Fallout 4: The Life Aquatic.

As part of my Survival mode replay of Fallout 4, I've also been exploring parts of the map that I just didn't get to previously, such as Spectacle Island*, located in the ocean to the southeast of the city.  Because I'm unable to fast travel to locations, I've also been using bays and lakes as shortcuts to speed up my travel time.

As a result, I've been spending a lot of game time underwater - which, quite frankly, creeps me out.  I had a bad experience with water as a small child, which has left me with a lifelong aversion to swimming.  I realize full well that I'm just looking at pixels on a screen, but my chest tightens a bit whenever I jump into a body of water and the weight of my power armour pulls me down, down, down to the bottom.

It tightens even more whenever I find myself forced into deeper water for any reason - it's one thing to enter the ocean by walking into the water from a beach, a completely different thing to discover that, in order to make your exit, you have to detour deeper to find a path out of a shipping channel.

Granted, if you stay underwater long enough, your armour will eventually run out of air (which, again, creeped me out more than a little the first time it happened and I realized that I was in trouble) but there's also an upgrade perk which allows you to breathe underwater, so now that I have that, presumably I could spend as much time as I want marching around in the wet.

Unfortunately, the game programmers haven't done very much to make it worth my while.  There's a bit of seaweed, some sunken cargo containers, the occasional ditched aircraft or drowned house, at least one suit of submerged power armour, and my trip to Spectacle Island revealed massive enigmatic pipelines running under the water, but that's about it. There are amphibious monsters in the game, but I haven't run into anything dangerous under the water, all of my encounters have taken place in the air.**  In fact, it's not even possible to deploy weapons when submerged.

If anyone from the game development group at Bethesda Softworks is reading this, I'd like to strongly recommend that they change all that. Making the underwater environment as fully featured as the land would be a huge opportunity to add additional depth (no pun intended) to the game.

As hinted by the appearance of dead fish and beached mutant shark-dolphins on the shoreline, it would be easy to create an underwater ecology to match the surface one.  Whereas on the surface the player harvests plants and shoots animals - either for food or in self-defense - the submarine survivor would be dredging up seaweed, prying open shell fish, and defending themselves against whatever undersea menaces the creative minds in game development could come up with.

And, obviously, there would have to be an armoury of subsurface weaponry:  spear guns, tridents, and so on, as well as modifications to the existing catalogue of surface weapons to allow underwater usage.  (After all, a knife is a knife, whether you're on land or under the sea.)

To make it even more involved, the concept of underwater settlements would be an interesting addition.  Whereas on the surface, settlements are restricted to certain areas, the oceanic equivalent would be abandoned undersea bases which the player would have to pump out, supply with oxygen, and equip with defenses against pirates or aquatic creatures. There could even be one or two of the experimental Vaults that sheltered a selected few from the atomic holocaust - perhaps one with a secret tunnel connecting it to another Vault located on the mainland.

The creation of submarine wildlife would be simple. Instead of birds, there would be fish, the amphibious mirelurks would have a larger role as we discovered their underwater nests and communities, and the reptilian deathclaws would only need gills and fins to make the change to life in the ocean.

Frankly, I'd like them to stop there.  As we go further from land, the bottom drops away to vast dark gulfs, alien to light and warmth, where unimaginable horrors may lie in wait...

Seriously, the underwater parts already make me nervous, I don't need to have nightmares.

- Sid

* An actual island near the real-world Boston.  Thompson Island, located closer to the mainland, didn't make the cut for the game.

** Although  I do seem to recall being attacked while wading around in the sewers in Fallout 3.

“Is the future going to be all girl?”

What does it feel like to be the first woman Doctor?

"It feels completely overwhelming, as a feminist, as a woman, as an actor, as a human, as someone who wants to continually push themselves and challenge themselves, and not be boxed in by what you’re told you can and can’t be. It feels incredible."

-  Jodie Whittaker

And so, without an excessive amount of inappropriate fan-boy fallout*, the first woman Doctor: 34-year-old English** actor Jodie Whittaker. Whittaker fits nicely into the profile of Doctor Who leads since the 2005 reboot: she's an experienced professional with a solid portfolio of work, but her acting profile isn't extremely high, which makes her an affordable casting choice for the show.*** (As per previous discussion of budgets, salaries and so on.)

That being said, I hope that her wage packet is comparable to her predecessors, given the manner in which the BBC is currently struggling with gender pay gap problems. In one of this season's episodes, the Doctor commented that the Time Lords are "billions of years beyond your petty obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes" - BBC management would do well to follow their example.

As fans adjust to the change, it's fair to say that Ms. Whittaker will have to accept some changes as well.  Apparently in the past she has been happy to go unrecognized by people on the street, preferring a low profile in public - ah, well, I have some bad news for you there, Jodie...  

Similarly, she'll need to prepare herself to answer questions about life in the TARDIS that have little to do with her craft as an actor.  I recall interviews with Liam Neeson regarding his work as Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace in which he was so obviously baffled by questions about lightsabers and the Force, rather than character development and acting decisions.

Whittaker has worked with two previous Doctors:  she shared the stage with Christopher Eccleston in a theatrical production of Antigone in 2012, in which she played the title role, and more recently appeared with David Tennant on Broadchurch.  When asked for his opinion on Whittaker's casting during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show, Tennant commented:

“You know, sure, Jodie is from a different gender than anyone who has gone before, but that will be irrelevant almost immediately once she takes the part.  It’s about finding the right performer at the right time, and that’s Jodie, without a doubt.”

He's completely correct - Whittaker's gender should be irrelevant, she should be judged on the quality of her work rather than her sex. However, I suspect it's going to be challenging for people to avoid commenting on her status as the first female Doctor when discussing her performance  - I think of this as the Obama Effect.  Hopefully she'll be able to make her mark based on more than just being the first woman in the role.

But let's not diminish that milestone.  The last couple of years have been very positive for the genre in terms of strong female leads: Rey in The Force Awakens, Jyn Erso in Rogue One, the massively successful Wonder Woman movie, and now a female Doctor. To quote an exchange from the final episode of this season:

The Master: “Is the future going to be all girl?”

The Doctor: ”We can only hope.”

- Sid

* I somehow doubt that many of the naysayers are fan-girls, although you never know.

** I bet we'll have to wait a LOT longer for the lead in Doctor Who not to be from the British Isles.  It's been surprising enough that two of the last three were Scottish.

*** I've also seen photos of Whittaker that demonstrate a slightly maniacal grin, which seems to have become one of the prerequisites for the part.

"Happy birthday to you...."

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Curiousity rover on Mars - and, with apologies, a belated anniversary greeting to its older brother Opportunity, still operating after thirteen and a half years of travelling the Martian surface.  Best wishes from your organic brothers and sisters on Earth!  It's a commonly known fact that you play "Happy Birthday" for your anniversaries - I wish there was cake, too*.

 - Sid

* Candles would be a nice touch, but a bit of a challenge given the atmospheric conditions:  the Martian atmosphere is only 0.13% oxygen, as opposed to 21% here on Earth.