settlement on Malcassairo (at least until Yana turned back into the Master) was Chantho, and she was only there it was her planet (and somehow all the rest of her people had died out). Are we to extrapolate from this that in the year 100 trillion, humans haven't mixed with aliens enough for a random sample of people to not be overwhelmingly human? (From a story point of view it would have given a better feel of end-of-the-universe if there had been a mixture of all sorts of species, emphasising that this wasn't just another "only Earth is threatened" crisis but that everyone left in the universe was united in the goal of survival). And then of course the only other attempt at transhumanism was Professor Lazarus' attempt to reverse aging, which not only had the unfortunate side-effect of turning the subject into an unconvincingly-rendered giant scorpion-thing but was condemned by the Doctor because it's immoral for us to try to transcend our limitations. Why is a show whose hero is a time-travelling near-immortal alien from the oldest species in the universe and whose time machine is a sapient being that comprehends existence on a level utterly alien to any other corporeal life form so infuriatingly anthropocentric and reluctant to allow for any real change in future human society?

Tags: doctor who

I bought Image of the Fendahl and The Invasion today. I love them both. Fendahl has gothic horror and an ancient evil with badly-painted-on eyes, while Invasion has Kevin Stoney being awesome, Two/Jamie, the Brigadier, and a bizarre UNIT theme that sounds like something from Gilbert and Sullivan - they weren't that incompetent, surely?

I have also spent quite some time watching them and am currently working on new rules for Werewolf. At some point I should go to sleep.

Currently about to search for a copy of Farmer Giles of Ham.

Happy birthday, elleblue !

It seems I'm going to be in Oxford on Friday between 11:15 and 16:30. Is anyone interested in meeting up for perhaps food and stuff?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7926694.stm

And, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse:

'"God's law is above any human law. So when a human law... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value," Cardoso said Thursday. He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the Church. Although the man allegedly committed "a heinous crime... the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious," he said.'

There's really nothing you can say to this. It's just... I thought the Catholic Church had effectively lost any possible claim to representing the views of any benevolent god, but this is just...

Tags: sick and wrong
Current Mood: infuriated

Where's it all gone? I was in Waterstone's recently and the only interesting non-romance vampire books were Dracula, Carmilla, (both of which I've read) and Batman - Vampire (which wasn't bad, although I think it had Batman killing people too soon, and fell into the trap of saying "it's really a virus... that gives you immortality, superhuman strength, speed, agility, and resilience, lets you function perfectly no matter your state of decay, lets you shapeshift and turn to mist, makes you vulnerable to crosses, and makes the sun burn you"). The only other appealing vampire stories I've come across recently have been the Dresden Files, and I'm not sure if they count as "vampire stories" given they're filled with pretty much every supernatural creature the author's heard of.
So what's happened to the genre? What turned Stoker's powerful, menacing, majestic, magnificent lord of the night into "Random Author's sexual fantasy that apparently needs to be shared with the world no matter the poor quality of writing and/or plot"? And why is it that despite my hatred of "Always Chaotic Evil, and authors demonising darkness, night, death, and undeath, the only vampire stories I really like are Dracula, Carmilla (which, incidentally, contains my favourite obscure vampire weakness - Carmilla feels pain when she hears people singing hymns), Nosferatu, and Hellsing?
And while I'm complaining about things, why is it that nowhere in Oxford seems to stock the soundtrack to "Repo! The Genetic Opera"?

Tags: repo! the genetic opera, vampires
Current Mood: annoyed

Back in Oxford.
And a belated happy birthday to sebastienne .

Every time I watch the scene from Journey's End where Davros says to Caan, "You betrayed the Daleks?", I expect him to follow it with, "Have you... betrayed me?" And this got me thinking about the other similarities between Davros and Avon - they both wear black leather, they're both genii, and both either are or become insane.
Maybe the hypothetical crossover wasn't so hypothetical...

Tags: blake's 7, doctor who