Spamaray
I wish everything came in amaray DVD cases. Except for those things that come in digipaks.
I’d want sandwiches to come in amaray cases. So I could neatly stack them in the fridge.
Orthogonal Pareidolia
I’ve a horrible record at remembering labels. Proper names especially, and nouns more generally. Most broadly, classifiers of any sort. Which is part of why I’m so bad at languages, despite learning the grammar and pronunciation almost immediately. When it comes to vocabulary, it’s like I’m tacking weak post-its over everything, and every time I turn they blow away. This probably also feeds into my trouble with mathematics (despite again understanding the concepts), and my inability to remember my phone number.
It always trips me up; I expect the words to be there, and then am unprepared when they’re not. I search for synonyms, and find that whole part of my lexicon misplaced. When this happens for every third word, conversations with me can become rather tiresome. I suppose I should just start coining my own words; it would save me such anxiety.
To assuage some of the botherment, I keep a file on my desktop of words that I keep forgetting. (The filename is “words you keep forgetting.txt”.) Many of them are absurdly common, and I use them almost every day to describe some of my favorite concepts — but when I reach for them, they’re just not there. Words like catharsis, exposition, disregard, catalyst, and paraphrase. Others — prosopopeia, dysphemism, moiety, breviloquence — are a bit more specialized. I can probably get away with not remembering those when I need them.
Why, therefore, it has taken me until today to start a file on fantastic names, I don’t know. Potential titles, character names, and band names — the sorts of things that come up all the time, then disappear into the vapor. At the moment all I’ve got is a phrase I found nestled in my head when I woke today: Airtight Harem. The actual words were Airtight Harlem, which is also good, but I meant the former.
(Airtight Heirloom isn’t quite as good. Too obvious.)
Eleven
So Matt Smith is not at all what I was expecting — and this is good! In terms of his personality and mannerisms and appearance, he seems to have beamed in from his own universe. Combine that with the practical thematic aspects of going so young, and it really does feel like the character’s portrayal is getting rebooted. Or brought in a completely new direction, anyway.
Combine this with Moffat’s comments that he intends to focus on the logistics and consequences of time travel, and series five is starting to sound pretty fascinating. I don’t know what to make of it! I can only imagine.
Young, mercurial (as Mr. Hellman puts it) man who calls himself “the Doctor” (uh-huh…) and claims to be hundreds of years old. And who keeps getting involved in time paradoxes…
David Hellman thinks an older, more intellectual woman would make a good companion. I’m inclined to agree!
For a first episode, I’m thinking maybe of An Unearthly Child II, set in a university. A fortysomething college professor becomes fascinated by one of her students, and… oh dear, this is turning into a bad fantasy, isn’t it.
Thing is, for all the bravado he projects and all his knowledge, the Doctor is emotionally underdeveloped. And needy. In a way, shaping him as a very young man — which he is, in spirit — who has seen far too much, and is far too clever for his own good, is a good way to address the character’s demons. To allow him to mature somewhat, and move on.
Moffat, more than any other Who writer so far, seems interested in exploring what makes the Doctor tick. And this is a great opportunity for that. Giving him an older female companion who can take care of him as well as she can fend off his intellectual spurts and tantrums — well, it’s kind of a natural evolution of a theme, isn’t it?
Donna was very good for the Tenth Doctor, in part because of the standards that she held him to; similar deal with season-one Rose, and Ian and Barbara.
That would be so interesting: basically exchange Susan for the Doctor himself, and pair him with a new Barbara, and send them off to figure out what it actually means to be a Time Lord. Logistically and emotionally.