“It’s the only way to be sure,” as Ellen Ripley said.

Glad to see the superrich don’t object to paying large sums to build society. So we can just start wealth taxing them instead, that’ll be fine right? That way they don’t have to spend their valuable time cherrypicking initiatives and charities.

Ha. Completely coincidental, but I just registered here as @SiliconAvatar. Kbin.earth seems to have federation issues, so it seemed easier to double up.

Happy cake day, treksite (and me) 🖖

You mean “The Doctor”. Or wait, is it “Gallifrey”?

Thanks for this. A lot of online comments seem to mistake “put out to tender” for being put to pasture. It’s a little less dramatic than that at this point, but then the fandom seems to be a drama all of its own sometimes.

It’s a sign 😅 I’m there for the cat nurses and Cassandra, her tragic clone and Face of Boe. Less so for Rose making googly eyes at Suddenly Hot(?) Doctor, but such is season 2…

As an aside, any new seasons may be a couple of years out, but as a substitute I’ve spent the day browsing online fan communities in complete meltdown over baseless conjecture that the show is somehow cancelled. Bring on the popcorn!

Eccleston recently added a new criterion for him to return: having a young, female showrunner. Dunno if all his demands need to come true though, he got his rider from a couple years ago fulfilled today 🙂

Yeah, I think this has all been handled very poorly, but at least something seems to happen. Or the initial preparations to finding someone who will, eventually, make something happen…

I liked Moffat’s run, too, but I wouldn’t wish this sort of responsibility on him. There is too much opinion and preconception around him in the fandom already, best leave this to somebody with less baggage… and maybe more fresh-faced go power 🚀

I have to say, I was dreading what Davies might have pulled out of a dark cavity for that special. His recent track record hasn’t been great, so this is good news in that sense. I’m still amazed that this is where we’re at a year out from the last season finale, rather than as soon as Disney officially let the show go.

I get the impression there has been no talk whatsoever with potential production partners in the intervening year. HBO let slip recently that there had been no communication concerning … how was it again, “an important part of the BBC”? But all things considered, glad they’re finally moving ahead toward a new direction.

I’ll admit that I only read a few paragraphs down this article; then skimmed at least as many before my eyes glazed over; and finally, found myself scrolling absentmindedly until I didn’t remember why I was on that page. That’s the general state of my reading comprehension after almost two decades consuming and composing a maximum of 500 characters per tweet (or toot, or post).

As a consequence, I feel more comfortable replying to the title of the text than its entirety, much less its content. I know I’m not alone in this; most people only respond in this most superficial way, particularly in online, short form discourse. We call this a “hot take”, because it is as brief and ill-advised as testing with your fingertips whether a hotplate is still on. Reading a text before replying would require others reading your decidedly colder take to do the same, and that’s just presumptuous.

To the point of the title, then — I do think we should consider the literary qualities of the tweet toot nondenominational microblog post as more of a potential than a given. A potential that the quoted short form post by Patricia Lockwood demonstrates very well, but to the exclusion of all the dreadfully nonliterary tweets posted at the same time; as well as all that came before and after.

Not to say that Lockwood composed the single, glowing point of artistry in a void of dire hackery — there are certainly many more in her league, across several platforms not all bought by neofascist techbros and surrendered to the alt-right and Russian troll factories as open soapboxes. But I digress.

I would not want to imply that this is even the only example in the linked article that might qualify as literature, either; I refer again to my initial paragraph. What I do propose here is that we consider instead these updates parts of a textual spectrum that partially, as one modal component, contain a literary ecosystem. In this ecosystem several strata of literary professionals, dabblers, audiences and pundits would coexist.

I refer here to the consummate professionals; struggling part-time writers (subbing, perhaps, as a barrista or preschool teacher); award winners, the bitterly shortlisted, and the also-rans; copywriters with pretentions of literature; aspiring celebrities and the otherwise self consumed; the well received and the not at all noticed; formalist experimenters (also a part of the entirely unnoticed); genre writers (noticed only by the illiterate); autobiographers; essayists; literary historians and critics, who are largely particularly disillusioned versions of all of the above; opinion letter aficionados; toilet graffiti scrawlers; involuntary compulsive cursers; readers; fans; hangers-on; people who commit to read any number of books during a year but lie about achieving their goal; people who collect books for their material qualities but don’t really care for the writing; those in one-sided parasocial relationships with writers; the writers’ closest relatives; writers’ agents; writers’ bank managers; writers’ nemeses (also part of an armed militia); writers of notes; writers of holiday postcards; writers of shopping lists; writers of financial statements; writers of incriminating evidence; abductors (collagists); some tattooists; some fine artists; all the bloggers that survived web 2.0; readers of the surviving blogs but not books; readers of the surviving blogs and also the books; book burners; note burners; shopping list burners; incriminating evidence burners; probably some CD burners; microblog post burners, somehow, if at all possible; and those who don’t know they’re responding to a writer, the post just showed up in my timeline and their name looked like somebody I was introduced to at the pub, anyway it was just meant as a larf, no offense meant your honour, certainly no perjury.

In summary, people who may or may not safely and/or knowingly engage with literary forms, if at all. Within this varied biome, the examples that most closely approach writerly qualities, such as the one by Patricia Lockwood presently cited, are similarly most apt for our consideration as truly literary expressions of this short form, nondenominational microblog post.

If someone wrote a long read about that phenomenon, I’d definitely read it. Well, I might lose my thread after the first couple of paragraphs. Too many years posting oneliners at max. 500 characters, you know. Your attention span goes before you know it.

Where was I?

Where am I?

It was always weird to me that, after 7 years playing Picard, as soon as they started making movies, Patrick Stewart’s instinct was to play him as an action hero 🤦

All of that beach buggy stunt driving in Nemesis should have gone on the editing floor.

True. The last couple of Doctor Who seasons have felt like they could fit into one 2005-ish season… and maybe have been tighter that way.

I’m not saying my suggestion would help that, but it might give us a steady (but slower) flow of new material.

To be fair, I believe there just is more of the classic show? 🙂 I like either incarnation of the show equally, but I do think some of the very early nuWho episodes have aged worse than classic era serials. That could also be because I was an adult (of a sort) through the aughts and cringe at the way contemporary society was portrayed…

Oh, I’m sure. What I actually know about TV production is vastly overshadowed by the confidence with which I present it 😄

I do assume creating sets and finding locations for one limited series would be cheaper than for the same number of individual episodes. Similarly casting the roles. And I would suppose different serials could be shot in one block if that saves money, too?

But I barely understand how a TV works, much less how shows end up on it. Like I said, I’m grasping for any straw of a likely way to see Doctor Who semi-regularly back on screen.

Hey now, that was top of the line special effects 😄

I was hoping the shorter production batches might eliminate the show disappearing off screens for years. In a lean season maybe there would be a single four-episode serial and a holiday special? But with enough traction to at least hit the December mark, I could see a year go by without a multi-parter, and the show remaining in the public consciousness.

But, let’s be serious. Shows like Who and Trek can be off screens for a decade and still be relevant to viewers. With 60+ years of TV and film presence available on streaming or physical media (and despite the BBC’s eccentricities cincerning international streaming deals), I’m fairly confident their cultural cache will tide them over.

All that said, and with the amount of DW media that I’ve hoarded for myself, I still want to see regular, new material. If that realistically turns out to be one serial in spring, one in autumn, and one xmas special for the casuals — you know, I could live with that.

What made the original Who fun, was they were running on the same budget as a family making Halloween costumes.

Wellll — I’ll agree it was part of what made classic Who fun 🙂 The infamous bubble wrap monster of “The ark in space” was a bit of a nadir that we don’t need to stoop to again…

On the other hand, I didn’t particularly see the big Disney-padded budgets doing much for the quality of the show, when it’s really done quite well on less. The powers that be (and viewers) need to embrace that Doctor Who can be janky and still work. The eyeball monster in “The eleventh hour” wasn’t great CGI, but Matt Smith sold it.

And I think writers would have a ball exploring a story at more length than one 45 minute episode. Add some twists and turns that otherwise might be sanded off. Imagine “Flux”, but with a story that actually makes sense 😉

I’m going to be an analog purist just for the sake of it, and go “ew, bluetooth” 😆

Yep, batteries, headphone jack(s!) and a shoulder strap. And since Dual put their name to it, I might even trust it with my vinyl…!