Donna Noble! Brainy specs! Ancient Rome! Giant bees! Robotic claw! The Ood! Martha in green slime! SO excited!

Season 4 of Doctor Who comes to the SciFi Channel on April 18 at 8:30 p.m. EST. They’re starting (as usual) with the hour and a half Christmas special from this year, and in subsequent weeks it’ll be one hour at 9:00 p.m.

Image credit: LJ user shannonsequitur.

Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood. Episode called “Ghost Machine”. Hasn’t aired yet in the U.S., don’t know if it will, but it’s on YouKnowWhere. Actor: John Normington.

He played the Fool in King Lear when I was in Stratford, and this is not an instance of fangirl squeeing. In my opinion, Lear was the RSC’s clinker of the season, and casting seemed to be part of the problem. Lear was played by Colin Redgrave, who was about 65 at the time, but looked younger — in fact, looked too young to be moaning about his age and death and decay and senility, especially when he so often shared the stage with Normington as the Fool.

Imdb.com tells me that Normington is only two years older than Redgrave, but to look at them on stage, I would have sworn there was a ten to twenty year age gap (though what really killed their scenes was the chemistry gap).

So it should surprise no one when I say that a bit part as an old man in an armchair suited Normington perfectly.

As for Torchwood itself, I’m not thrilled with it. It seems to have gotten pretty decent ratings in the UK when it aired last fall, but it seems to be missing something. It isn’t cohesive somehow, and though the characters are all okay, they’re a bit vanilla somehow. Maybe the show just needs time to settle into itself.

Mostly I watch it because I’m curious about what they’re going to do with Captain Jack, who is a very different person than the one who flirted with Rose and called it business. Not sure what’s gotten to him between there and here — responsibility, death? The next interesting question is: Given that he’s going to appear back on Who later this season, will we see the lighthearted Jack of season one or the shoot first, ask questions later, super-enigmatic Jack that he often is in Torchwood? And how much does the pre-/post-watershed scheduling difference between the two programs play into the difference in his characterization?

The Harry Potter jokes come from the episode broadcast on April 7, the title of which grabbed my attention: “The Shakespeare Code.” Definately a fun romp through Elizabethan England, with several scenes filmed at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London, whee! Besides the HP amusement, there are no less than six instances in which the Doctor quotes Shakespeare to Shakespeare (though Will comes up with “to be or not to be” on his own), as well as other references to the Macbeth witches and their “blasted heath,” the “Dark Lady” of the sonnets, and the scholarly debate concerning Shakespeare’s sexuality (”Ooh, fifty-seven academics just punched the air…”).

I particularly appreciated that the episode revolved around a Shakespeare play that is not Romeo and Juliet! Instead, they used the less known Love’s Labors Lost, playing on the fact that there may have been a sequal, now lost, called Love’s Labors Won. [Tangent: Now I want to read Love's Labors Lost next month, it's one I don't know.]

After so much Renaissance lit in college, though, a few things jumped out at me as odd. Though the Doctor and his companions sometimes dress to be period-appropriate when they time-travel, but this time they did not, meaning that Martha was wearing jeans throughout. When we discussed plays like As You Like It or Twelfth Night, in which the heroine spends most of the play pretending to be a boy, it was suggested to us that crossdressers like Rosalind and Viola might not have seemed so absurd: because no women wore pants, anyone wearing pants would have been assumed to be male. Of course that sounds ludicrous now, but let me suggest this: if someone is wearing a skirt, even if the person has boyishly short hair and a flat chest, at a glance, wouldn’t we assume that the person is female? And of course, the more layers you wear, the easier it gets. Confusion over Martha’s gender would have been an interesting twist, but this episode didn’t go there.

Another cultural detail involved the Doctor’s constant quoting. Though most of it was Shakespeare, in one instance he referred to “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas. Shakespeare liked the line and said he might use it, to which the Doctor replied “You can’t, it’s someone else’s.” The line is funny, but it’s also true that Shakespeare and his contemporaries borrowed (and stole) from each other like mad. At the time, copyright existed to protect printers’ profits from being undercut by unauthorized editions, not to protect authors’ intellectual property. So while the Doctor’s tone of voice might have deterred Will, his words alone probably would not.

I also wonder whether the writer of this episode has ever tried to write with a pen and inkwell: twice we see Shakespeare writing late at night, ending up with his forehead on the pages in front of him. He should have had ink spots all over his face from that!

Spiralling down to the most nitpicky bit of the episode, we see Shakespeare reciting “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” to his “Dark Lady,” when in fact that sonnet is one of those addressed to a “fair youth.” The writer got major kudos from me for avoiding Romeo and Juliet, but he did lose a few for choosing one of the most well-known sonnets.

Before I sound bitter, though, let’s end with a bit of fan love.

Shakespeare: And I say, “A hart for a hart, a deer for a deer.”
Martha: I don’t get it.
Shakespeare: Then give me a joke from Freedonia.
Martha: Ok. Shakespeare walks into a pub and the landlord says, “Oy mate, you’re Bard.”

Image credits: LJ users ladybrick (”fan boy”) and atellix (all the others).

My roommate and spent the middle of March apartment hunting, under the impression that we would have to move when our lease ran out on June 1. Our current building is gradually being rennovated and sold as condos, but as it turns out, that process is going more slowly than the owners anticipated (as I understand it, real estate is a buyer’s market right now), so they’re letting us renew the lease for another year. So that means I don’t get to be rid of our stained carpets, stained countertops, and finicky shower, but I am very glad to not have to move. Besides, I love the area around us, so I’m glad not to leave just yet.

School is almost finished for the spring — my last class is next Tuesday. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Research Paper Land, Group Presentation Land, and Final Project Land, but the end is in sight. Of course, there’s still a last paper, project revisions, and poetry revisions to do in the next week, but still — light, tunnel, yeah.

Funny little story involving the denim bag with the Cherokee alphabet that my cousin made for me. It was sitting behind me in class last week when my classmate, A., looks at it and says, “Is that the Cherokee alphabet?” I say yes it is — but looking at it, the top (where it says what it is) is hidden in a fold of cloth. “How did you know?!” I ask. Apparently he studied linguistics in college. Impressive!

Baseball season has started, which is a big deal up here! I don’t pay much attention, and I still know more about what’s going on in baseball than I ever have.

While we’re on sports, the Boston Marathon was just over a week ago. The weather was dreadful, but not quite dreadful enough to call it off. I was at school all day and the marathon ends very near here, so when I went wandering around 2:30, it was just ending and there were lots of runners everywhere, each with a support group of friends and family as well as a bright orange Adidas bag and a silver mylar blanket (looks like aluminum foil for humans, invented for the space program, I think?)

Since then, it’s warmed up and finally feels like spring! It was so strange to think that school was about to end when I was still wearing my wool coat every day.

Despite being swamped, I did finally finish season 3 of Babylon 5, so I’m in great suspense about how Sheridan will get out of that pit! Triumph over a Balrog, perhaps? I just know that he does, because (refrain) I’ve seen season 5… But the series makes it pretty clear that the outcome is never the point (we know from the first episode that Londo and G’Kar die at each other’s hands); what matters is how we get there.

I highly recommend Radioland Murders, which is kind of a cross between Clue and A Prarie Home Companion. Good fun! I’m half way through The Emperor and the Assassin — it’s moving very slowly, and I’m not sure how the two plots are going to come together…with luck I’ll have a chance to finish it tomorrow night. And then I’ve saved Twelfth Night for last, so maybe Friday or later in the weekend, and then Liz will actually get her DVDs back! They’re coming, I promise.

In between, I’ve also discovered (after the clip I linked to here has made me curiouser and curiouser) that lots and lots of Doctor Who can be found on YouTube…

The big excitement of last weekend was the Loreena McKennitt concert I went to on Saturday! Fabulous…but I think it needs a post of its own!

(And if that weren’t enough fandoms for one post: I turned on the TV this afternoon and hey look! There’s Inara — or rather, Morena Baccarin — on Stargate SG1, wearing a very Inara sort of costume, just with funny-colored contacts. No idea how old this episode is, only that it’s post-Richard Dean Anderson. But yay for Firefly cast.)

Later: Evil Dead: The Musical. What the hell??

I had two job interviews last week. The first was for a job I really wanted, as a guide at a local museum (a colonial house), and though I thought it went quite well, it apparently did not go quite well enough. Got the official rejection yesterday morning.

The second was an office assistant job in the payroll office at the college and consisted mainly of the interviewer talking at me for thirty or forty minutes (nice fellow, don’t get me wrong, but definately a talker). I was at the low point of a brush with a cold that day, and I thought I hadn’t come off as well as I might have – hard to get a word in at the best of times, and it was not the best of times. But he got back to me this morning and offered me the job and could I start Friday? Since it’s Payroll, part of my job would be delivering timecards all over campus every other Friday. It’s not much, but I’m feeling insecure about turning anything down right now and I’m leaning toward the idea of working two part-time jobs – especially since this seems so minimal. So I accepted the offer.

Coursework has been pretty light thus far, but it’s starting to pick up. I have two courses: a requisite overview of magazine publishing and a course in magazine design. Design started in earnest on Tuesday, as we had to present our first rough drafts of layouts for pages of mock-magazines. The overview will, I hope, finally kick into gear next week as we start work on the big project of the course (also revolving around a made-up magazine).

In lighter news, I’ve discovered television this month, partly due to Courtney’s influence, partly due to my having too much time on my hands, and partly due to the fact that I have a tv in my room. I’m not sure which is more is more novel, owning a television or having such a thing in my bedroom. Shockingly decadant. So I’ve discovered DS9, the new Doctor Who, Heroes, Gilmore Girls, and those are just the ones I’ve decided I like. Plus I’ve been going through Courtney’s collection of Buffy and Angel DVDs - after all, it is Joss Whedon…