Author Archives: John Saye

About John Saye

Servicing you with novels and garbled discourse based on my impressions of shows, movies, books, story structure, and whatever else I can get into.

“Father’s Day,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 8

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

It’s probably harsh to say that I hate this episode. I never particularly thought it was a strong episode, and I think that Rose having a father who is missing growing up is almost sadder than getting to know him. He’s always been this kind of force in the back of her mind. I lost my father to Octobers ago; I lost my mom last December and I would do anything to get them back. So I understand Rose a lot more.

I would break the laws of time to have either of them back for a minute.

Father’s Day

1) In a zone of comfort

It starts with Rose as a child, remembering her mother telling her stories about how great her dad was, even though he was not. Her mother is telling stories about them like they are fairytales, building him up to be something in Rose’s mind that she could remember favorably, when he was no good, always trying some kind of scheme and running him and her mom out of money all the time.

2) They desire something

The desire in this episode is simple. Rose wants to see her dad. She knows when and where he died and she has access to a time machine. At first, she plans to go to him so that he doesn’t have to die alone, but she misses her chance waiting too long and wants to try again, and that’s when it all goes wrong. She races out at the wrong time, passing herself and the Doctor who are still standing on the street, and then saves his life instead of being there for him when he dies.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

Rose gets some time here with her dad, a time that she never would’ve had before. She’s able to talk to him about his schemes and talk to him about his relationship with her mother and how strained it is. She avoids being found out for who she is, but she confuses Pete because he trusts her implicitly and doesn’t seem to understand why he would just leave the house and later give her the keys to his car without thinking.

4) Adapt to the situation

At the same time, creatures begin to patrol the streets. They hang on the side of buildings giant black-winged monsters and attack people. They are wraiths who want to set time right. They get people in their backyards, and get people as they try to walk to a wedding. At the wedding Pete and Rose meet her mother Jackie who has baby Rose with her. Pete had been on his way here with the wedding present when he met his fate originally.

I just put that together “Pete Rose” really? Coincidence, right?

5) Get what they desired

Rose has her dad, however, people around, in a church at a wedding, and doing yard work start noticing it get cold, the Doctor can’t get back into the TARDIS, and the car that killed her father keeps showing up. Rose meets herself as a baby and sees her mom and dad fight. They love each other, but this is what they are really like,

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

As Rose lies about how good a father Pete was as she grew up, he figures out who Rose is. The creatures arrive to collect Pete and they hide in the church until Pete figures out he has to sacrifice himself.

When Rose touches the baby version of herself, it’s like the last straw, and the demons can get into the church. The Doctor being the oldest thing there, sacrifices himself to slow them down. Rose now has her father, but she’s lost the Doctor and she is stuck in time. The Doctor has put a heck of a lot of faith in Pete, that he’ll figure it out, and do the right thing to fix this.

He runs to the car that killed him and takes the hit, and the creatures vanish.

7) Return to their familiar situation

Now Jackie’s bedtime story has changed and an anonymous Rose comforting him is a part of it, having been there as he dies.

8) They have overall changed

Rose has learned how fragile time is, but is better for having met her father.

I will admit, for now, this episode makes me cry more than any of the rest of them do.

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Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney

Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On the day Donald J. Trump was supposed to hand the keys over to incoming President Biden peacefully, something horrible happened. I watched the horror play out from start to finish, live on television. I haven’t been this horrified since I watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center on a live feed from inside CNN Center in Atlanta.

He’s currently facing 91 counts over four criminal indictments, which he’s successfully prolonging court dates for, and he still seems like he’s about to clinch the Republican nomination. I think it’s so sad.

Cheney led US Representatives in an investigation. They presented the results in public hearings. I watched these as well. The book essentially runs through the committee findings chapter by hearing. It’s a straightforward, sober, mostly Republican-led effort, and yet he’s still their front-runner. I just don’t understand.

Linked below are video recordings of the hearings if you’d rather bypass the book and just see it for yourself.

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January 6th Committee Public Hearings Playlist on YouTube

“The Long Game,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 7

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

The Long Game

This is an amazing Doctor Who story for me on many levels. One of the most interesting things about it is that it is a Doctor Who story where he kicks out a companion, returning him home for misbehaving. The Doctor bans Adam from the TARDIS and leaves him to avoid being detected after altering his brain. The mechanical third eye reminds me of someone. I think this is a missed opportunity and could have been an interesting way to introduce Davros to New Who, the scarred companion left behind.

1) In a zone of comfort

Everything starts easy enough. They arrive on Satellite 5 and the Doctor allows Rose some hints so she can look smart for Adam when they first come out of the TARDIS. He appears to take a lot of time to adjust to being on a satellite that exists many years in the future. Everywhere they look, are televisions showing various news segments from around the world. It looks like a lot of terrorist activity and bloodshed. Rose shows Adam her phone and permits him to call home since he is having trouble adjusting. I’m not sure if he gets the idea then, to send information about the future home, but after standing up when the Doctor returns to find them, keeps Rose’s phone, tucking it in his pocket. There’s something fishy going on with him, but I’m not sure if at this stage he even knows what he’s up to.

2) They desire something

After a demonstration of the broadcasting process from Cathica, the Doctor can tell that the technology is wrong. He can tell that it’s not as up-to-date as it should be for the time. Looking around, he can tell that progress is been stunted. This desire drives the Doctor.

Cathica longs for a promotion. She feels like it’s overdue; she feels overworked, and she feels like she’s earned it. She wants one more than anything else. She has been good. She has followed all the rules, and it’s gotten her nowhere. She is driven by this desire, and eventually, it is Suki getting promoted over her that drives her to join the Doctor and break the rules.

During this period, Adam slips away. His desires, as an alien artifact cataloger, come later.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

Adam gets hungry for power and tries to send a coded message home. but can’t. He needs a chip.

The Editor is looking for something wrong going on because he has vague suspicions and targets Suki. He decides that it’s enough to bring her upstairs. So she’s promoted over Cathica, who is furious about it. She happily takes the elevator upstairs, acting like it’s the break she’s been looking for and disappears. She physically enters an unfamiliar situation, by going into the cold desolate 500th floor. She searches around, encountering dead bodies connected to control panels, and eventually finds the Editor. The Editor confronts her and outs her as a revolutionary, which is something that I did not expect the first time I watched it. She pulls a gun, and he introduces her to her boss, hanging on the ceiling.

On a different level, Adam finds a computer terminal. He has told Rose he wants to go to the observation deck and get used to things, but that’s not what he does. What he does is he goes and tries to access a computer. With Rose’s phone, he’s hoping to send some kind of message home with information about the future. He runs into trouble because he can’t access the computer properly. He doesn’t seem to have the proper chip installed in his head. So instead of saying I may need to get back to the Doctor, he goes looking for how to get a chip of his own.

I find it unusual, that in a Doctor Who episode it would focus as much as it does on a side character. The companions are important, as they are our point-of-view characters who encounter the Doctor’s wild world for us to enjoy, but there’s something fishy about Adam. He’s taking up too much time, so he makes me wonder. The Doctor wants to stop whatever’s going on, but I think what’s really going on revolves around what Adam is doing.

4) Adapt to the situation

Adam walks onto the medical floor and inquires about getting a chip and is deftly up-sized to the full Info Spike. She knows how much credit is on his chit, and she wants all of it she can get.

While Adam is getting his surgery, the Doctor, Rose, and Cathica sneak around. The Doctor easily figures out how to get the elevator to take him to Floor 500, but Cathica won’t go with him. She’s still trying to follow the rules.

While the Doctor and Rose search Floor 500, unaware of what they will find, the Editor delves into their identities and becomes completely baffled because of the absence of any information about them in his database.

5) Get what they desired

Adam gets his brain Info Spike, learning to flick it open and shut with a finger snap. (or click.)

The Doctor and Rose go find the Editor, and his boss, the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe (Max.) I do not envy Simon Pegg for having to say that with a straight face. He’s the reason for all the air-conditioning blasting upstairs and upsetting the heating on the other floors. The Doctor finds Suki dead, but somehow still working. Ever feel like a job is sucking the life out of you? She certainly does.

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

Despite the Doctor and Rose being captured, Cathica sneaks upstairs.

Adam takes over the satellite and away with the show and broadcasts too much information home through time. In doing so, he gives the Doctor and Rose away.

Cathica takes Adam out by getting in a dentist’s chair of her own to kick him out and heat the Jagrafess up. Break rules on her watch? I don’t think so. I’d hate to be a creature that explodes when it gets too hot.

The Editor tries to escape, but zombie Suki stops him.

7) Return to their familiar situation

The Doctor then bans Adam from the TARDIS, sending him home, and he destroys the archive. (It all fits on an answering machine?)

8) They have overall changed

The Doctor only takes the best.

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase: And Another Thing… The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Quintessential Phase by Eoin Colfer

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase: And Another Thing… The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Quintessential Phase by Eoin Colfer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dirk Maggs beautifully adapted this dramatized “radio show” from Colfer’s novel And Another Thing… as the 6th installment in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.

This is a finishing piece to cap off the Hitchhiker’s Guide series after Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adam’s last entry in the story, which left us on a dark note. In Adam’s original end, we are left with the conviction that everyone is dead. I saw an interview with Adams where he expressed regret that the series ended so darkly and that he intended to add a better ending eventually, which unfortunately he wasn’t able to provide.

It also reunites many of the original cast members from both the radio shows and a short-run television series from 1981, including two different Trillians, and workable reasons for that. It’s a beautifully blended cast of old and new.

This brings together just about everything you want to know about what happens to each character. Does Trillian run off with the best and sulking in the universe? Does Arthur ever find Fenchurch again? Whatever happened to Zaphod Beeblebrox’s other head? What will be Random’s legacy as former President of the Galactic government? These are only a few of the great mysteries you will uncover in this edition of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

An important note to anyone reading my thoughts on books or dramatic audio like this is that I make zero distinctions between paper, ebook, or audiobook. The media used does not matter because the process the brain goes through to interpret the information is the same.

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“Dalek,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 6

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

You would make a good Dalek.

The Doctor, Rose, Adam, and Henrey van Statten, face off against the Dalek.

1) In a zone of comfort

The Doctor starts this episode showing off for Rose in Henry van Statten’s underground museum. The Doctor and Rose appear in the Museum of Alien Artifacts. The Doctor points out several of them, including the head of a Cyberman, something that we haven’t seen thus far in the series, and calls it a former enemy or friend. As they look around, security notices them and surrounds them. Statten has a vast collection, and the Doctor’s in-depth understanding of it leads directly to what he labels as the cage where his greatest specimen is kept.

2) They desire something

It turns out to be a Dalek, which we as huge fans all immediately recognize. The Doctor, finding himself locked in a room with one panics and tries to get out. He confronts it. Pieces of the Time War come out. They’re both the last of their kind. The Dalek is waiting for orders, and the Doctor thinks that the only way any of them will escape dying themselves is to kill the Dalek. What Henry wants a vain sort of Americanized and misplaced validation of himself.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

The Doctor, now identified as another form of alien, stuck down in Statten’s collection of alien artifacts, is poked and prodded. The Doctor finds himself in an unfamiliar situation as he and the Dalek are both tortured, prodded, and tested by Statten’s people to get information out of them. It’s the first time in this series that we see the Doctor’s two hearts, something that I think is very important to him as a character and not just as a Time Lord.

4) Adapt to the situation

The Dalek, faced with its apparent impotence and inability to kill the Doctor is visited by Rose and Adam. I have more to say about Adam, but that will probably wait until the next episode. For now, Adam is a smart but goofy kid who works for Statten, cataloging new artifacts that come in. He has sort of a soft spot for Rose, who is probably the first girl his age that he has seen in however long it must be.

Rose touches the Dalek, a creature that seems just to be sad, and the Dalek does something that I’ve never seen happen before. It’s more than a physical touch. It works on the Dalek emotionally as well. It assimilates her DNA and extrapolates her relationship with a Time Lord, who must be the Doctor. To me, this is a subtle nod that not only is the Doctor in love with Rose, but they probably already have a physical relationship by this time. It takes this information and dissects it then manages to revitalize itself, some say it regenerates and begins to gain its power back. It easily breaks the code on the cell it’s in after they try to lock it back in there, and it chases Rose and Adam down the halls killing every military operative between them.

Near the end of the chase, Adam escapes through bulkhead doors that are being shut by the Doctor and Statten. Rose falls behind on the other side of the door, but not before the Dalek surprises everyone by flying up the stairwell when Adam remains convinced it couldn’t, possibly. It still can’t kill her and isn’t sure why.

It is not the first time as a die-hard fan that I’ve seen the Daleks fly. During the seventh Doctor’s time, in a show titled Remembrance of the Daleks, was the first time I saw one fly up the stairs. And although looking back on that clip now, it hardly looks as scary as it used to. I remember when that happened, completely flipping out. Oh no, now that the Daleks can get up the stairs, there is no hope for anyone now.

5) Get what they desired

Eventually, they have the Dalek surrounded. The Doctor is in command, Statten is playing along, trying to survive himself, and for the moment Rose and Adam seem to be out of danger. They cut loose, firing at the Dalek as many times as they can, but it doesn’t work the way they want to.

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

Statten’s military fires, but the Dalek rises into the air, shoots a pipe that causes it to rein in the room, and then electrifies the air, killing all the military personnel left.

The Dalek then faces off against the Doctor over the video comm and commends him, saying “You would make a good Dalek.” This horrifies him, and he takes a few minutes to fully understand what the creature means.

7) Return to their familiar situation

As the Dalek and Rose are coming up to the surface, the Dalek is thinking about what it wants. It needs someone to command it, to give it orders, and it doesn’t see its place in the universe anymore, so it wants to die. They do that as the Doctor and Adam are rummaging through the old broken tech, looking for something, anything to fight the Dalek with. I think it’s funny that they use the old hairdryer joke when they’re going through the old guns. Many a hairdryer have become sci-fi guns after they were spray-painted black.

8) They have overall changed

The Dalek doesn’t want to kill anymore. It reaches the surface with Rose, wanting to feel the sun on its skin. It opens up, allowing Rose to see its soft underbelly. It’s fully vulnerable, and when the Doctor arrives. It would be easily killable without its armor protecting it.

The Dalek is done. It only wants peace and to be allowed to stand down. The Doctor can’t kill the Dalek, either. Through Rose, he sees the change, and maybe for the first time, just how much even the life of a Dalek means.

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“World War Three,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 5 (2 of 2)

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

World War Three

Let’s all say it together: “Raxacoricofallapatorius!”

The Doctor, Rose, Harriet, Jackie, and Mickey face off against the Slitheen family. This episode is banana pants. As the second part of the story, it doesn’t have all of the hallmarks of a full-blown Dan Harmon-style circle. I don’t think anybody at BBC is looking at the Dan Harmon circle, I just think it’s a useful tool to look at story structure with. This one doesn’t follow it exactly, so I’m going to get close.

1) In a zone of comfort

We start with a grand escape. At the end of the last episode, the Doctor was in the process of being electrocuted to death in a room full of scientific experts. Things were not going well for anybody and he had to get the heck out of there. Rose and Harriet are hiding and evading the aliens as best they can. So I don’t see this as a zone of comfort unless you think in terms of characters who have their comfort zone inside of being in extreme danger.

2) They desire something

The Doctor desires to stop the aliens from carrying out their plan. He has a plan of his own, but he’s hesitant to use it because of the desires of Rose’s mother. Jackie rails the Doctor the entire episode about the safety of her daughter as she travels with him. It keeps the Doctor from acting as quickly as he could.

The alien crime family is interested in profit, but we don’t exactly know how they could get their profit. We just know that they are going to cause a lot of havoc by creating something that they can sell.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

After encountering the aliens and running into and out of danger with the UNIT guards, the Doctor, Harriet, and Rose lock themselves in the cabinet room. The Doctor, who is used to being able to run around and do things, is sort of grounded. This puts him off guard and vulnerable, a place he does not like being. I think this is the most unfamiliar thing about the episode. We are all used to the Doctor who runs everywhere, but now he has to stop stand, and face what’s going on.

4) Adapt to the situation

The one link to the world inside the sealed-off room is Rose’s superphone. It’s got a connection when nothing else does. Much like my Internet this afternoon. Sorry, my Internet is dodgy today as I write this. Anyway, they get online with Rose’s superphone and call Mickey. Mickey the idiot, he takes continual abuse from the Doctor, who mispronounces his name on purpose just to tick him off, has to do the one thing that he never wanted to do to get out of the situation. He needs Mickey’s help. It’s not a small order either. The Doctor wants Mickey to hack into the national defense system, eventually, so they can launch rockets.

5) Get what they desired

In this episode, getting what they desire is sort of one-sided to the aliens, but the Doctor gets in there too. The aliens have the world in an uproar, and the Doctor and Mickey launch that missile. The missile comes right at the end though, almost a part of paying the heavy price for winning.

I love Doctor Who. I’ve been watching it since I was 11 or 12. I’ve been watching Doctor Who almost as long as there has been Doctor Who. I love the characters; I love the situations and all the gadgets. I love the fun. I live in South Georgia. I grew up in Atlanta. I lived there for 40 years. The way I grew up, the shows I was exposed to, and the experiences all contributed to turning me into a big anglophile, but I got it honest. To a certain extent, I feel more connected to London and Britain than I do to the United States, and I’ve never been there. It’s not to say I don’t love my country. I’m just saying that it’s a tremendous influence. Can you imagine hacking into the national defense system, from within the White House, and clicking a button that would send a missile from a submarine, directly into the building and blow it up? In this episode that’s the idea, except it’s 10 Downing St. and not the White House, that’s essentially what they’re doing. That is the way to defeat the aliens. To launch a missile at yourself, while inside the capital building of your country.

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

That leads to the best line in the entire series, at least as far as I can tell. The Doctor is dealing with Rose’s mother and her not-so-wrong attitude that a life with him is super dangerous, and the alien threat at the same time. He has a plan to stop the aliens. That plan might kill Jackie’s daughter. He’s in a dilemma. Thank goodness Harriet takes control and tells them to fire the missile.

He says, “I could save the world but lose you.” He means it. You could tell that the Doctor, who is infatuated with Rose, a guy who keeps his distance from everybody because he knows how dangerous his life is, is kinda falling for her. He has feelings, and he’s playing them all out there. 900 years old, and he’s talking to a 19-year-old woman like he’s afraid of losing her.

Mickey, who also loves Rose, but understands the situation, clicks the button.

7) Return to their familiar situation

Things get cleaned up. Harriet Rose and the Doctor crawl out of the wreckage, and Harriet runs off to save people. The Doctor and Rose return. The Doctor hangs out in the TARDIS and fiddles with things while Rose packs at the flat. The Doctor is still teasing Rose, giving her inflated stories, and trying to be a badass and get her excited to come back with him. He knows he’s competing with her mom and that old regular life. He’s trying to make it look exciting when he does not know what’s coming next. Rose has already decided. She’s packing and getting on board.

8) They have overall changed

Rose is now less indecisive about what she wants. She wants to travel with the Doctor and find out everything she can about that life out in the stars. Before it was an impulse, and now it’s a decision after what she and the Doctor have gone through.

I think the Doctor has a lot more to learn from her.

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The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The movies, at least the ones that I saw, were good. Not great, but good. The kids were too old. The Disney+ series, I quite liked a lot, and it made me interested in reading the book again. I’ve had the book in and out of my reading list for quite a long time. I want to like this story. I think the idea is solid, and I think that the concepts and situations are all good.

My major problem with it is that to me, it’s a snooze fest, but also exactly the kind of book I’m supposed to love. Moderately disconcerting.

I don’t like my opinion, but I am determined to give it the benefit of the doubt. I’ve already got book two set aside, but I don’t know if I feel the need to read it before the second season of the Disney+ series (which I hear is already moving forward) comes up. I think that somehow seeing that, might be what inspires me to want to read the second book. I just don’t feel any urgency to get into the next one, and that’s kind of bugging me. Part of my issue is the first-person point-of-view. Not that it’s Percy, but I’m banking on his voice, sounding better as he grows older. Despite all the god-like powers he has, his voice is that of a whiny kid.

I also resent (lightly) the crack in chapter 10 about the furies having Southern accents from “somewhere farther south than Georgia.” I’m from Georgia, from Atlanta. We from that region have an incredibly distinctive, yet neutral accent. It’s a strange bubble to come from. I felt it was a slightly New Yorker elitist line, and it made me feel like the writer thinks people from the South are monsters. Probably unintentional, but it made me less inclined to root for Percy if this is his real opinion. He also seems inclined to dismiss overweight people. I imagine I will write and put into a book something that unintentionally makes someone else feel the same way. I hope not, but it’s probably an eventual truth, that I’d like to avoid.

Is it bad that I think Hades should have killed Percy and the other kids, then appointed his skeleton to lead his army and taken the bolt for himself?

My books are still nothing compared to the success of this one, but it still seems like this is a lesson in how I should strengthen my characters.

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It, by Stephen King

It by Stephen King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It, a third-person singular pronoun, takes a lot of responsibility as the entire title of Stephen King’s 1985 doorstop novel. These days, it’s a story that is widely known. Kids in the 1950s in the book it’s 1958, fight a shape-shifting monster that reverts to the shape of a clown when it can’t scare the kids. And then in 1985, all the kids return to their hometown to fight the monster again, this time as adults. When the way you beat the monster in the first place, is essentially an extension of a child’s imagination and play, the very idea that they can come back at all to find it again is almost out of the question. Mike Hanlon knows this, and even though he knows he will probably get some of his friends killed, he calls them all back.

It is a story of intense friendship and the bonds that kids can make and honor as adults. I was going to say I don’t know about friends from when I was 12 or 13 as the kids are in the book, but that is not true. Online, I still have friends from that age who, if I had a strange contract with, to come back and try to kill a monster that was haunting Doraville, GA, I probably would return to help them.

I read the book for the first time when I was the age of the kids. And I’ve read it several times since then, including when I was the age of the adults in the book. Now that I’m 50 I have another perspective on it. Each time I read this book something new pops out. Details emerge, parts of the story get clearer and clearer, and overall I think I enjoy it more each time I go back to dip into it again.

There are a certain number of aspects of the book that would not fly today. And that’s true but overall, if you’re interested in seeing a story where good friends connect in a very meaningful way, It is your book.

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“Aliens of London,” Doctor Who, Season 1, Episode 4 (1 of 2)

This show’s entry follows the style of Dan Harmon’s story circle.

Aliens of London

This episode is a little different from the other regular episodes, because there is a cliffhanger at the end, so changes to individual characters are noticeable, but not as strong as I expect from the end of the episode. The Doctor, Rose, Jackie, Mickey, and a new character Harriet, face the Slitheen, a group of body-snatching aliens bent on world destruction.

1) In a zone of comfort

Rose’s been traveling with the Doctor for a few days, but when she returns after an error, it turns out she’s been gone for a year. This understandably upset her home life. Her mom, Jackie, has been searching for her, and her boyfriend Mickey has been blamed for her disappearance. They’ll think him a murderer. Rose won’t tell her mother where she’s been because she wants to protect the Doctor, who is increasingly irritating her mom.

2) They desire something

Rose wants someone she can share her adventures openly. She pursues the Doctor, and Mickey, working out which way she wants to go. She doesn’t know who she can tell. As it comes out that she wants to share her adventures openly, it comes out he’s nine hundred years old. While she’s working out how she’ll deal with that kind of crazy age gap, a spaceship flies over them and plunges them into the next segment.

3) Enter an unfamiliar situation

The ship crashes into the Thames, after busting out a huge chunk of Big Ben’s clock face. The military has everything blocked up when they try to investigate. The Doctor ends up stuck in Rose’s world, watching coverage of the alien spaceship landing on the news, while everyone Jackie seems to know is there in the apartment with them, like it’s a party and they keep getting in the Doctor’s way.

4) Adapt to the situation

As we’re adapting, strange people show up instead of the prime minister. The news reporters know who they all are, but it is confusing to them why they are showing up instead of some other prominent people. Anytime they are asked why these people are showing up, they are told that it is none of their business and that they are in charge.

As they are gathering together, this is the first time we get to meet Harriet. She is a lower-ranking member, and no one else seems to know why she’s there either. It’s not for lack of trying, she’s trying to get her program seen, but since there was just a huge spaceship crash in the Thames, no one wants to talk to her which is understandable. Harriet, being a future Prime Minister, not that she knows, is in the way at the wrong time. She tries to bring people coffee. She does anything she can to try to get in front of the cabinet members. Of course, since they’re all aliens in disguise, they could care less about what she has to say.

Tosh from Torchwood is introduced, she is doing her doctor bit, examining the alien that has been brought in. She’s confused by its look and by its biology. A military general, who will later be captured by the Slitheen, tells her to keep it out of sight.
As Harriet tries her last-ditch coffee, the villains all gather in the boardroom and begin to laugh maniacally.

5) Get what they desired

Good things start to go their way. As characters begin to get what they desire, sometimes things come up roses, but other times it’s a bitter win.

Rose, who is looking for some kind of validation that she’s making the right choices, receives a TARDIS key from the Doctor. I like to think of this as less than the idea of giving a loved one your apartment key, hoping that they will come okay and live with you. And more of validation, that he wants her on the road with him.
The Doctor, can’t handle all the peopling anymore and slips away after giving that key to Rose. He sneaks down to see what’s going on. The UNIT troops immediately catch him, but he has a backdoor command that they quickly follow. All of a sudden he’s in charge of the troops. He takes them down so he can talk to Tosh about the space pig.
Mickey shows up, having seen the Doctor disappear. He faces up to Rose and Jackie, validating his innocence in her disappearance.
Harriet gets in to read the protocols and hides in the closet. She got in to sneak her plan in, then found out too much. The alien crisis is much bigger than she realized, and these are the aliens that are causing the trouble!

6) Pay a heavy price for winning

I think the heaviest price in this episode, is witnessed directly by Harriet. She’s hiding in the closet, she sees them kill the general and take his body.
We also witness, back with the doctor and Tosh that people who were not ready to encounter aliens, can be so nervous on their end that they shoot to kill, when the space pig is running and scared.

7) Return to their familiar situation

Jackie, trying to get her life back together and protect her daughter follows the instructions on the television and turns them in. The result is when the Doctor and Rose come back out of the TARDIS, they are met with helicopters and military. Rose thinks they’re going to jail, but the limo seems a bit posh. The Doctor says nope, not jail. They’re being escorted to #10 Downing St.

8) They have overall changed

Harriet usurps some control. She’s the biggest change in this show. She may not know exactly what’s going on, but she knows she’s the only one left who’s been elected in the building.

Doctor Who on DvD

Starting from zero

Sometimes I feel like I am starting from zero. In the last December, my mother died. I have felt like everything has turned upside down since then. I stopped writing my blog, leaving everything here on the webpage pretty static, which is sad because I just restarted this website. I deleted my Twitter account because I thought Elon Musk was being an ass. I deleted my Pinterest account because I deleted my Twitter account, and I was on a roll. I didn’t miss that one until just yesterday or the day before somewhere. I deleted my Instagram account. I deleted it because I felt like it, and because I barely used it. I had no idea what to use it for, but it feels like I ought to have one, and that I ought to know what to use it for, and that sort of confounds me. I didn’t kill Facebook though, but that still doesn’t mean I know what to do with my author page.

I’ve been struggling, to get started on a new book, while two people are reading the next book I intend to publish in the background. I’m not sure when I will get feedback from them, and I’m not sure how much I will change the books based on that feedback anyway, but it’s out for feedback, and that’s the way it is. It’s the second of my Dead Detective series. I’m hoping to have it published in the next couple of months. I keep trying to start this other book and I keep hitting a brick wall and turning around. It’s not exactly writer’s block, because I have other ideas. I just really want to develop this one, but it’s slow going.

Today I think I just wanted to get something out so that I wasn’t sitting around not having gotten anything out. Some days that’s the way it feels.

My health seems to have stagnated. I can’t honestly tell how much of it’s me being scared that I can’t move forward, or that I just can’t move forward. My left leg depends completely on compression hose or else it swells up like a giant balloon. I have to get them on early in the day or I’m not getting up. The trouble is I am stuck in a pattern where I forget to ask for it before it’s too late. It’s partially on purpose and it’s partially a habit that I’ve formed and it’s time to break the cycle. Especially since Wednesday, I want to get up because the lady’s coming to cut my hair. I need to get up a lot more often anyway, maybe I can use that to break my cycle.

I want to share more of what happened to me in the hospital, and I don’t know what the best platform is that I need to do it on. When I was initially suffering from Guillain-Barré, I was on some pretty heavy stuff to ease the pain and allow me to sleep. I slipped through a large portion of it in a coma, but I spent a large amount of time during that period doing what I can only describe as dreaming. Sometimes they were dreams where I went on strange adventures. Sometimes I faced some of my worst fears. Sometimes I could see things in the room around me, that I knew were not there. I visited places that don’t exist, and I’ve had a couple of NDEs. Sometimes I visited some of these dream places on multiple occasions in what I feel is great detail. I remember many of these experiences or dreams or whatever they were, just like they were any other memory to me, and that is the scariest aspect of what I experienced in the hospital.

I still have fight in me, but I no longer have the support of any kind of home health therapy situation. They have all come for multiple series of visits, and they have all come to the conclusion that either I have not progressed enough for them to continue, or I am not currently sick enough for them to continue. Now I think that’s laughable because I still can’t get out of bed on my own under my strength, but that doesn’t seem to change their opinion, even if I can wiggle my legs a lot, where I couldn’t move them at all at one time. So I have to figure out how to do this on my own, and I have to tell you it’s a lot easier when there’s an appointment and someone is coming to help me at a certain time to do some kind of exercises who has a stronger back than anybody else in the house. I’m committed, and I’ll figure it out, but like the social media accounts that I blew away above, I feel like I’m starting at zero. Maybe that’s a good thing. I think the only way therapy is coming back is if I do more hospital time.

So, I have a whole lot of things in my brain. They are experiences that I want to have, that I can’t have with this body, at least the way it is now, the strength level. I don’t have any core strength. And by that, I mean pretty much zero core strength. I’ve got a good bit of arm strength, but my hands don’t want to participate very much. One hand is curled up and doesn’t extend like it should. It’s technically flexed 100% of the time which is stupid because it’s kind of a strain on my arm for the shortened tendons or whatever’s pulling the fingers back and the other hand is okay but neither one of them can hold a fork. I’ve got this collection of what I call bicycle handles, that you can stick utensils or a toothbrush in and I can hold that, but it looks awkward and it’s heavy and some days are better than others. The weather does a complete number on me, and if a front comes through, it can make my arms hurt like heck despite any medication. It can get bad enough, that my only escape from it, is to pass out. This is not a choice of passing out, this is an “I have hit the absolute end of my pain threshold and the only way that my brain has of dealing with this is to pass out.” I don’t like days like that at all. It’s not that I’m not in control to the point where I couldn’t handle getting moved back into the bed or dealing with some problem or issue or making a decision, it’s just that I reach this point where I’m like “I gotta go to sleep,” and I lay there and think “I hurt too bad to deal with this right now.” I hug a pillow that I keep in the bed with me, close my eyes and listen to something, and try to go to sleep, and usually, before a minute runs out, I’m out for a few hours. Some days I put on headphones and listen to a recording of the rain, and sometimes I put on headphones and listen to rock music because it gives my brain too much to think about and I forget to think about the pain for a minute and that puts me out.

I have all kinds of adaptive ways I can do what I need to do. I’ve got software for dictating things like this entry into my computer. I’ve got an adaptive Xbox controller, that I can use with all kinds of games on my PC. That thing saves my life sometimes. It’s got inputs for all the buttons that are on a standard Xbox controller, but I only use a few of them. One of the things that I do like is that I can make the jump and the attack buttons use these two giant buttons on the controller with my hand. It’s easy to jump and swing your sword when you don’t have to worry about getting a single finger down on a keyboard key and you can use your whole hand to smack the big button.

Another problem that I wrestle with in my mind, is the idea of creating a YouTube channel. Besides the fact that I have no idea what kind of subject matter I would choose, it’s an almost insane idea for someone largely confined to a bed to get any footage beyond that of my crusty old face. I keep thinking it might be interesting to make some kind of animated thing, but that also requires a good deal of fingerwork on the computer that flat-out tires me before I can complete much. I don’t know, maybe I’ll figure it out at some point.

My daughter is a budding artist with a complete hatred for AI art. I see it as a tool that will never go away, so we may as well embrace it and learn to integrate it into our lives as a tool at our disposal. The header image for this post is AI art, created by Adobe Firefly with the prompt “starting from zero.” It’s better than I could create, and since my daughter hasn’t had the “hey, commissions can earn cash” lightbulb go off in her mind yet, I guess it’s AI art for me for a while.

Thanks for reading my rambling update.