carmen_lj | Entries tagged with the thick of it

In a determined attempt to make there be less tabs open in my browser, I'm blogging about All The Stuff that's currently open as a result of "ooh, I should blog about that." Obviously, it's all brilliant, fascinating stuff:

The Thick of It is back on the telly! Having two whole British programmes on that I love is a novelty of delight. Also, there's lots and lots of Peter Mannion and the Opposition, who are now in fact part of the Coalition Government, but I keep forgetting to call them that. Whole episodes with neither Nicola Murray or Malcolm Tucker! And yet they are still wonderful. Here is a lovely clip where Malcolm uses Star Wars as a metaphor:
Dragon Age III is confirmed! Not very many details but enough to make me think there's going to be lots of armour for companions and more than three bloody dungeon maps. Not that I minded much at the time, but then I played Skyrim and understood the problem better. Which reminds me, I still haven't played ME3. Mostly cause I need my Perfect Game on a computer that still works for ME2. I have my Perfect Game in DA: I get to be Queen. Which means that ficwise, fandom tends to pander to me a lot. Which is nice. Still don't know what my Perfect Game in DA2 is. Mostly because one character lost his sense of humour and became a right crazy dude between appearances.
Scientists can take pictures that can discern between different types of atomic bonds which is pretty damned amazing.
This is not my drinks cabinet. I wish it was.
Here is a beautiful thing on Tumblr, and by beautiful I mean a crossover comic page between Doctor Who and Portal.
Nick Clegg apologised about fucking students over re tuition fees. And by apologised, I don't mean he apologised about breaking his party's promise not to raise tuition fees in England and Wales, but he apologised for making the fucking promise. Because our deputy Prime Minister is a twit. Then someone made a song out of it (it's currently at no 65 in the singles chart; Clegg has okayed it and requested profits got to charity). Which was on the national news. Here it is:

Bet that's brightened yer afternoon. And, yes, he always looks that sad. I like to think it's cause he knows he's kind of destroyed his party. (Witness their collapsed vote in the Scottish and local elections, though I suppose the real test to most people's minds is the next General Election.)
There are some gorgeous pictures here of space, for they are the winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2012.
Daleks! A fantastic selection of Daleks that you can buy for only £3000 a pop! I especially like the incredibly stringent terms and conditions down the bottom of the page that basically say "stick it in your living room and talk about it, but do anything else with it and we'll sue you." Cheering.

So in a half-hearted attempt to try and make my books fit on the shelves (I am being SO GOOD and actually removing ones that I'm pretty sure I'm never going to read or I read and hated, even so, still stuck with a couple of hundred Doctor Who books that I am mostly hrrm at) I found the The Thick of It, The Missing DoSAC (I bet I've got that capitalisation horribly wrong) Files and got a wee bit distracted reading it instead. It is almost entirely lovely, which I put down to half the writing and half Peter Capaldi, for despite him merely being in some pictures, his voice was VERY LOUD as I was reading. What I didn't like was that in order to give it the feel of a missing documents folder (I assume this was the reason), the pages were all perforated along the top, and still stuck together, so I had to tear the blasted things apart. Mostly this went badly, for I am not good with perforated paper. And tearing the pages of books is NO FUN AT ALL. So much judgieness unto whoever designed that thing.

Also, catching up on Torchwood, I saw episode six last night. Which was painful. Very painful. There were three things I liked: ( spoilers, yo )

Other than those few minutes, it was awful. If you're going to discuss the banality of evil, you do not need smash your audience over the head with anvils. Repeatedly. That hurts. It hurts a lot. It was so bad I don't even care about how much handwaving they're asking to audience to do about how the central premise of the story works. I have to leave it at that or I shall start on a massive rant. And I know I should stop watching, but I really want to see the Trek dudes.

A NICE THING: Torchwood Babiez, the final part. I spluttered into my poor tea three times before I finished it.

MORE NICE THINGS: You Told the Drunks I Knew Karate, an Amy/Rory vid by

settiai and Black Dove, a River Song vid by

kiki_miserychic. Both just make me ridic gleeful and filled with joy at these characters what I love.

I made a list; I like lists:

Plato's Stepchildren is making me ALMOST CRY. Yeah, TOS's Plato's Stepchildren - no running away till you've heard me out! Channel One, formally Virgin One, is doing a promo for their TOS reruns and they've taken Uhura's speech to Kirk when she's forced to kiss him and OMG, Nichols' delivery is so good which oddly, since it's surrounded by PLATO'S STEPCHILDREN, I never noticed before. But strip all that awfulness away, and combine it with a nice montage and suddenly it's kinda awesome. Her voice is so beautiful and she says "and I am not afraid" and I may have FLAILED SLIGHTLY THE FIRST TIME.
It is one of my favourite things about Uhura that she is allowed that emotional vulnerability and it works for me pretty much wholly because of how Nichols plays it: not as "omg, I am so scared," but as a woman who has enough confidence and self-knowledge that she's comfortable admitting when she's afraid and when she needs emotional support.
Everyone has seen this Sherlock/Doctor Who crossover vid, yes? If not, it's pretty goshdarned good. FEEL FREE TO MAKE THIS BEEB!
I am Backing Stuff Up. It's very dull.
Getting a smidgen excited about the return of SJA because I saw a wee clip and OMG ( clip spoilers )

Also, from an interview selenak linked to is this frankly awesome quote from RTD: “We talked about it a lot beforehand,” says Davies. “I know there’s a feeling that she’d have got divorced, and there was a theory that she’d be living on her own in Wales in a little cottage – some of the novels did this – and you think, ‘Nice idea, but actually that’s absolutely betraying the way we left her’. We left her with the promise of happiness, of adventure, of love and joy, and you can’t be cynical and undercut that by saying, ‘Oh, she’s a drug addict now! Her husband left her, she’s lonely, her life is bitter’. That’s just interfering with classic Doctor Who and rewriting what we were promised. So I was absolutely strict about that.”

Which is not exactly how I feel but it's PRETTY DAMN CLOSE and more-or-less the main reason that I so very Do Not Like so much the the NAs.
I sort of inhaled The Thick of It after reading this post of meddow's. It's Yes, Minister twenty years later with the swearing - there is an awful lot of swearing - left in and, basically, it's brilliant, brillianter and then, omg, BLOODY BRILLIANT. I did have a bit of a problem with the first season as I recgonised the name Chris Langham but couldn't remember from where and looked it up and, uh, yeah, that. I remember that being in the news, though I had no idea who actor was as an actor at the time and, WEIRDLY, knowing someone was downloading child pornography did slightly interfere with my ability to enjoy the show. Mostly I scrunched up my eyes when he was onscreen and tried to pretend he was Bill Nighy.

Anyway, then Langham went off to have a trial and go to jail and there were the specials and, oh, SO GOOD. The Opposition are AMAZING. It is possible Peter Mannion is my favourite character; I do love them all really, but he's exactly the sort of vaguely competent politican who has zero time for pandering to his media image that means I end up liking him even if I find his politics appalling and Roger Allam is so gloriously deadpan and CONSTANTLY LOLARIOUS. (Randomly, I keep getting Allam mixed up with Kevin McNally.) And then there is season three and there is a political comedy where EVERY EPISODE gets to pass the Bechdel test which is like Extra Bonus Points on top of the marvoulessness that is Nicola Murray MP. And my very favourite bits are, I thinkit is 304 and 305, where there is Nicola and her dudes and Peter and his dudes and there is GLORIOUS COMEDY LOLS pay-off for so much character stuff it makes me utterly glee.

And I haven't even mentioned Peter Capaldi, who is AS MAGIC. Sweary magic.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Come along, Ponds

i should like a hat like that

Entries tagged with the thick of it

A list of stuff

books and bad telly

It's not that easy to come up with Das Kapital in the back of the cab, Glen

Profile

April 2017

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags