ClaRK! Kent

Ah! I wondered where I'd seen her before! She was really good, I thought. She's also quite cute, in a 'her that used to be in Eastenders/My Family' kinda way.

I think that'll be revealed later in the series. I doubt RTD would just throw that in there for no reason, and they tend not to leave any story arcs unresolved by the end of the year, so I guess we'll see. Anyway, I really enjoyed that episode. Fun, lively, wordy and a great historical adventure. Not since The Mark of The Rani has the show done history that well, methinks. Way better than the last two "celebrity historical" episodes from the new show, ie: the one with Dickens, and the one with Queen Victoria. Jolly good fun, Martha seemed to come into her own a bit more, and Tennant/Shakespeare had some great banter.

Only one of those is 4 words, dolt. "Face of Boooooe!" "BOE!"

"I am Kesyer Soze."

Of his? Well, that song itself is pretty much an updated, ironic take on the traditional folk song "Peggy's Farm" and of the similarly traditional "Magee's Farm" he'd sung at a protest rally in 1963 I believe, so... in terms of that, his 'rocked-up' versions of his older stuff on the 1966 electric tour are pretty similar. Try to find the versions of "One Too Many Mornings" or "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" from the 1966 live album, Bootleg Series #4. Otherwise, the album Bringing It All Back Home, which "Maggie's Farm" is from has a lot of stuff with a similar sound. "On The Road Again", "Outlaw Blues", and especially "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" are in the same vein.

He would, however, be the 6th actor. Delgado, that guy from Deadly Assassin who's name I forget, Ainley, Roberts, (theoretically) Jacobi, Simm.

I think it's pretty much certain that they'll be "you are not alone", it's the worst-kept secret in the series.

Ringo wins this thread. Roughly, from the end of the Another Side period to when he made Blonde on Blonde, that's the creative zenith if nothing else. 3 of the best albums of the decade, the best live tour in rock history, and he wrote a book too! He also had a good period, a very good period in fact, in the mid-70s with Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, Desire and the Rolling Thunder Revue tour, but nothing up to the mid-60s stuff, really.

Today, I watched Laputa - Castle In The Sky as a part of my 'Miyazaki is a fucking GOD, watch all his stuff' kick, and I was fairly disappointed. The animation is lovely, the characters are cute and you're starting to get Stockholm Syndrome for them eventually, and they do a good enough job with the premise (isn't it some odd Japanese legend?) but... meh. The plot isn't exactly good, the steampunk stuff was done way better in basically every other film he's done, and watching it right after Howl's Moving Castle was just a big, big step back. 7/10 for a decent enough effort, but nothing overly special compared to what else is on offer from Studio Ghibli.

Highway 61 better than Blonde on Blonde: Are you quite alright in the head?

Again, I think it needs time to settle in without Billie, who was just as big a part of the re-invention as the Doctor was. Martha's got a lot of potential, she seems very similar to Rose in a lot of ways whilst also being tangibly different, which is what they need in the second companion in the same way that they needed that for the second Doctor. I'll agree with timmay that the monsters were poor, and that Tennant carried the entire episode on his back, which is promising as he'll have to do that for a lot of this season whilst people get familiar with Who-sans-Billie, but I thought the plot wasn't dreadful. I liked the intergalactic rent-a-cop idea, just wish they'd made the Judoon better. And the script was pretty standard, really, no better or worse than any of the other roughly-average episodes we've had so far.

"We've got air! How does that work?" "Meh, just be glad it does." Tennant no-sells everything.

I thought that was fairly good. I don't know why the Judoon had to have rhinoceros heads, but I'll let it slide. The writing was good, some of the one-liners were very funny ("So this guy in the helmet, where's he from? The planet Zovirax?") and it generally had a good atmosphere to it, despite being a bit of a retread of old ground with re-introducing the Doctor to Martha, in the last couple of minutes especially. Martha seems like she's going to be fun. A bit smarter, a bit older, a bit more flirtatious, and generally another step in the evolution from 'screaming girl' to 'proper character', as she seems very independent, quick-witted, and the like. A bit like Sarah-Jane, but far, far less cute. She's hot though. Again, I'll be reserving judgement until I've seen some of the later episodes, but it looks good. Already there's some stuff bouncing around about Mr. Saxon, who will be this season's Bad Wolf/Torchwood thread, and there was a nice flash of darkness from Tennant at the end. Good-oh.

FUCK YEAH! Ahem. Anyhow, judging by the trailer shown at the end of Runaway Bride, and my general web snooping/reading of the Radio Times, this should be a good season. Lots of cool monsters, some really fun historical trips, and a big-budget story in New York city... me likey, it's getting more like the New Adventures novels every day, which is awesome 'cos they were fucking ace. The first episode is likely not going to be anything special, they'll have to retread a lot of old ground about the Doctor character in order to introduce Martha, so my advice would be to wait until week two before starting to judge it too much. That said, I think this season will either make or break the new show, as Billie Piper was such a huge part of the relaunch, bridging the Doctors and generally being the go-to girl. Pretty much all of our revelations about the Doctor came from her POV, and she was built up as a thoroughly great character, knocking off even Ace and Sarah-Jane Smith for 'best-developed companion' honours, and as good as this new girl may or may not be, she'll struggle to capture the public like Rose Tyler did. The trailer/preview thing for the episode looks nice, hospital on the moon and all that. Those monsters with the rhino heads look disturbingly like Sontarans, which I hope isn't referenced. In 'classic Doc' news, I bought the New Beginnings DVD box set a while back, which has Keeper of Traken and Logopolis, Tom Baker's final two stories, with Peter Davison's introductory serial Castrovalva too. It's a really nice compilation, with a good running arc as the Master pops up in all three for the first time since Roger Delgado died, and Anthony Ainley is on fine form. Yay. The special features are awesome, especially the documentaries on Logopolis and Castrovalva, which feature Tom Baker actually opening up and being serious about his final months on the show, and why he left the programme. It's nice to see him actually opening up, 'cos usually he's very flippant about his time on the show. Plus, previously unseen rehearsal footage of him yelling at a director and throwing a, and I quote, "fucking silly prop", before imploring the hapless crew to "get on and shoot the damn dreary scene anyway" = ownage. Yay all round.

A lot of people recommend waiting 'til you're like 25ish, although I schooled it at level 18 or so with Quickenings, a lot of Phoenix Downs, and some good old-fashioned Sleep spells. In other news, I am officially in love with the Nihopalaoa accessory. Just used it as the lynchpin in my plan to kill the Lindwyrm (clouds, yay!), which my FAQ informed me was going to be an impossibly hard battle due the it's 230,000ish HP. Nah. Dispel, used Vaan with the Nihopalaoa to stick it with a Remedy to blind it, silence it, and put it to sleep, then hammered away with Aeroga (it's wind-vulnerable, yeeeeeees!) and the odd Alarm Clock to keep it snoozing until it hit the dirt after 5 minutes or so. Apparently it can use Restore to put like half of its HP back... not when it's asleep, though.