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Have you ever considered that the Prime Directive is not only not ethical, but also illogical, and perhaps morally indefensible?

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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • In “The menagerie”, pt 1, Kirk explicitly states he only met Pike the once when he was made Fleet Captain.

    I actually think this one is a fun way of playing with that established dialogue in an unexpected way. The actual exchange goes like this:

    MENDEZ: You ever met Chris Pike?

    KIRK: When he was promoted to Fleet Captain.

    MENDEZ: About your age. Big, handsome man, vital, active.

    KIRK: I took over the Enterprise from him. Spock served with him for several years.

    It’s entirely possible that “when he was promoted to Fleet Captain” and “I took over the Enterprise from him” are two separate events. And if that’s the case, then you might as well sprinkle in some additional meetings in between. I don’t think it’s the original intent of the scene in “The Menagerie”, but it’s a valid alternative interpretation.

    The Gorn thing is admittedly a bit tougher to explain, but I think it’s mostly a Kirk problem - Spock doesn’t really say anything to indicate whether the Gorn are familiar to him or not. And I don’t think Kirk has me the Gorn (yet) in SNW?


  • Okay, rewatch complete.

    I do think that anyone who genuinely believes that something like “Space Babies” (which, to be clear, I did not particularly enjoy) was somehow out of line needs to pop back to 2025 and really look at what RTD was doing in his original run. A garbage bin belching after eating Mickey The Idiot kind of says it all.

    This episode does a very, very good job of introducing the Doctor, and the basics of what he’s all about (no Time Lords or Gallifrey to be mentioned just yet) to a new audience. Rose really was the best idea RTD had, allowing her to serve as the audience proxy moving forward. The focus on Rose’s “domestics” was also a very good move, one not really replicated in the following seasons (though RTD certainly tried, and came pretty close with Donna’s family).

    The Nestene are a bizarre villain to open with - it’s like RTD has a thing for smacking new viewers in the face with the goofiest things he can think of, just to set the expectations. Armies of department store mannequins in the streets of London are truly a sight to behold.

    The episode isn’t shot particularly dynamically, but it gets the job done.

    One thing that I absolutely hate is Murray Gold’s scoring for this era. The opening music over the montage of Rose’s daily routine encapsulates it nicely - that driving percussion over the orchestral stuff just doesn’t work for me at all. I’m going to try not to harp on it through the Tennant era, but I think Gold’s work improves a lot once Matt Smith takes over. “The Doctor’s Theme” is fantastic, though.




  • Welcome to the regenerated Retrospective Discussions! The idea is simple: we discuss each episode as normal, but there’s no need to pretend the subesequent years of stories never happened - feel free to reference later continuity, compare it to future episodes, etc.

    As long as the threads are minimally active, I’ll post one every Sunday until The War Between the Land and the Sea comes out, at which point we’ll shift are attention to that for a few weeks.

    As for myself…I haven’t rewatched “Rose” yet, and haven’t seen it in a few years, so I’ll be back after I’ve rectified that situation.










  • Toronto @ Montreal

    Once again, I saw a bit of this one live, and caught the highlights for the rest. This Winnipegger is never going to be upset about watching the Argos lose.

    Montreal looked very well put-together. I’ve got to agree with the officials on the Arbuckle “forward pass” - there didn’t seem to be an eligible receiver anywhere near that ball. Toronto’s O Line was a bit of a disaster.

    That one Toronto TD was great, though - love the effort.




  • I think New Who has definitely danced on the razor’s edge, getting by with narrative shortcuts as long as the emotional resonance lands. And when a story doesn’t land with you, those shortcuts are very visible.

    I actually do like the small bits of exploration of the a Timeless Child that RTD has done using it to inform the Doctor’s personality in new ways. It would be great to see a Jo Martin story or something like that, though.

    Trying another “Flux”-type season could be interesting too - sort of a hybrid between the old serials and more modern episodes. Hell, the eight-episode seasons are practically begging for it.


















  • I’m sure more details will emerge, but:

    Under the legislation, someone who is certified or licensed to perform specific skilled work in a province or territory that wants to take on a job doing the same thing for a federally regulated project will be deemed to have met that federal standard.

    The government says recognizing provincial standards will open up job opportunities to workers and give employers a larger candidate pool to draw upon.

    The bill only recognizes provincial standards at the federal level. Workers certified or licensed in one province that want to work in another will only be able to do so when that province or territory agrees to drop their trade barriers.

    The federal government has rules and standards for businesses on top of regional requirements that apply across provincial and territorial borders.

    Under the legislation, provincial standards for goods and services will be recognized as having already met federal standards. That means a province’s organic standards for food, or energy efficiency standards for appliances, will be treated as having met federal standards.