A couple of weeks ago, ms_siobhan and I spent a day in Saltaire, with the particular aim of checking out an antiques dealer with a bit of a line in Art Deco furniture on the top floor of Salt's Mill. I was looking in particular for a largish sideboard / cabinet to go in an alcove next to my fireplace, and I'd hardly got inside the shop when I saw an absolutely wonderful example, in a golden maple-wood finish with a bowed front and lots of lovely storage capacity. The price was high enough that I had to spend quite a bit of time thinking it over and psyching myself up before I took the plunge - but eventually I did, and it was delivered today.

( This is what was previously in the alcove which it now occupies )

Perfectly all right, but not really making the best use of the space. What I needed was something that would look good and allow me to stash lots of crap inside it!

( So this is what I have now )

Meanwhile, the old low-level beechwood sideboard which used to stand in its place is now surplus to my requirements, and therefore for sale to anyone who might be interested. It's good solid wood furniture, with a lovely spicy smell when you open the drawers, and ( there are a couple of pictures here if you want a closer look )

In other news, I spent this last weekend in Birmingham visiting the parents. Mum is still doing pretty well - enough to go to a jazz concert on Friday, have my sister and fiancé (!) round on Saturday, and then go and visit some local gardens which were having an open afternoon on Sunday. While there, I also stocked up on floaty purple skirts at The Oasis, because (despite the rain today) there is clearly no way I am going to make it through the summer without a good selection of light-weight medieval princess skirts that ripple around my ankles when I walk. I also spent Saturday afternoon reading in dappled shade on a deck-chair in my parents' gloriously beautiful garden while my sister and fiancé (!) planned wedding stuff, my Dad made random observations about the state of the world and my Mum sat in the summer-house. It was a perfect slice of English summer, and I hope there will be more in the same vein over the next couple of months.

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Right, I think it is about damned time I got caught up on my Doctor Who reviews. I actually had to stop watching it over a month ago, as I already had a back-log of four reviews to write, was too busy to write them and couldn't bear it to get any worse. Which was rather miserable, really. But now I am rather more on top of things once again, so let's see if I can't get back on track.

Waaaaayyy back in April (apparently), I began at the beginning of the McCoy era with Time and the Rani. Since then I have worked through four of the other five of his stories which are currently available on DVD. (I'm leaving out Survival, because I am saving that until The Very End - even though I know it doesn't really offer very much in the way of closure, and I'm pre-empting matters rather with my shiny new icon anyway). This means that during late April and early May I experienced Remembrance of the Daleks, The Curse of Fenric, Battlefield and Ghostlight in more or less rapid succession, and HOT DAMN! They are good. I'm well aware that I've got a warped impression of the McCoy era by doing this, as the BBC have very sensibly released all his best stories on DVD first (a situation which I believe will be somewhat balanced out by the release of Delta and the Bannermen this month). But still! He is good, Ace is brilliant, and I now very much see where the fannish consensus that the stories were just getting good again when the series was cancelled comes from. More detailed responses follow below.

( Seventh Doctor: Remembrance of the Daleks )

All in all, it's pretty much perfect. Not every Doctor Who story can be like this - it would be tedious if they were. But a programme with a pedigree Who had developed by this time certainly should be producing stories like this one on at least a reasonably regular basis.

( Seventh Doctor: The Curse of Fenric )

Battlefield and Ghostlight remain to be written up, of course, but I think this is quite enough for one evening.

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I encountered Petronius for the first time at school, when we read sections from the Cena Trimalchionis for what it reveals about Roman attitudes towards slaves and freedman. As a postgrad, I returned to consider the design of Trimalchio's house and his funerary monument, and also had a go at translating the stories of the werewolf and the widow of Ephesus in various Latin classes. At Warwick, I set (in English) Echion's speech on the gladiatorial spectacles of Titus and Norbanus as a way of helping first-year students to understand ancient attitudes towards the games. Now, though, I have finally done for this book what I did two years ago for Apuleius' Metamorphoses: actually read it as a proper novel, rather than just mining it for historical data and language practice.

Not that I can quite do that in the way that its author intended, since unlike Apuleius' work, it survives now only in fragments. In some places, in fact, I'm pretty surprised so much does survive, given that the principal means of transmission for ancient texts is being copied out by medieval monks. The surviving portions include, to give just one example, a scene of the main character (Encolpius) being anally raped with a dildo rubbed with crushed pepper and nettle seeds. Yet this clearly was copied out; and indeed was still being read widely and treated as a great work of literature by Christian authors such as Sidonius Apollinaris, Fulgentius, Jerome and Isidore of Seville, all of whom use citations from Petronius to demonstrate grammatical or other points in their own work. I suppose it just goes to show a) how an established status as great literature can carry a text forward into a new age even if its subject-matter might be considered distasteful and b) that we shouldn't over-exaggerate the extent of early or medieval Christian prudery just because we are looking back at it through a Victorian filter.

( The identity of the author )

( The plot and structure )

( What I got out of reading it )

But I'm off into territory that more properly belongs in my academic publications, here. In this context, I'll content myself by saying that Petronius has been a brilliant read - and I will be back for Lucian's True History before terribly long.

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Seen at the weekend on DVD. I've watched quite a few Fellini films before, but not since I've got into the habit of recording everything systematically here. So, for my own reference, the other ones I've seen are La Dolce Vita (1960), Fellini - Satyricon (1969) and Roma (1972) - amongst which the latter is probably my favourite.

This one is very much in the now-familiar vein. The story is impressionistic and open-ended, full of dream sequences, fantasies and childhood flashbacks, and it is of course also strongly autobiographical - the main character, played by Marcello Mastroianni, is a director trying to plan his latest film while grappling with his own personal lack of direction. The line between art and life was clearly very blurry for Fellini - which is part of why his films are so good, of course. The cinematography is also very beautiful, with lots of shots from interesting angles, compositions which speak volumes about the emotional space the characters are inhabiting and so forth. Also, it does not hurt to have Claudia Cardinale about the place, looking all doe-eyed and beautiful.

Perhaps most striking, though, was the in-story meta-commentary. Throughout the film, Mastroianni converses with a cinema critic: ostensibly about the film his character is planning, but in fact it is clear from the content of their conversations that they are actually discussing the film we are watching. Arguably this is a bit self-indulgent, since it allows Fellini to pre-empt the real critics before they can speak by showing that he is quite aware of their narrow-minded little views, thank you, knows what he's doing and has an answer for them. But it's also bold and self-assured, and helps to guide the viewer through what is otherwise quite a fragmented narrative, so on balance I rather liked it.

Overall, not quite on the same level as Roma for me, but a very accomplished piece of pure Fellini all the same.

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Yeah, I know. I am really supposed to be writing about fora, not posting to LJ. But I have in fact written 1/10th of that article this morning, and give that it was the first 1/10th, and therefore included the all-important breaking of the ice on this particular piece of work, I am pretty satisfied with my progress so far.

Anyway, you would be sorry if I did not distract myself from my work for a few minutes, because I have fox pictures! I mentioned the other day that I had seen a fox cub in my garden. Well, now I know that there are at least two, and possibly even three of them. And I know this because I saw them all out together as a family today, and managed to snap the pictures shown below from my upstairs window.

They're not the most brilliant pictures ever, as a) the lighting was a bit dull, b) I was shooting through a window, c) I had to switch my flash off, because it would have reflected in the glass and tends to scare them off anyway and d) I had to use the digital zoom, which always means grainier images. Also, the cubs were busy zipping off all over the place to explore, so it was hard to capture them at all, let alone together with the adults to show how much smaller they were. But I did manage to get several shots of at least one cub and the adults together, playing or grooming one another, and a little bit later I even managed to get a picture of the mother suckling two of the cubs in a shady spot at the top of next door's garden!

Here's teaser to start you off:



( And the rest are under here )

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Yay! I would appear to have finished all my marking, and a week before the deadline too! I still have a bit of moderation of other people's marking to do, but it's hardly my fault that I haven't done it, as they haven't finished the first-marking yet. Anyway, there's still a week left to finish that, and it shouldn't take very long when it comes.

This doesn't mean I can relax yet. Instead, I now need to turn my attention to the fact that I have ten days remaining to write one 1500 word encyclopedia article on each of the following subjects: forum, vicus and hinterland. Will I ever not be in a work crisis, I ask myself?

Anyway, for this evening, it is time to relax and enjoy having finished the marking at least. To assist the process, here is a lovely photo meme taken from innerbrat.

Instructions:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Pick an image.
c. Copy each image URL into Mosaic Maker. Change rows to 3 and columns to 3.
d. Save the image and post it.

Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favourite colour?
3. What is your favourite food?
4. Favourite drink?
5. Dream vacation?
6. Favourite hobby?
7. What you want to be when you grow up?
8. What do you love most in life?
9. Best self-description?



( Explanations and links to the original pictures under the cut )

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I'm personally of the opinion that 'traveller' should have two Ls in it, but maybe people in North America feel differently about the matter. Anyway, only one L is included on the cover (in the title at least), so there it is.

Spelling aside, I enjoyed this novel very much. It suppose you could call it 'fantastical realism', or something of the sort - it isn't magical realism per se, as the time travel in it is explicitly presented as a genetic disorder rather than the result of magic, but it has the same sort of quality of depicting an entirely realistic world except for the one small detail of involuntary time travel. As such, the extent of its emphasis on the feelings and development of its characters is greater than you tend to find in a typical fantasy novel - and this, presumably, is why it's found such acclaim outside of SF circles.

I'm rather late to the party in reading it myself, as nearly_everyone seems to have done so several years ago, but I suppose that gives me a slightly different perspective, since I had heard a lot about it before I read it. My chief surprise was to find that the time traveller (Henry) was featured in the novel as much as he was. What I'd picked up was that the novel focuses primarily on the effects of his time travelling on his wife (Clare), but although this is more true than with most novels featuring time travel, in fact the experiences and traumas of the two get more or less equal billing.

What I didn't anticipate based on what I'd heard ( begins to be a bit spoilery )

Anyway, I'm glad I read this, and indeed enjoyed it so much that I may well return to it sometime. If you enjoy fantasy novels, you'll definitely like this, but even if you usually don't, it's worth making an exception for this one.

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Watched this evening on Channel 4, after recent posts by dakegra and ashavah reminded me that I'd always been mildly intrigued by the character of the Roman soldier (Octavius, played by Steve Coogan) in the first one.

He's not the biggest character in the film (literally - he is a 3" tall figurine), but he does get a decent amount of screen-time, and is really very cute. He likes to FIGHT and be NOBLE and GLORIOUS. What really interested me, though, was the explicit links drawn between him and the Cowboy character, Jedediah (Owen Wilson). They start out trying to colonise each other's territory, but Ben Stiller's character eventually convinces them that, apart from having been born 2000 years apart, they are basically just the same, and they end up becoming firm friends.

And I love this, because there is a long-standing tradition of viewing the European settlement of America as a modern equivalent of Roman colonisation - this is why, for example, William Penn planned Philadelphia on the same basic model as a typical Roman colony. On that analogy, the Wild West is a lot like the frontier zones where the legions were based (though less organised, obviously), so the link the film is drawing is firmly rooted in established traditions of Classical receptions. It's nice to know that's still a strong enough idea to crop up in a kids' comedy run-around. Even if it is obviously completely morally reprehensible to glorify imperialist expansion of any kind, of course...

Other than that, it was basically light-hearted brain-candy, with NEANDERTHALS and WOOLLY MAMMOTHS and DICK VAN DYKE. But I did think it had very stylish opening credits, and a lovely muted golden autumnal colour-palette. The only down-side was Ricky Gervais' character, who was just a straight-forward rip-off of his role from The Office, and really didn't work in the context of the rest of the characters at all.

I don't think I'll bother paying actual money to see the sequel in the cinema, but I'm glad I bothered to catch this one on TV.

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Here's me having another go at email posting with a picture. This time you
get a picture of a print which I bought recently for my house. It depicts an
exceedingly modern young lady (in 1936) showing off her equally modern house
to some horrified visitors with the caption, "Owner: DO tell me you LOATHE
it!"

I am absolutely in love with it. Well, mostly with the young lady, actually.
She wears trousers! And is, oh so casually, a property-owner! In
1936! And the house that she owns is just like mine. (Well, except for being
blatantly about 10 times bigger, but shhh!) She is wondrous and
captivating, and my new idol. Such a pity she is only a cartoon...

ETA: Yay! A success this time!

*lj-userpic:* Apollo Belvedere
*lj-tags:* mobile phone posts, apollo
*lj-security:* public

This is me testing out the camera on my shiny new phone, and my ability to
post from it to LJ via email with a picture attached. If everything goes as
planned, you should be seeing a picture of the plaster bust of the Apollo
Belvedere which lives on my mantelpiece, along with an icon featuring the
original. Plus of course this text, typed out just for you on a tiny
keyboard that is smaller than a credit card! Groovy.

ETA: OK, so the picture worked, but the LJ commands that were meant to set the icon and tag the post didn't. Can anyone who's more used to email posting see what I did wrong? I've checked the userpic keywords and tags I've used, and they all existed previously and were spelt correctly, so I'm not sure why they didn't go through.

I'm feeling all sicky and sorry for myself today. I knew I'd been over-doing things recently, culminating in the conference I ran last Friday. I thought I could absorb the fall-out from that by just spending most of the subsequent weekend asleep (which I did), but it obviously wasn't enough. I was slow and tired throughout Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday and Thursday, the effort of going into work apparently caused me to develop a slight temperature by the end of each day. I think what's happened is that I've succumbed to a mild gut infection, of the kind I'd normally be able to fight off, but which I was too run-down to send packing this time. So today I'm just giving into it, and awarding myself a sick day.

So far, I've had a lie-in, and then spent a good three hours browsing LJ which watching old sit-coms on GOLD. Shortly I'm going to attempt some lunch and watch an episode of Poirot; then I might see about maybe making some LJ icons. It would all be rather blissful - if I weren't unpleasantly aware of how much work I have to do by June 15th. Ah well, I shall just try and forget about that for the present...

In good news, though, I treated myself this week to a very exciting and shiny new mobile phone. It is T-Mobile's G1, and it is a thing of beauty and power. I am still exploring its capabilities, but am highly impressed so far - especially with its ability to magically tell me where I am and direct me from there to where I want to get to in case I ever get lost. Anyway, it is giving me something to fiddle with while I lie here prone on the sofa.

Do feel free to send kittens, jokes and possibly chocolate biscuits.

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I'm feeling very lazy today. I ran a mini-conference on Friday, and although it all seemed to go pretty well, both the run-up to it and the day itself were rather exhausting - like when you are giving a party, and you don't actually have any fun yourself because you are too busy running around the place making sure that everyone else is happy and well-provided for. So I spent most of yesterday afternoon fast asleep, and am planning on spending most of today supine on the sofa.

While I do that, here's a nice meme (taken from purple_peril) to keep me amused:

In Three Words
1. Where is your mobile phone? Just behind me.
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend? Does not exist.
3. Your hair? Gets greasy easily.
4. Where is your father? In Birmingham probably.
5. Cheesecake? Mum's is best.
6. Your favourite thing to do? Watch good TV.
7. Your dream last night? Undercover with sister.
8. Your favourite drink? Delicious vodka cocktails.
9. Your dream car? From the 1930s.
10. The room you're in? My sitting room.
11. George W. Bush? People elected him.
12. Your fears? Being thought stupid.
13. Nipple rings? Once considered them.
14. Who did you hang out with last night? Holmes and Watson.
15. What you're not good at? Any physical exercise.
16. Your best friends? All over country.
17. One of your wish list items? An espresso machine.
18. Where did you grow up? Selly Park, Birmingham.
19. The last thing you did? Googled "Cherry Hill"
20. What are you wearing? Lilac dressing gown.
21. Tattoo on the lower back? No thank you.
22. Ketchup? Rarely eat it.
23. Your computer? A Dell laptop.
24. Your life? Is pretty decent.
25. Your mood? Enjoying being lazy.
26. Missing? The dreaming spires.
27. What are you thinking about right now? Poirot on TV.
29. Your work? Is very exciting.
30. Your summer? All about research.
31. Your relationship status? Single but romantic.
32. Your favourite colour(s)? Shades of purple.
33. Last time you laughed? Dinner on Friday.
34. Last time you cried? Watching Love Actually
35. High school? Good times overall.
36. This quiz? Actually quite hard.

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Nothing to see here: I'm just trying out posting updates via Ping.fm, doubtless very cluelessly.

ETA: actually that seems to have worked fine. Figured it was about time I got this set up, given that sms_to_lj is being retired soon, and I was reminded last night that posting via text can be quite useful sometimes. Still more so if I can automatically update Facebook at the same time as well.

If anyone knows how I can get LJ to display a default icon and subject line of my choice for any posts I send in this way, much as sms_to_lj used to do, please let me know. I think it worked before because LJ somehow interpreted the sms_to_lj posts as email posts (for which you can choose your defaults), but this doesn't seem to be the case for Ping.fm.

I'm sure I'll live if it can't be done, but I'd prefer it to be obvious that any posts I send this way in future originated as a text message, so that it's clear why they are so short and basic!

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Leeds people about to leave work might like to know that there is a bus ON FIRE on the Otley Rd. So may be some transport troubles tonight!


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After re-watching the film yesterday afternoon, I followed up this morning with the DVD extras. That's not normally something I would expect to want to blog about - but it turns out there were three deleted scenes included on the DVD that really would have made a massive difference to the film if they'd been left in. So now I feel the need to write about how silly I think it is that they were cut, and how much clearer and stronger the film would have been if they'd been retained.

The first two scenes both come from the beginning of the film, when Miss Pettigrew is wandering the streets of London at night between being dismissed from Mrs. Brummegan's house and reporting to Miss Holt's agency in the morning.

( Obviously they are spoilery, not only for the deleted scenes themselves but also for the rest of the film which they relate to )

The third comes later on in the morning, when Nick is on his way up to the apartment, and Miss LaFosse is in the lift with Phil, frantically trying to stop either of them from seeing one another.

( And again with the spoilers )

So why all that had to go is beyond me. Between them, those three scenes add up to about another 10 minutes of footage between them, while the film as released was only 88 minutes long - hardly an epic by today's standards. Possibly they were cut for the sake of the overall pacing, since all three come quite early on in the film, and maybe it was felt that the action needed to move forward more quickly. But is that really so important that it is worth leaving two major loose threads hanging, weakening the characterisation of Miss Pettigrew and causing actual confusion in the cinema audience for the sake of it? Obviously I still enjoyed the film as it was released, even without these extra scenes. But now that I know about them, I find it absolutely criminal that it could have been treated so badly by its editors. If anyone can explain the thinking behind this sort of decision to me, I am all ears!

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Watched this afternoon, all curled up on the sofa as part of my weekend of indulgence. I've seen it before, and indeed reviewed it before, but that doesn't mean I don't have new stuff to say about it, especially because I've also read the book since.

It seemed shorter than I remembered, but I suppose that's natural enough when you've seen a film before, and therefore know where you are in the story and how much remains at any given point. Now that I've read the book, I'm also less keen than I was before on the way the character of Edythe Dubarry is depicted in the film. In the book, she is a strong and self-possessed business-woman, who is nothing but supportive of both Miss LaFosse and Miss Pettigrew. But in the film she has been made into Miss Pettigrew's rival - the one who knows her secret, uses this as a hold over her, and has cynically entrapped lovely, honest, Ciarán Hinds-Joe purely for the sake of his professional status. It all makes her both more bitchy and more weedy than she is in the book - and definitely a lot less feminist.

Apart from that, though, I still absolutely love the film - both in its own right and as an adaptation of the book. I especially liked the way it is made so much clearer in the film how similar Delysia LaFosse's situation really is to Miss Pettigrew's, beneath all the glitz and glamour. This is touched on in the book, when we hear that her real name is Sarah Grubb, but the film makes it much more explicit by extending the name-confession scene to reveal that she also barely has any possessions that are really her own, and could be out on the streets herself in the blink of an eye. There's also a lot of good mileage got out of the impending outbreak of the Second World War, which adds a dark undertone to the otherwise-glamorous proceedings; and a running theme about Miss Pettigrew getting nothing to eat and no sleep for almost 48 hours over the course of the film, which has humour value and also helps to underline the severity of her position.

And of course, the film has all the benefits of sumptuous sets, costumes and cinematography, all of which are used extremely intelligently. Since I now own the DVD, I was able to cap a couple of my favourite scenes ( for your delectation )

ETA: further thoughts on the deleted scenes included on the DVD release now posted here.

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I am at a bit of a low ebb physically at the moment. I have a tiny little stye on my upper left eyelid, which is so small I can barely see it, but has somehow made that entire eyelid swell up hideously, to the extent that I looked yesterday as though I had been socked in the face, and was worried about whether I would be able to go to work today without scaring people. It had gone down enough for me to venture out into the public glare this morning, at least after having put reddish-pink eyeshadow on the other eyelid so that they matched, but it is still really rather tender and sore, and I wish it would sort itself out. Also, I have my period, complete with the usual accompanying washed-out-ness and occasional random internal twinges.

Thankfully, however, I had the foresight to indulge in a massive online shopping spree at the end of last week, so my physical aches and gripes were greatly eased today by the receipt of the following items in the post:


Books:

• John Williams (1972), Augustus - a novel in epistolary / documentary format covering the life of Augustus, with a special focus on his relationship with his daughter, Julia. I'm interested to see to what extent Imperium: Augustus is dependent on this.
• Allan Massie (1986), Augustus - another novel, this time purporting to be the memoirs of Augustus, à la I, Claudius - along with the above, it's something I've been meaning to read for ages.
• Mark Gatiss (2006), The Vesuvius Club - one of several novels which relate in some way or another to Pompeii that I've been buying since hearing a paper on the subject at the CA.
• David J. Howe and Stephen J. Walker (1998), Doctor Who: the television companion - probably a wise investment if I'm going to write something semi-academic on early Who. Mine is a charmingly well-thumbed second-hand copy which was clearly very dear to its former owner.
• Colin Hines (2003), Art Deco London - drooling fodder. My love affair continues.
• Adrian Tinniswood (2002), The Art Deco House - ditto the above.

DVDs:

• Empire (2005) - a TV miniseries about Augustus which I haven't seen. I don't hold out high hopes, but I want to be sure I have explored everything.
• The Rescue and The Romans DVD box set (released 2009) - I've seen the stories, but I'm going to want to again, so thought I'd treat myself to this lovely new release.
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) - sheer indulgence again, and in any case something I've wanted to revisit since I read the book.

You will, of course, notice several very distinct themes amongst that little line-up. I know what makes me happy.

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I'm now ready to move on to the Seventh Doctor era - but before I do, it's time for a nice palate-cleansing First Doctor story (with bonus discussion of how historical stories 'worked' in Doctor Who at this time):

( First Doctor: The Aztecs )

And so I am ready to press on into the Seventh Doctor era. In keeping with the policy I applied for Six, I started with Seven's screen introduction, so that I could get a proper idea of where he was coming from as a Doctor:

( Seventh Doctor: Time and the Rani )

In summary, then, a pretty terrible episode, but saved from Twin Dilemma depths simply because it is at least introducing a perfectly likeable Doctor. And thank goodness that's the last P'n'J effort I have to suffer...

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( Sixth Doctor: Attack of the Cybermen )

That's it for Six's stories as televised, then, but there is just one remaining loose end I want to tie up before I move on.

( The Ultimate Foe episode two: Eric Saward's script )

So that is that, and Six becomes the second Doctor for whom I have seen the entirety of his televised oeuvre - not so hard in his case as in others, obviously. When I reached this stage for the Fourth Doctor, he got a whole eulogy post, complete with top five and bottom five stories. Six gets no such eulogy, I'm afraid - he has his moments, but I have no particular desire to revisit this era of Who in any kind of detail. A top five and bottom five would also be rather excessive, since that would mean I'd have to include all but one of his stories in the ranking. But I think I can manage a top three and bottom three, as follows:

Top three:
1. Revelation of the Daleks - lots of good secondary characters (including a possible gay couple), some nice self-referentiality, a sound portrayal of Davros and Colin Baker on good form.
2. Attack of the Cybermen - see above!
3. The Mysterious Planet - it's not perfect, and I could equally have put Mindwarp or Terror of the Vervoids here. But this one just about wins out for having some good dialogue and secondary characters and taking us around the London Underground in ruins.

Bottom three:
1. The Twin Dilemma - poorly-conceived story, feeble characterisation (with the noble exception of Edgeworth / Azmael) and a catastrophically-misjudged introduction for a new Doctor. Whoops!
2. The Mark of the Rani - stupid fake Northern accents, don't much like the Rani, Anthony Ainley sounds bored out of his tree and the fake-continuity annoys the hell out of me.
3. Timelash - also suffers from fake-continuity, the drama largely misfires, the Doctor jeers at a disabled person for no reason and Peri is particularly bad. But then again, it does have Avon from Blake's 7 and H.G. Wells. I still doubt I'll ever watch it again, though.

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Yep, I enjoyed that!

( Silliness )

( Squees )

In short - that will do nicely, thank you. MOAR PLS!

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