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?