Month: June 2023

Doctor Worst

I’m not a big fan of WhatCulture’s videos, and I’m generally iffy about most Doctor Who discourse on YT, but I was struck by this one when it was recommended. For what they may be worth, I’ll give my own thoughts on the selections…

10. “Arc of Infinity” (1983) — not that bad, though not as good as the novelisation which I read long before seeing the serial, and as such I didn’t have the, er, benefit of the visuals.

9. “The Underwater Menace” (1967) — yeah, crap, but blighted mainly by the series’ continual week-in week-out production method of that period. This came immediately after “The Highlanders”, which introduced the immortal Jamie McCrimmon, who only became a companion once production was more or less done, meaning the next two serials (this and “The Moonbase”) had to be re-jigged to accommodate his unexpected presence. I don’t think much would’ve saved this story anyway, but that certainly didn’t help.

8. “Warriors of the Deep” (1984) — look, the Myrka is crap but I don’t think the story’s terrible. Could’ve been better, but not terrible.

7. “The Dominators” (1968) — again, cursed by the 60s production schedule as much as anything. But it kind of is the embodiment of the six-parter that should only have been a four-parter in the first place.

6. “Time and the Rani” (1987) — very bad, but knowing now what the behind the scenes situation was like on the program, I’m inclined to be gentler with it than I once was.

5. “Timelash” (1985) — yeah, pretty inexcusable. Not bad conceptually but the execution… yikes.

4. “The Space Pirates” (1969) — again, the show’s ad hoc production method didn’t help, really, in that they had no option but make this cos other stories had fallen through. I’ve never actually seen this in full, by which I mean I’ve watched the one surviving episode but never heard the remaining off-air audios. Never had much inclination to either. Don’t think this ever had a great reputation.

3. “Underworld” (1978) — some of the worst CSO work in the series, but I never thought this was actually bad as such (from memory it was the first of the Target novelisations I ever read; primary school library had a bunch of them). Suffered from a director who blew all his budget on the first episode, and a producer who didn’t think it might be a good idea to just cancel this one, but I have a soft spot for it. People who vote this as the worst Tom Baker serial haven’t seen “The Android Invasion”.

2. “Time-Flight” (1982) — YES. FUCK THIS. How the series went from a peak like “Earthshock” to a nadir like this baffles me. You can’t even blame it on end-of-season slump or budget issues, it’s just dogshit.

1. “The Twin Dilemma” (1984) — yeah, what I just said but worse. Again, the show went from a peak (“Caves of Androzani”) to the worst possible introduction for a new Doctor. And I think Colin Baker is unfairly maligned, the show had an interesting vision for his Doctor and he did the best he could with what he was given. But no one could’ve overcome that costume. Serves mostly to save “Timelash” from being Colin’s worst serial.

So that’s that. Interesting to not see traditional Who worsts like “The Gunfighters” or “Horns of Nimon” on this list. And for all their faults, I don’t think any of these are as terrible as “Love and Monsters” from the new series, which for me remains the single worst Doctor Who story from either old or new eras.

Slava Wagner?

I’ve had nothing really to say about the Ukraine situation, cos frankly what is there I can add to that discourse… but it’s taken an interesting turn in the last couple of days. The longer it dragged on, the more I expected one of V. Putin’s generals to get the shits and off him, but I think they’ve all been too worried about accidentally falling out of high windows like certain critics of Vlad have done (here‘s the most recent one I can find).

However, it seems at least of Putin’s mates has finally got pissed off enough with him, that being Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, which is basically Russia’s state-owned mob of mercenaries… I saw someone post online a quote by Machiavelli about mercenaries, which can be read here, and I think old Niccolo was not necessarily wrong, there really is only so much you can buy from them, and Prigozhin seems to have passed this point.

Continue reading “Slava Wagner?”

MY EYES

FUCK’S

BASTARDING

SAKE

I just saw someone post a screenshot of these tweets from Canada’s finest in a Facebook group, and I found it just… too hard to believe it was real. This had to be something someone had mocked up.

Someone had not mocked it up.

That is my own screenshot of those two actual tweets by Jurr Durr. I saw them with my own two eyes, both of which of have since been removed from their sockets for their own good. CHRIST ALFUCKINGMIGHTY, like the battle of the billionaires wasn’t a fucking stupid enough concept without this cunt chiming in with THIS contribution…

Fuck absolutely EVERYTHING

“Yeah, I’m taking you out with my big forehead, you Lovecraft-looking son of a bitch.”

Yes. This is the world I find myself living in today. I want to set it on fire even more than usual. I wish I could say this is the stupidest the world will ever get, but I fear that if I did the world would just reply “challenge accepted”, ask me to hold its beer, and prove me horrifically wrong…

Go to fuck you. Go directly to fuck you.

In news that should surprise no one, Andrew Tate and his beard… er, brother got charged with human trafficking and rape yesterday. I mean, it shouldn’t surprise anyone, but looking at the Twitter coverage last night, I found at least a few who professed to be amazed by the development. I know the Internet is overflowing with stupidity but that was kind of mind-blowing…

We Hunted the Mammoth have an interesting collection of people standing up for the brothers (though apparently the two other guys who’ve been charged with them can get fucked, cos no one seems to be talking about them), including such thoroughly upstanding characters as white supremacist, recipient of funding from Jeffrey Epstein and sex pest J.-F. Gariépy, cos when you’re facing trial for doing bad sexual things THAT’s the sort of person you want on your side…

…But the WHtM posted also includes some decidedly less supportive comments, of which I thought the above was chef’s kiss stuff. It is, of course, impossible for anyone with any sense to feel sympathy for this stupid cunt; after all, he made such a point of saying when he moved to Romania that he did so because “corruption is accessible for everybody” and he would be less likely to be charged with sexual offences there. And, well, look where that boasting’s got him…

Down among the dead men?

The news getting everyone worked up at the moment is the missing Titan submarine, with five people on board, en route to check out the Titanic.

A lot of the commentary I’m seeing has, frankly, been kind of heartless if not ghoulish on account of the four passengers being purported billionaires cos apparently you have to be a billionaire to afford this sort of thing… and while the $250,000 asking price is obviously not cheap, it’s something *I* could actually afford myself. (Not easily and it wouldn’t exactly leave me with much ready money left over for the rest of my life, but I could do it. Obviously glad I didn’t…). And I am manifestly not a billionaire of any sort. I am also obviously not a fan of billionaires, even someone with a single billion to their credit has earned it rather dubiously, I know, eat the rich and all that, whatever… I can still find the gloating about their misfortune a bit tasteless, especially now we know one of them was actually the teenage son of one of the others (and one actually has decades of legitimate research of the wreck to his credit)…

The fifth person, though, is evidently Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the company that does the Titanic tour thing (I’m guessing he was the pilot of the sub). And that’s where things get complicated, cos it looks increasingly like the current situation is very much his fault.

Continue reading “Down among the dead men?”

Happy 75th, vinyl

The Guardian digs back into its archive for this kind of delightful notice:

New York, 20 June
A symphony lasting 45 minutes was played on two sides of a 12-inch gramophone record at a demonstration here. The average 12-inch record plays for only eight minutes.
The record is known as the “Columbia LP (long playing) Microgroove.” It is also being made in the 10-inch size with a playing time of 27 minutes. The material from which the records are made is unbreakable.

I love this cos that’s the entirety of the original news about the birth of the vinyl record, just this casual acknowledgement that you could now fit a lot more music on a record and you couldn’t break them like you could with shellac discs. A revolution of sorts that clearly went underappreciated (at least by the Graun, apparently journalists at the demonstration were a lot more impressed). I also rather like the photo accompanying it…

…the engineer on the left looking faintly aghast at the way his boss is holding the record (“by the EDGES, you clown!”)

The rest of the article is a 1950 article on the somewhat belated introduction of the LP to Britain, which is quite amusing itself, mocking the way the American market agonised over the Columbia LP vs the RCA 45rpm single and what to do with 78s, and rather smugly proclaiming the 45rpm record “is probably doomed for serious music” and that certain forms of music, individual songs and other short items, don’t really gain anything from the LP format so the old 78s probably wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry. The author was one Desmond Shawe-Taylor, who clearly did not foresee the record industry’s later propensity for repackaging and reissuing; just a couple of decades he would in fact be involved in a company devoted to just that…

Anyway, I bring this up cos it’s obviously timely and interesting—though as I’ve said elsewhere I’ve no particular love for vinyl per se—but also because I saw something on Tumblr the other day, which I now wish I’d saved cos I can’t remember where it was… anyway, it was a picture of a sign with the words “SAVE THE CULTURE” and something about vinyl… and I just thought, the culture? I just found something slightly ludicrous about that, cos the “culture” is officially only 75 years old. It has quite literally just passed that milestone. You can date the beginning of the “culture” quite precisely. Were there shellac enthusiasts in the 1950s lamenting the disappearance of 78s? Sorry, but I just find the fetishisation of vinyl irritating…

The very picture of health

Hmm.

More than a quarter of patients on antidepressants in England – about two million people – have been taking them for five years, the BBC has found.
This is despite there being limited evidence of the benefits of taking the drugs for that length of time.
A doctor who runs an NHS clinic helping people off the pills says withdrawal symptoms can make it hard for some to stop taking their medication.
Withdrawal guidance was updated in 2019, but he says little has changed.
More than eight million people in England are on antidepressants – which are prescribed for depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder and other conditions. That’s one million more people than five years previously, NHS prescribing figures show.
The new figures on long-term use – for the period 2018-2022 – were provided to BBC Panorama by the NHS, following a Freedom of Information request. The data gives an overall picture but does not reflect the circumstances of individual patients, some of whom could be on antidepressants long-term for good reason.

—sigh—

Continue reading “The very picture of health”