Counting down II.

With one week to go until Canada's 150th birthday, here's a video about the distinctive nature of our country from one of our great national icons: Dave Hadfield.

And his brother Chris.

- Sid

(My favourite part of this video is at 3:11, where we watch Canada's best known astronaut solemnly launching a thirty-five dollar model rocket.)

Y meddyg sy'n profi.

(Contributed by Chris Sumner)

When I was exploring Cardiff during my recent trip to England and Wales, I texted Sid with a couple of pictures of landmarks from Torchwood, the Doctor Who spinoff - the front entrance of the secret headquarters and also its side entrance.  (This headquarters got blown up in the Children of Earth series.)  He suggested I write a posting on his blog regarding this and the Doctor Who Experience I had yet to visit.  Sid had been bothering me a while about doing a blog posting, and a few people he knows, including my sister, have written a guest posting.  Here is mine.

Getting back to Torchwood Cardiff, I wasn’t able to jump on the ‘lift’ at the front entrance as there was some outdoor footie screen thing going on and it was in the process of being fenced off.  There were armed guards patrolling nearby as this was a few days after the Manchester bombing at the Ariana Grande concert, so I didn’t want to pull some guerilla culture move, especially since I was wearing a backpack. I then proceeded to the side entrance.  This has become a shrine to Ianto Jones, a main character of the show who died in the aforementioned Children of Earth series of Torchwood.

The next day, I decided to go to the Dr. Who Experience near the docks.  Sid had visited the London version when it was in England in 2011 so I was interested to see what was different about this version.

I arrived several minutes before the 10 AM opening time, keen to get underway.  The show started a few minutes after ten when the first group of visitors assembled.  We had a guide that was dressed in Gallifreyan garb* – minus the head (and shoulder) dress.  He explained to us the rules of engagement of the experience. This was semi-interactive as the audience was tasked to do several things throughout.

Peter Capaldi, the present Doctor, appeared on various video screens throughout the ‘show’ and he was his cantankerous self as he cajoled and insulted the audience (and our guide) into saving the universe from various threats including the Daleks. The audience had to find three crystals in the sets we passed through.  Children were the keenest to perform this task. There was a shaking floor and other special effects to make the experience more real.  We needed to fly the TARDIS as the Doctor was unable to be there himself.  It was fun to watch Mr. Capaldi in this role and it felt like I was in a mini-episode.

Once the initial show was over, in which we were not allowed to take any photographs or videos, we went into the exhibit part of the Experience.  

 

There were pieces from different points in the Doctor’s past such as the various models of the Daleks and the Cybermen as they went through their evolution.  

 

Also present were the ice warriors, the Silence and the weeping angels, the outfits of the Doctors and some of his companions, and a small section dedicated to Torchwood.  

 

If you aren’t a Doctor Who fan this experience will probably not hold your interest, but it is certainly worth the visit if you are.  

Unfortunately, the gift shop was out of medium and large T-shirt sizes for pretty much every shirt they had for sale, so I didn’t get the T-shirt, just a mug with Gallifreyan designs.

 

The most unexpected moment was when I went to the loo before I went into the ‘live action’ portion of the Experience at the beginning.  With nothing more in mind than ridding myself of hotel breakfast coffee, I rounded a corner and came face to face with an adversary of both the Doctor and humanity.  It made me jump a little and then smile. I am sure the Daleks would be the masters of earth if they only took over all the lavatories on the planet.

- Chris

Thanks very much for a great post, Chris - and some great pictures!  It looks like they've upgraded the Doctor Who Experience since my visit - sadly, my next visit to the UK won't be until next fall, and there's been talk of retiring the Experience before then.  Ah, well, as the Doctor often reminds us, nothing last forever...

- Sid

* For the uninitiated, here's a shot of ex-Doctor David Tennant modelling a vintage Gallifreyan Time Lord costume -WITH the head (and shoulder) dress.

 - Sid

Discovery.

 

The first trailer has been released for Discovery, the new Star Trek series, and I'm intrigued by the possibilities suggested by the clip, even with the brief glimpses of the main characters that we are given.

So far the show's creator's have been quite coy about the actual plotline, and the trailer doesn't provide a lot more information.  Apparently it's a single story thread - which, to be honest, may well be the wave of the future (no pun intended) for this sort of series - and it deals with a specific event from the Star Trek future.  The show takes place ten years before the original series, but after going through a wide variety of reference material, I couldn't find anything in the history of the future* for that range of time that would warrant 15 episodes. The presence of reimagined** Klingons may indicate that it deals with some aspect of the Klingon war, but let's be honest, Klingons are a fairly standard prop in the Star Trek universe, it's probably unwise to attribute too much significance to their appearance in the trailer.

Sonequa Martin-Green, fresh from being zombified*** on The Walking Dead at the end of last season, stars as Michael Burnham, first officer on the U.S.S. Discovery, with Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou of the Shenzhou.  Based on just the brief footage from the trailer, Michelle Yeoh is obviously going to be a fabulous starship captain, to the point where I'm concerned that she might overwhelm her younger co-star.   

However, I was surprised (and a little disappointed) when I realized that Yeoh isn't the captain of the titular starship.  Captain Lorca, played by veteran genre actor Jason Isaacs, will be in charge of the bridge on the Discovery, which makes it a bit puzzling that he's not featured at all in the trailer.

Isaacs tweeted that he wasn't in the trailer because (haha) he wasn't in the trailer, but tongue-in-cheek comments aside, there's been some speculation that his character may not be around for very long. (A first name would certainly make me feel more secure about the character's future.)  It would be a shame if that turned out to be the case, Isaacs is an excellent actor who is very often cast as a villain, and it would be a welcome change to see him in a (presumably) more heroic role.

That being said, there are some ways in which I wouldn't be disappointed to see Isaacs make an early departure, or perhaps be featured in flashbacks. With Captain Lorca out of the picture, we'd be left with a brash young black female first officer who is being mentored by a veteran Chinese female captain.  I think that Gene Roddenberry would have had some trouble selling that concept in the 60s, but to me it sounds exactly like the sort of future that he envisioned when he first created Star Trek.

- Sid

* I realize it sounds contradictory, but science fiction makes you comfortable with phrases like this.

**  What, again?

*** Walkered?

Dumb and dumber.

One wrong note eventually ruins the entire symphony.

Walter, Alien: Covenant

I had the day to myself on Saturday, so after taking some pictures for upcoming blog postings, I decided to go to a movie.  Having been specifically forbidden to see Wonder Woman without Karli, I checked to see if Alien: Covenant was still in circulation, and headed off to the Scotiabank Cineplex Theatre to take a look.

I didn't purchase an advance ticket because I expected there to be lots of room:  the movie's been out for over a month, reviews haven't been that brilliant, and it was a warm sunny afternoon.  To my surprise, I had some difficulty finding a seat in the almost full theatre - perhaps I wasn't the only person there who was not allowed to see Wonder Woman yet.

The Alien franchise has certainly had its ups and downs over time, and although the latest offering has been accused of franchise fatigue, I was hopeful that it would be an improvement on its predecessor, Prometheus.  Prometheus had incredible promise, but ultimately disappointed due to the lack of logic and consistency in the script.

How does the latest entry in the lineup fare by comparison?  Well, let me introduce you to the crew of the Covenant.  With no ill will toward anyone, my god, these people deserve to die.  It is difficult to think of another group in the history of cinema who have been so willing to put themselves in danger's way over and over and over again - these idiots make the teenage victims from the Friday the 13th movies look like the acme of caution and prudence.  

Covenant is a beautifully shot film, 79-year-old director Ridley Scott hasn't lost any of his deft touch with lighting and composition, and Michael Fassbender does a brilliant job as the villainous David, but the script is an endless litany of poor judgement on the part of the crew.

"Mysterious alien planet?  Do we need to worry about alien organisms or viruses?  Should we wear isolation suits?  Nope!  Jackets and earflap hats it is!"

Good plan.

"Let's not land too close to the distress signal!  Eight kilometers away will let us have have a good long hike!" 

Gosh, yes, sixteen kilometer round trip - why would you want to stay close to your sole means of return to the mother ship? 

"Look, it's some kind of puffball!  I'm going to get as close as possible and poke it with my bare finger!  Hey, little black spores!!"

My god, man, I wouldn't want to do that on Earth, let alone in an alien biosphere!

 "Ledward's spitting up blood - let's not quarantine him! No, wait, I'll quarantine him with another crew member after I've aspirated his blood!"

Because really, why would you wear anything other than rubber gloves to examine someone who is mysteriously sick on an alien planet?  Oh, and three words: non slip flooring.  Look into it.

"I'm going to call the mothership and scream incoherently at my husband!  Then get a gun and shoot randomly at the alien until the lander explodes!"

And...done.

"The rest of the crew has created a defensive circle to watch for an alien thing that's roaming the darkness - I'll just stand outside of it and try to contact the ship."

What are the odds of anything bad happening because of that?

"I'm just going to go off all on my own to get cleaned up.  I'll go as far as possible, take off my sidearm, and wash my wounds with my back to the door."

Absolutely do that.  Smart move.

"Hey, I wonder what's moving around in this big organic egg thing?  I'll just take a closer look."

Sure, lean right in there.  Stick your head in. After all, the weird marooned android says that it's safe, what could possibly go wrong?

"Let's split up and look for the captain!"

Sign me up.

In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, ex-astronaut Chris Hadfield describes the rigourous training process that NASA employs to ensure that its astronauts are prepared to intelligently deal with any eventuality without panicking: equipment failure, a fire on the ISS, the death of one of the team members, or any contingency that could imperil the mission.  Apparently this sort of training does not survive into the next century - nor, apparently, do many of the astronauts.

- Sid

P.S. And one more thing: damn it, it's Aurigae, not Origae - look it up. Please try to at least get the names of the constellations right. 

"Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright."

I never really thought that I'd be the lucky person who won the Omaze Doctor Who Breakfast draw, not really.  My luck in the area of draws and prizes has always been non-existent, and it's hard to imagine that it would suddenly change now.

Regardless, I found myself surprisingly disappointed when I read that Tony. B. from Toronto had been selected as the winner of the grand prize:  breakfast in London with seven Doctors.  However, I have absolutely no ill will toward Tony.  Not only is he Canadian, but he looks like an old school fan like myself, someone who will fully appreciate his opportunity to meet with the full range of Doctors.  As such, from one fan to another, I'd like to say congratulations, Tony, and I hope you have a great time - make us look good.

All that being said, if you're reading this and you don't have anyone to take with you for the breakfast, I would be happy to pay my own way to London.  Just sayin'.

- Sid

"Food 2.0"

Food tastes better than Soylent.

Jessa Gamble, How Healthy is Soylent? - The Atlantic

An ad for Soylent Drink appeared on my Twitter™ feed this morning, and I confess that my mouth hung open in surprise for a moment.  Was this a spoof?  Part of a subversive marketing campaign for a movie remake?

As far as I can tell, they're completely serious - there's nothing in their FAQ to indicate that they're aware of the dystopian 1973 Charlton Heston film, there's a very earnest Wikipedia™ entry regarding the creation and development of the product, and its relative benefits as a food alternative are the topic of unsmiling discussion in the media.

On the other hand, I see that they don't offer it in green.

- Sid