Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Quit FIFA now!

So an organization runs an election, A wants to get re-elected, B is the challenger. Suddenly B is accused of bribery, then B revenges and claims A is corrupted too, then A sets up an inquiry to investigate B, then B pulls out of the election, then A also sets up an inquiry to clear his own name, then A is "elected" unopposed as the only candidate. All under the sun as if the rest of the world are all blind.

I said it before, and I am glad that someone else is also saying it: can someone break away and start a rebel league? Clearly it is impossible for this organization to "improve" from within: the FIFA bosses are elected by such a small number of national FAs; the bosses and the national FAs give benefit to each other and it is their mutual advantage to keep things as they are; the national FAs are not accountable by the greater public either (say if some government wants to investigate this scandal, they will say this is "political interference" and suspend the country from FIFA).

So why not take this chance to quit it altogether? You have an unhappy English FA (of course, none of this would have happened if England won the 2018 bid, or just lost less embarrassingly - they are just losers of the game, but still), and a lucrative English Premier League. Try to get one or two more European countries and leagues on board - this is where the money (i.e. power) are. Who cares about football corruption somewhere in Africa or central America anyway? Then you might, just might, be able to start a revolution...

Friday, May 20, 2011

A TARDIS inside a TARDIS inside a TARDIS inside a TARDIS...

First off, a brief word about Episode 3; I think it is a perfectly fine episode. As far as filler episodes go, it is actually very good and very carefully constructed and the twist is unexpected yet sensible.

Now back to this episode...

Doctor Who Episode 6.04: The Doctor's Wife
I didn't like the idea of a "personification" of the TARDIS. But somehow it worked really well, and I think it is all down to the actress pulling it off very convincingly. Even down to the accent; I quite like that accent.

Anyway here is a list of random thoughts:

1. So, Idris (the "soul" of the TARDIS trapped in human body) travels using the freshly-constructed TARDIS, which then materialised inside the Tennant-era TARDIS, which has been archived inside the current TARDIS.

2. Rory dies again. I've counted that he dies on average every other episode (only counting episodes that he actually travels along: that's episode 7 and 9 of 6,7,8,9,12,13 in Series 5, and episodes 2,3,4 out of 1-4 in Series 6.)

3. Oh no, the swimming pool! Ditched!

4. "The only water in the forest is the river." Hinting at River Song-Amy Pond struggle?

Saturday, May 07, 2011

River Song with a gun

So, our brains were all melting after this episode. Despite being a big Moffat fan I'm less and less convinced about the grand scheme of things. I think his best episodes are the ones when everything has to be resolved completely in one episode (Blink, The Girl in the Fireplace). I can only hope I will be proved totally wrong. Below are some questions that are either big mysteries that will be resolved, or just glaringly big plot holes.

Doctor Who Episode 6.02: Day of the Moon

Observations:

(1) Amy and the Silence:

Amy surely is somehow related to the creation or origin of the Silence: "You will bring the Silence". Is this related to her "quantum" pregnancy and the little girl?

But at the same time it is the Silence who bring the girl up by putting her in the spacesuit - possibly even create her (from Amy?) in the first place. The quick flashes as she wakes up in the proto-TARDIS clearly indicates that the Silence did something to her during that long period of time.

Back to the Future, anyone?

(2) Doctor-Silence similarity:

It is a mad theory, but I can't help notice that the Silence are in some sense similar to Time Lords. They attempted to build a TARDIS; they can manipulate people's memory, which is not dissimilar to Time Lord's abilities (for example, the Doctor planted the memory of "something blue" into Amelia in The Big Bang). This "dark" side of the Doctor (?) is described in Moffat's short story Continuity Errors, where lots of ideas have found their ways into the TV series (a planet-sized library; time-travelling archaelogist; "a hero to many"; rewrite a person's past to achieve a particular aim for himself).

The girl can regenerate, so surely she is at least part- Time Lord. Why would the Silence want to bring up a (part-) Time Lord?

(3) Spacesuit-Cyberman similarity:

The spacesuit is some sort of a womb to sustain life, and it chases down the little girl to "eat" her, much like the cyberman head opens and tries to "eat" Amy in The Pandorica Opens.

(4) Cracks vs Silence:

By creating this memory-erasure plot point, now Moffat can insert anything back in the show's history at any point - just say that the characters have forgotten them. So Series 5 he has this crack thing which erases anything he doesn't like, and now he can insert anything he likes.

Nitpicks:

(1) Episode 1 cliffhanger:

Why didn't the Doctor question Amy why she shoots? (He probably have deduced a lot of things by now, though; just not saying.) And why didn't he confront the astronaut / the Silence immediately, which is his usual behaviour?

(2) Dead Silent:

Can a dead slient remove itself from people's memory? I mean, after I killed it, if I looked away do I forget it? If yes then people all over the world would be busy looking at dead alien bodies repeatedly wondering "What is that?" and forgetting... If no then since 1969 there should be plenty of documentation about the Silence?

(3) Doctor forgetting:

The Doctor also forgets what the Silence looks like initially. So presumably he should also forget all the events soon afterwards, like humans forgetting the killings in 1969??

[EDIT 20/5:]  (4) Telepathic spacesuits?

Actually I just came across this: the little girl calls the President and says the spaceman is coming at her, so she's not inside the spacesuit yet at that point, so how can she call the president (unknowingly using the spacesuit's communication-system-hacking technology)? Unless you tell me that the spacesuit is telepathic or something...

Nice bits:

(1) So the reason that River Song is an archaelogist is to give her a Tomb Raider moment then... visually spectacular too. Give her more things to shoot please...

(2) Another heartbreak when River realises that was her last kiss...