I interpreted the end of Hungry Earth/Cold Blood to mean they intended not to revisit these characters or this particular bunch of Silurians ever again.

I think with Who it's best to assume they intend not to revisit them until it would be really cool to depict a future Earth ruled by an alliance of humans and Silurians. ;)

Spoiler, if stuff that happens in the first minute of an episode counts as a spoiler: Liz X is not a non-recurring character.

Okay, in light of that, I think the wisest course for me would be to keep my trap shut from here on until I've seen the entire fifth series.

I interpreted the end of Hungry Earth/Cold Blood to mean they intended not to revisit these characters or this particular bunch of Silurians ever again. (“It's a thousand years in the future, of course we can't revisit it, it's not like the main characters can travel through ti—well, anyway, they're not going to in this case.”) On the other hand, I suppose it is reminiscent of the Ambiguous Apocalypses the Daleks have faced at least once every single series.

Spoiler, if stuff that happens in the first minute of an episode counts as a spoiler: Liz X is not a non-recurring character. Also I find it quite likely that we'll see more of Dr Chaudhry - the next time we have a Silurian-themed episode, most probably.

This is my impression. In general, Davies appears to a Tokenist, whereas Moffat seems mostly to occupy the “colorblind” camp.

This means that Davies' idea of racial sensitivity is always to have one (and only one) person of color around most of the time, one who isn't a raging stereotype or anything else obviously offensive. He's also more likely to spot the most obvious unfortunate implications in racial dynamics which colorblind Moffat could miss.

I came to my conclusion about Moffat after watching The Vampires of Venice right on the heels of the Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone two-parter. The former story features, as its main Allies-of-the-Week, two black people, both of whom die. And the thing is, they're not the sort of characters who do tend to die on this show, except when Davies was feeling particularly excessive.

In The Time of Angels (written by Moffat himself), the first two characters to bite the dust are also black, while the tragic young kid who gets to become the creepy/comedic Voice of the Antagonist for the remainder of the two-parter is white. The second part, Flesh and Stone, features one black cleric, who does not die first but is still passed up for any kind of special treatment in favor of the bishop (white), and a white cleric (I think the latter's name is Marco).

At the time, it occurred to me that Davies probably would've spotted something wrong in there and taken steps to correct it. (Now Viorica has reminded me of the Naismiths and the Micky/Martha pairing in The End of Time, I shall have to reconsider that idea.)

I'll grant you Dr. Chaudhry, though she may've been writer Chris Chibnall's idea. Liz X, on the other hand, was written specifically by Moffat, and was very cool. However, I do notice that Moffat has so far failed to provide even one recurring character of color. Maybe he'll improve with the next series (I sure hope so).

The other thing I've found to keep MMOs in sane proportion is to only play them WITH someone else - so in WoW in log on *to* raid with my guild, or to play with Dan on the assumption that "doing something with Dan" was going to be how I would spend that time anyway.

I find the best way to think about it is to treat the game as a hobby in and of itself, rather than as one single video game. It's not something you play to the end and then are done with, it's something you do a little bit of every day, or every couple of days.

It's like that old joke: "What did you learn at school today dear?" "Not enough, I have to go back tomorrow."

Awright, that's it, I'm officially forbidding myself from playing any more Star Trek Online. Seriously, MMORPG players, how do you guys do it? I'm used to polishing off games in a few days, a week at the utmost, and there's a part of me that still amazed over what giant timesinks those things are.

With any luck, this means I'll be generating some actual content for Ferretbrain in the next few days. Not on that though, that'd be the easy way out.

@Dan Don't forget that the puppy includes in this TV series scenes where the sexy armchair is gently nibbled on by various puppies, but it's OK, because the armchair has been designed to want that.

I don't know if anyone's taken the time to read more of the Riot Nrrd webcomic, but it's (a) rather good and (b) has a lot more to say about Joss Whedon than just the puppy strip.

Regarding Doctor Who: What with all my white privilege it's hard to say, but Moffat does seem to be rather more enamoured of very white country villages and a slightly old-fashioned aesthetic. I did also like the way in which RTD casually introduced LGB characters into a popular mainstream show, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) there's been less of that in the recent series (or season for all Americans out there). I've also seen criticism of the way that Moffat handles female characters, though to be fair that does also apply to RTD's endless succession of comapnions too.

Basically, I think Moffat's series (season) was great, but I don't see him as miles superior to RTD in terms of this sort of stuff.

I lack strong feelings about Joss Whedon, but I think maybe some people around
here have some? This
person here has explained how they* feel about him using a comic and
metaphorical puppies

To extend the metaphor, the problem is compounded by the fact that Joss-Whedon-Puppy has a huge fanbase who insists that Joss-Whedon-Puppy never does any normal puppy things *ever*. And says things like "don't be stupid, Joss-Whedon-Puppy got an AWARD for not chewing on the furniture. That means that he NEVER chews on furniture and if you think he chewed on yours you're WRONG".

Then you get home, and find that Joss-Whedon-Puppy has chewed the words "I DON'T CHEW ON FURNITURE" into your sofa.

And then when you call him on it he says "Hey, I hate people who chew on furniture. Just check out this TV show I've made where a puppy who chews on a sofa gets *violently killed* by a *sexy armchair with tight upholstery*. Besides, the whole sofa-chewing angle was only in there in the first place because my WIFE suggested it."

the ones I can remember were one companion who always seemed to lose out to Rose and Donna whenever the Doctor was having some angsting about past companions, that guy who always seemed to be on the verge of full companion status but never quite got the promotion

The former is Martha, the latter is Mickey. At the end of Tennant's run, we find out that they got married, despite never having been shown interacting, and the fact that Martha already had a fiance. In fact, one might get the impression that the only thing they had in common was their skin colour.

Oh god, not another grammar debate! I thought I'd deflected it by diving into the vastly safer and less threatening territory of race...

I just yesterday got around to reading that article on the use of singular “they” and feeling rather uncomfortable because, yes, I do in fact take issue with that quote from C. S. Lewis at the beginning of the post. “as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water”? That's a terrible construction, regardless of whether it's grammatically correct, which I doubt.

Umm, it's entirely grammatically correct. What could possibly be wrong with it?

He did have Meera Syal as the awesome scientist who gets to be humanity's ambassador to the Silurians, and then later on decides - without seeking permission from anyone - to get frozen with them so she could handle the negotiations when they thaw. Oh, and there's the Queen of Space Britain from the second episode - and it's sort of telling that I had a "wuh buh?" moment when I realised that the Queen of Space Britain was black, because it's more or less accepted over here that members of the Royal Family are white.

Both characters had, to my mind, more importance and agency ascribed to them than any other non-white roles I can rememeber from the RTD years - the ones I can remember were one companion who always seemed to lose out to Rose and Donna whenever the Doctor was having some angsting about past companions, that guy who always seemed to be on the verge of full companion status but never quite got the promotion... er, and some of the villains in Davis and Tennant's two-part swansong, who got brushed aside by the Master and Timothy Dalton more or less entirely once some really proper villaining needed to get underway. And that's kind of about it.

I think it's one of those things where if you go by the numbers RTD has the edge, but if you go by what non-white characters are actually allowed to be and do Moffatt is in the lead. Though nobody can claim to have scored a goal until they cast someone who isn't white as the Doctor. And RTD's arguably ahead in the numbers mainly because he had four years and a brace of specials to earn his brownie points over.

Quick follow-up which hopefully will not result in conversational necromancy!

I just yesterday got around to reading that article on the use of singular “they” and feeling rather uncomfortable because, yes, I do in fact take issue with that quote from C. S. Lewis at the beginning of the post. “as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water”? That's a terrible construction, regardless of whether it's grammatically correct, which I doubt.

I didn't realize until the article writer spelled it out that the point was Lewis' use of singular “they” at the end of that sentence, which I completely failed to notice because it looked so natural and obvious.

On an unrelated note, that modernized Sherlock Holmes show does sound interesting. However, there was a point in the podcast when the interviewee pointed out the series is “Still essentially two white blokes,” and as long as they're updating the cast, why not explore updates in gender or ethnicity or (gasp) maybe even both?

This reminded me of another point which has come up watching the latest season of Doctor Who (we still haven't gotten to the last four episodes quite yet, no spoilers please). It seems to me that Steven Moffat is rather less racially conscious than Russell T Davies—and it's not as if Davies was exactly an anti-racist firebrand in the first place. Am I the only one around here to get that impression?

No, no not the English degree! I surrender!

You better watch out or they'll rub their English degree in your face!

I lack strong feelings about Joss Whedon, but I think maybe some people around here have some? This person here has explained how they* feel about him using a comic and metaphorical puppies.


* (According to the 'about' page, 'To the left you may see an artistic rendering of the creator. They are often called RJ. ... They prefer the pronoun “they”'. In the interests of politeness and various people's tranquility of mind, I make no comment except to swear down that I did not know this issue was going to come up when I decided to link to this comic strip.)

Jane Austen's Fight Club.

XKCD today makes an old, tired joke but I still found it rather funny

I'm amused by the reviews on Triumff's Amazon page:

“a brilliant occult-comedy-historical-adventure that's true to the best traditions of the genres”

Sounds like fun.

“Abnett truly is the master of future war”

Wait, what? Are you sure you've got the right Abnett book?

Thank God, the playpen is safe again!

I'm not sure I have anything review-worthy to say about it, or indeed time to write a review. I will say, though, that I spent yesterday devouring Triumff by Dan Abnett and think it would probably be well appreciated by fellow Ferrets, featuring as it does a swashbuckling degenerate hero, magic, terrible puns, and affectionate if sometimes predictable parodies.

DYNAMIC LIGHT-HEARTED TOPIC CHANGE GO NOW!!!

So, do you like adorable fancomics of popular video game franchises? Sure, we all do! In that case, you have absolutely no excuse for not taking a look at Peachi's livejournal, which features delightful skewerings of the Ace Attorney games, Professor Layton, the first three Metal Gear Solid titles (where she manages to make Volgin the funniest electokinetic bisexual sadist ever), and Persona 4, which now has a surprisingly awesome fandub.