Newington College is still facing grief over its decision to let girls in after a century-plus of having none of that; this time it’s not just the old boys protesting but the ones still there:
Inner west boys’ school Newington College is set to go into 2025 facing the possibility of two legal battles over its controversial plans to admit girls to the 161-year-old institution.
A current student has launched action in the NSW Supreme Court alleging that the school’s governing council contravened the terms of the school’s 19th-century charitable trust by implementing its plan to admit girls from 2026.
A statement of claim filed last Thursday says members of the school council had breached their duties of an original deed of indenture by considering, and planning to implement, the move to co-ed.
It says the word “youth” used in the original 1873 trust is limited to the education and advancement of boys and young men and that the school’s governing council “breached the Trust Purpose by paying, applying and/or setting aside trust funds held subject to the Trust Purpose on in connection with […] implementing its decision to transition Newington College into a co-educational school.”
The boy – known as student A – cannot be identified after the court issued a non-disclosure order and a psychiatrist’s report said he faced being bullied and shunned if his identity was to become known.
Personally I’m kind of OK with this little shit being bullied and shunned. What children all of these fucking people are.
Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry? Well, this comes closer than most. I am not especially a fan of Christmas, it’s just one of those things I stopped having any use for a long time ago, and yet something about this is just… exactly right, and I start tearing up in the last part of the song when he starts envisaging future Christmases with his daughter as she grows up. It’s sentimental, all right, and it hits me in the gut every goddamn time.
So here was a bit of a surprise when it was announced recently… with the colourised Daleks serial having performed to what I presume were expectations, Russell T. told us a few weeks ago to expect this similarly reworked Patrick Troughton farewell story, and here’s me got my virtual hands on it just before Christmas. “War Games” seemed like an interesting choice, it gave us possibly the most important expansion on the show’s mythology, and if nothing else it should at least have technical advantages (having originally been shot on 625-line tape and existing as stored-field films) over “The Daleks”.
“The War Games” was originally a ten-part extravaganza which came about as part of the general chaos of the 1968-69 production season, with two other serials having fallen through and forcing the team to expand this one to unexpectedly great length… traditionally I gather it’s generally thought of as nine middling episodes and then one great episode where the Time Lords finally catch up with the Doctor and put him on trial, but I’ve actually always thought it was the other way round, with the first nine being pretty good and the tenth the kind of ho-hum one (I must say some details of this episode, like the Doctor’s potential new faces, are addressed kind of brilliantly in the new edit). Whatever, “War Games” was an important tale, ending the monochrome era of the show, answering its longest-standing mystery to that point and clearing the decks (with the three leads all having handed in their notices) for what was basically a reboot of the whole thing.
So the colour version is abbreviated to a mere 90 minutes from over four hours, mostly to good effect, colour’s technically pretty good and the additional music isn’t too egregious for the most part (even if sonically it jars a bit with the dryness of the original 1969 TV studio sound). The cutting of so much material does, however, affect things negatively sometimes, particularly when it comes to some of the secondary characters like the Resistance members, and the Germans are basically nowhere to be seen, rendering the character of Von Weich a bit confusing (I don’t recall him being disposed of either, unless I just missed that).
The really contentious point, though, are probably the details that have been added. I’m really not sure what I think of the use of a certain famous musical sting to imply the War Chief was actually the Master, which is an idea that’s been used in various non-TV media over the decades (let’s not get into THAT vexed issue) but I think this is the first it’s been addressed on TV. Even if it is a “special” edition, I don’t think I like it.
More egregiously, though, we now have the hitherto unseen regeneration of the second Doctor into the third. Unseen, that is, if you haven’t previously seen this:
This comes from a Youtube channel called The Confession Dial, whose proprietor made this CGI “bonus scene”, if you want to call it that, to bridge the end of “War Games” and the beginning of “Spearhead From Space”. And the BBC have since acquired this and, with a few changes (I did quite like the way the TARDIS approaches the Earth as the Nestene meteorites from “Spearhead” do), incorporated it into this new edition. And the show’s already complicated continuity just got another new wrinkle added, cos this complicates things by effectively wiping out the “Season 6B” theory, which is a fan theory that was kind of semi-officially endorsed to explain problems posed by the second Doctor’s later appearances on the show. Again, in a special edition of this serial, so who knows if it “counts” or not.
Anyway, that’s what I thought about “The War Games” in colour. Technically quite an improvement on what they could do to “The Daleks”, fairly well cut-down though it could’ve benefitted from maybe another 20-30 minutes being retained, and sonically less egregious than what they did to “The Daleks”… just a bit bothered by the additions, as noted. How was I not going to have at least some reservations? Anyway, it’s made me want to revisit the original, plus we have actual new Who coming in the next few days too…
I don’t think it’s actually possible to pick a single “greatest” year for movies cos, frankly, who’se seen enough to be able to make such a claim seriously? However, this video which I watched the other night settles on 1957 for an answer… which really interested me, cos it’s not the most obvious year, but our author breaks down the worldwide range of films from that year, not just the Hollywood stuff, in a way that I actually came to find quite convincing. And at 1h45m, the video’s long enough to make its case with plentiful examples. Well worth watching.
No real nudity in this one, but there is a photo near the end of Celtic Frost in their Cold Lake period which could be considered distressing. I mean, I actually don’t think Cold Lake is as bad an album as it’s usually said to be, but Tom Warrior did not really suit the ’80s glam look of that era…
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