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youremyonlyhope · 1 year ago

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The Devil's Chord

Been looking forward to this one.

The Devil's Chord is a tritone right? Like the Devil's Interval? Ok yep, Wikipedia confirms since it says ""Devil's Chord" redirects here. For the Doctor Who episode, see The Devil's Chord." Yay, the one little bit of music theory I remembered.

The Simpsons starts with a Devil's Interval, once again one of the few things from music theory I remember. 4 knocks. I feel like Jinkx is truly everywhere now. A year or so ago when I heard she was cast in a Doctor Who episode I was like "oh, that's nice" but didn't really know who she was. And now I feel like she's literally everywhere all at once. Cute way to bring in the intro with the piano. Though if I see one person claim that this is the first time the Doctor Who Theme was played differently, I'm slapping them in the face with Demons of the Punjab. Oh and it coming out of the Jukebox as it finishes is cute too. Ruby's a girl after my own heart. Why have you never done it before Doctor? Seriously. Also who says they want to go to the Titanic? I'm with Ruby in picking a historical moment that's fun, the place I wanna go is to see opening night of Pippin on Broadway in 1972. We're just days before my dad was born. That's crazy. Ruby, girl, that dress could actually blend in decently well. But glad you're considering it. God. Ncuti in that outfit make me so happy. Ever since the first set pictures leaked. The afro with the mustache reminds me of pictures of my grandpa in the 70s. God I love historical episodes. I was warned there'd be no Beatles songs. Which really does make me sad. But knowing the Maestro steals music, sure. Doctor stop knocking with 4 knocks. Back to the no Beatles music thing. I wonder if they'll at least, at the end when I assume everything gets fixed, do one of the famous songs that the Beatles covered? Like Till There Was You from Music Man? Or maybe Twist and Shout? So I vaguely saw a gifset showing various older women. I scrolled past it quickly when I realized it was Doctor Who because of a gif or two of Mrs. Flood and I didn't want spoilers. I took from that little bit of context that she might be popping up everywhere. Is this Mrs. Flood again? Do I just forget what she looks like? What is the Maestro's motivation to do this? If you love music so much, why not make people make even more of it? So canonically, we don't know where Susan is? I've always assumed she's just lived her life out with whatshisface wherever the Doctor left them. Doctor, baby, why are you laughing? Oh the old lady probably remembers the time before music died. Doctor, I'm sure you realize you're basically using Ruby as bait. NO. No the laughing arpeggio again. The Giggle. No not the old lady. His soul is torn in half. God I still hate this stupid bigeneration thing so much. The gods? Lord Temporal? Bound in salt? We're really sticking with the salt thing. [Playing the Saxon theme off-key] Ok the specificity of just the captions mentioning Saxon really really concerns me. Only can go back to 1963, like how the Doctor limited the TARDIS under the Master's control to just go between 2007 (2008? Stupid RTD timeline) and the end of the universe. Speaking Turkish, I'm sorry what? "I thought that was non-diagetic." I had to look it up to make sure, but wow that's a good 4th wall breaking joke. AND it leans into the story theme. How can a song have so much power? Have you HEARD Carol of the Bells? Who is the oldest one? Also I better not see a single person complain about Clara's Impossible Girl-ness ever again when we've got Ruby making it literally snow and manifest her memories into real life. Maple Leaf Rag! I was gonna say in the opening that if it's 1925 and they want something fun, they got plenty of ragtime right there to pick from. Plus jazz. I was gonna say I don't know how I feel about John being the one to save the day, but then Paul joined him. I guess I can accept that. "The one who waits is almost here" Girl what does that even mean? If it's not Dhawan!Master I don't want them. Yasss Rhapsody in Blue. See this was a perfect opportunity to get the rights to Twist and Shout like come on. Raining indoors. Oh and there's the kid again. I thought he was a projection or something, but I guess he's real.

I definitely enjoyed that episode a lot. Though the There's Always A Twist At The End was a bit much, even for me the girl who loves musical theatre.

I wanna know what the notes that saved them were though.

Ok I dived into a Reddit thread to see what the answer was. No one gave a straight answer. Google wasn't helpful either (especially with their stupid AI thing). It seems the consensus is that it's the final chord of A Day In the Life. I'm gonna take their word for it, my knowledge of music theory ends at me even knowing what the Devil's Interval was in the first place.

Also two things that came to mind as I proofread this:

The Doctor being called the Lord Temporal makes me wonder if they're gonna try to say he's one of these beings from outside the universe. Since it could be possible given he's the Timeless Child.

...Actually. In the process of typing this, my mom asked me a question and when I came back I literally could not remember what the second thing was. And I've spent like 10 minutes trying to remember by rereading the post. I can't remember. It's totally gone. So, I may edit this with whatever my second thought was. Maybe I was wondering if Ruby would be the one who is like the Toymaker and Maestro? I feel like that wasn't it though, but it was something I thought of.

#hope watches doctor who #ignore me if you want

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goldentailedmermaids · 4 years ago

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Bear with me: WEREBEARS

So here’s the thing. In my slow, mad, terrible and quite tedious descent into academic madness, carrying with it its load of essays, papers and source materials necessary for my master’s thesis in which I make everything as gay as a rainbow perfused with glittery iced-coffee as possible given the time period I am working on, I have come across an interesting piece of lore that I think has gone overlooked by fanfic authors in the wider genre of transformative works. Werebears. You know... Like a werewolf, but with bears.

So my research takes me first to the Indo-Europeans whose words for bears were euphemisms bypassing the very essence of the bear, using words describing it without naming it to designate them. Probably because they were afraid of them, big monstrous beasts towering over them with claws made of darkness and a matter as destructive as steel. The name, here, the true name, is something to fear, something to never utter and forget lest you conjure the very demon you seek to keep at bay, into the dark of the forests rather than in the midst of civilization. Based on that we may infer the fact that bears belonged to the domain of monstrosity and darkness, something to be concealed.

Then - OH! THEN! - comes the Saga of King Hrolf Kraki and the Anglo Saxon poem Beowulf, and Bodvar Bjarki, and Hott/Hjalti, the knightly duo, which is a theme widely used across the literary production of Europe in the XIth-XIIth century. The knightly duo (or duo chevaleresque) is this unit formed by two separate parts, aka, two knights, who, together incarnate the wholesomeness of the ideals of chivalry. Almost like a marriage. So what is interesting in Bodvar’s case is that he can turn into a gigantic bear. He is born from Bera and Bjorn, Bjorn, cursed to be a bear, Bera, cursed to love one. Here, the bear is heavily linked with mankind. Bears are our savage doppelganger in a way. We turn bears when we return to some form of primal savagery, to darkness and violence and chaos. Because bears can stand up on two feet and can grab things with their hands. They eat food humans eat and hibernate most of the winter, which humans did at the time (in a way). So bears = humans.

Bodvar himself emulate this dichotomy. He is a bear at night, a human during the day. BUT!!! This does not stop here!!! Bodvar, as established by the way he goes out of his way to turn Hott into Hjalti (which roughly translates as “warrior”) by having him drink some dragon’s blood needs Hjalti by his side.Bodvar roughly translates as “bear” and Hott as “man”. So not only does Bodvar illustrates in himself the dichotomy, but he also needs to express it in the world he has agency over. Because his nature is not of his own choice, but the way he exists in society is. So Bodvar needs Hott. Bear needs Man.

And just as a princess turns her bear lover into a prince, Hott allows Bodvar to exist within a society that fears and reveres him.

So basically, werebears are creature of halves in search for completion to exist in the world. It’s deeper than Twilight’s impregnation. It’s the need for the human, rather than the need for a pack. It’s the need for one person while alone. Werebears needs a human (preferably one of their same gender) to be their doppelganger, their avatar in the world, lest they become that monstrous beast the Indo-europeans were so afraid about.

#lore #werebear #mythology #I AM SORRY FOR THE RAMBLING BUT I LOVE QUEERING SHIT UP SO MUCH!!!#EVERYTHING IS GAY IF YOU'RE BRAVE ENOUGH KIDS!!!#NORSE MYTHOLOGY IS QUEER Y'ALL!!!!!#THEY GOT A RAINBOW BRIDGE AND CROSS-DRESSING GODS!!!

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tenrose · 5 years ago

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Doctor Who Tag Game

Tagged by: @sopheirion thank you!!!

Favourite Doctor: Ten, ten and always Ten. I just love David’s portrayal’s of the Doctor more than I can say. I love the good, and I love the bad. I love when he’s being an idiot, when he’s flirtatious as hell with Rose (omg the memories) like you two get a room, when he finally snaps, when he’s a dumb oblivious as fuck and you want to smack cause he’s being an asshole, I love when he’s heartbroken. The faces David pulls are the best thing in the world. Like his ‘I don’t want to go’ ARE YOU KIDDING ME DAVID??? And the whole Doomsday episode, his blank face against the wall omg I’m gonna cry right now. And when this bitch has the audacity to disappear before saying it aaaaahhhh. But also the way he talk quickly and absolute nonsense. His ‘er’. When he’s being silly as hell with Donna, those were the good times. When he’s angry yelling, but also when he’s cold angry in the end of The Family of Blood. When he realize things and make the ‘oh i’m so stupid thing’ but also when he’s realizing sad thing like with the end of Donna. Bitch when he cries under the rain like some edgy boy, I cry too. His smile when things are getting exciting, but also the smile going into his eyes that is just for Rose and only Rose Tyler The various face he makes with Donna, all the non verbal communication. Also when Martha decides to leave and you can see that he’s (too late) proud of her, and after that when he sees her again he’s being honest with her..The way he pronounces certain words if that makes sense???? Also David’s whole acting in Midnight, that was insane on so many levels. And least but not last : his iconic hair. I don’t think I need to tell more. And aside from that, I love all his season’s arcs, all his companions are my top three favourites. And of course, my close second favourite is Nine, cause without Nine, Ten wouldn’t be the Doctor he was.

Favourite Master: tbh I’m not that much into the Master, but I guess it’s Simm!Master cause I love his arcs. But I also love Missy as a character (not sure about her arcs though)

Favourite Sonic: I love both Nine/Ten’s sonic and Eleven’s sonic.

Favourite Companion: aaaaahhhh not this question lmao. So I can’t really choose between Rose and Donna. I just love them both too much. So I’m not even a hardcore shipper of anyything by tumblr’s standards at least lmao, but the Doctor and Rose (both Nine and Ten) as been the first fictional couple I deeply rooted for (like I’ve enjoyed a lot of other ships before but never as harder and deeply) and that I still root for after all these years (in fact Clexa is the only other one that goes that hard, but everything else is just phases, they come and they go but they never stay). I love the tragedy of them, bitch who am I kidding, I love it that much cause it’s a tragedy lmao. I just love how they both make each other better, but also how they flirt like dumbass teens, how they communicate, how they cry for each other. BUT, and it’s very important, I love Rose for herself. She’s not just interesting because of the Doctor. She’s so relatable for instance? Like she’s not from a wealthy family, she clearly doesn’t give two fuck about fashion (or was it 2005 who was like this?), she’s not too smart, too pretty (ok she’s definitely is for me), too much of anything, she’s average. And I love this a freaking lot you can’t imagine. She has flaws, and yes that’s exactly what we want in a character. Yes she has moments when she’s being selfish (but who doesn’t? especially when in love), and yet she has some of the most beautiful selfless moments,sacrificing herlself in Doomsday is the best cause she was literally gonna end up in the void but she didn’t hesitated for one second. Also when she’s showing empathy for other people, she’s being caring and understanding. And she doesn’t take anyone’s else bullshit, she call them out, and that include the Doctor first. Just because she loves him doesn’t mean it’s gonna stop her from telling him to stop being a punk ass bitch. Also she evolved so much between s2 and s4, and I don’t think it’s character inconsistency, it’s just that it happened off screen. BY THE WAY I WOULD VERY MUCH A SPIN OFF ABOUT ROSE TYLER HOPPING WORLDS THANK YOU VERY MUCH @BBC!!!

Now Donna? Where do I start? She’s also average, and also very relatable. In fact, personnally I think she’s the most relatable for me. Using humour, snark and sass to hide 10 thousands insecurities? Yes that’s the most relatable thing ever. Donna is the funniest character but she’s also the one who has the saddest ending in my opinion. Cause she grow up, she sees the world, and she understand that she is THE shit, she matters, she is important, and then she forgets all about it. That’s so cruel, and heartbreaking and angering, cause she deserved everyfuckingthing, she deserved the world. And her departure hit me so fucking hard. She’s going back to her life, thinking she would be not enough, I can feel that so deeply. Aaaahhh I’m hurting myself writing this. But she’s so amazing, she’s smart, thinking out of the box really make her so great, and she’s the one who take the least shit about anything. She stands up, yells, makes a scene, but she get straight to the point. Also she’s not the young and conventionally attractive companion and she knows that. And she’s so funny and sassy, and close to the Doctor. I mean she’s the Doctor Donna for a reason, she’s like a human version of the Doctor, with the sass, the babbling, the clumsiness. God I love Donna so much, I wish I had so much more of her. Also she has absolutely zero romantic feelings for the Doctor and the fact that they are the bitchy bffs of the universe is the best.

Favourite Story: I love a lot of stories, but my favourite is The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End no doubt. The story is a perfect mix of happiness, having every RTD’s characters together, all my fave working together is the absolute best, and of sadness, the departure of Donna (I won’t re talk about it ok) and Ten letting Rose go AGAIN. And the fact that there’s everyone he loves in these episode but then he ends up all on his own. God why do I love being hurt so much??? And the Daleks are also my favourite villains (it’s just such DW bullshit as a villain tbh lmfao) so I have everything I want. Generally speaking I love RTD’s arcs, cause the sign are here the whole seasons (Bad Wolf, vote Saxon, the bees disappearing and she’s coming back) but it’s not a ‘HEY LOOK THERE’S SOMETHING FISHY TO SEE HERE HEYYYY’ or ‘WE ARE STARTING THE SEASON WITH ONE QUESTION, ONE PLOT POINT AND THAT’S WHAT YOU’LL WANT TO BE RESOLVED BY THE END OF THE SEASON’, it’s subtle, it’s casual mention, and it’s when you’re in the last three episode that you’re starting to realize something is wrong...That’s one of my favourite type of writing ever (that’s probably why I love Sanderson’s books too). It’s not some mystery to solve, cause there weren’t any mystery to solve, because me, a dumbass viewer, weren’t even paying attention at first. But it’s here, it fills the plot. And when you see it you’re like ‘of course’. It’s not forced on me if I can say it like this. It allows me to see other stuffs. It’s not attention seeking I guess? But yes the end of s4 is my favourite story, all is in place. All characters do what they do best. There’s laugh and there’s tears, and I love it.

Favourite Soundtrack: everything Murray Gold has been doing for the show is pure gold and I think that’s a thing the whole fandom can agree upon. My artist of the decade according to Spotify is him, and considering I haven’t listened daily to his songs (except for some still regularly) I think that say a lot about how much I used to love both his music and the show at some point. My favourite of his are Doomsday’s Theme ofc, Love Across the Distant Stars, I am the Doctor, Rose’s Theme, Amy’s Theme, Clara’s Theme, Vale and cry. All of them. And that include the one soundtracks for episodes I don’t even like lmao.

Dream Actor for next Doctor: I don’t know, why not John Boyega? He deserves to be the main character and be treated well, of a sci-fi show.

Dream Composer: Murray Gold come back to me. Or I would love a glimpse of what Lorne Balfe could do.

Dream Story: Something that involves seeing Rose and Tentoo, and Martha as the Earth counselor, with Thirteen still having feelings for Rose. And Rose too. But the plot? Idk lmao. However the end would be sad cause Thirteen would have to see Rose and Tentoo coming back to their world, and I would cry. Also Thirteen would aknowledge Martha as the smarter companion the Doctor had ever had lmao.

A Companion You’d like to see back: Martha, but like not as a companion cause she made it clear that she would not come back, and that wouldn’t be fitting her character if she changed her mind. But she could always be accidentally stuck in the TARDIS, I mean it happened once. But really I would just love to have her coming to the rescue when shit on Earth goes too far and the Doctor needs help of a specialist. That’s Martha you need Doctor.

An Enemy/Alien/Creature you’d like to see again: I’m always here to see the daleks.

If you could travel with one of the Doctors, which Doctor and why?: Ten? Because he’s my fave, but also Thirteen because I’m gay and I would like to take my chance lmao

#tag games #dw #this has been long sorry lmao #never awake my dw feels

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sclfmastery · 8 years ago

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World Enough and Time

//Okay SO.

On the bright side:

--It looks like Simm Master was willing to use the Cybermen to his advantage in order to survive his resurrection which was killing him. But that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to turn on them and possibly side with the Doctor. Which would be bittersweetly wonderful. I want to be able to point to canon that isn’t from as far back as 2009 and say “see, he’s as multi dimensional as Missy is.” --Missy calling the Doctor “honey.” Missy having the ability to quell the Doctor’s panic. Missy and the Doctor being DOMESTIC. --Literally Missy’s entire attempt to go on a mission. “I’m Doctor Who.” “Are you a human?” “Don’t be a bitch.” --The Doctor explaining the Master’s importance as his first friend and “mancrush” to Bill. “So smart, so fast, so funny!” --The entire fucking part with “The Razor,” LMAO. Which btw I knew it was him the moment he spoke. I knew the voice and the eyes. Anyway, All his snarky lines about “the pain of hot tea hiding the horrible flavor; they can’t feel pain, well yes they can, I was just telling a clever lie; not everyone can wear burglar masks like I can, I have skills!; fast bottom, HEHEHEH; your hugs hurt my heart, no literally your metal heart grinds into my chest”; him fucking COOKING ON A STOVETOP; can we just be AMAZED at his long-con talents, at his capacity to LIE IN WAIT with the patience of a supernatural being, at how he played Bill and won her over so that he could gather intel about Missy and about Nardole and about Twelve? Nobody tell me he’s an arrogant prick who can’t SURVIVE ANYTHING ever again!!!! How fucking long has he been on that ship over the black hole, when did he learn to hide in the bottom like the fabulous rat that he is, so he could gather intel about his enemies at the top???? HE THINKS. OF. EVERYTHING!!!! --THE MOMENT. HE RIPPED OFF. THE MASK. AND HIS FAKE ACCENT DROPPED. AND HE REFERRED TO THE HAROLD SAXON YEARS. I SCREAMED AND CLAPPED. --HIS THEME!!! PLAYING!!!! at the very END!!!! DADADADA, DADADADA, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!!! --THE MOMENT HE LAUGHED AT MISSY AND IT WAS THAT BIG OBNOXIOUS LORDLY LAUGH FROM THE GUT THAT IS SO SIMM MASTER. --The two Masters standing together to present their horrible work to the Doctor.

On the downside:

--BILL. --The Doctor does not deserve Missy, the Master, any incarnation thereof. He is contemptible and dangerous and arrogant, “testing” her morality like she’s a guinea pig, keeping her cooped up in the basement of his TARDIS, treating her with disdain and distance, and it’s blown up in his face. I’m so angry at him. He is so much more dangerous than the Master will ever be because he has the capacity to INSPIRE people, and so often he does so at their risk, justifying it by hiding behind a martyr complex. Sorry. Not buying it. Moffat era Doctors tend to bother me especially in this respect. They never own up to their mistakes, they never own responsibility, and when they do, they overkill so much that it all becomes about their atonement and not other people’s welfare. They are more manipulative than any Master will ever be. And to me that’s the fatal flaw of Moffat era, even with all its wonderful attributes. --It’s annoying to me that we’re going to blame Simm Master for Bill’s conversion as if only he has the schadenfreude, out of all the Masters, to commit such an act as to hand her over to the scientists converting everyone. I don’t like where this is going, creating a dichotomy in which he is the Id and Missy is the Superego, of the psyche known as the Master. There is PROOF from End of Time that he was already willing to entertain thoughts of gratitude and remorse, when he returned the Doctor’s favor of saving his life. --I’m uncomfortable that Missy can’t remember doing this, unless she remembers now that Simm Master has changed history. --Let’s sit down and think about this for a moment. And this isn’t really a downside so much as an observation. And it’s totally IC btw, I am willing to accept it fully: that Simm Master let Bill be turned into a cyberman TO REWRITE HIS OWN DESTINY, TO CHANGE HIS NEXT REGENERATION, TO FORCE THE DOCTOR TO ABANDON THIS VAIN HOPE OF REDEEMING HER, AND TO RUB SALT IN THE WOUND THAT ONCE AGAIN HE FAILED A HUMAN COMPANION. DO YOU KNOW. HOW MUCH FOREPLANNING THAT REQUIRED. IT’S ON THE SAME SCOPE AS THE TOCLAFANE AND TURNING ALL THE WORLD INTO HIMSELF. ALWAYS ALWAYS TO PROVE TO THE DOCTOR THAT HIS MISSION TO SAVE EVERYONE IS FUTILE. Only NOW? Now, he’s stopped demeaning humans, and started attacking the Doctor’s own internal flaws and shortcomings. He’s gotten even SMARTER with his cruelty. Do not fuck with this guy, DO NOT FUCK WITH THIS GUY.

I have more but I’ll be merciful and stop there. I am just. BUZZING with muse right now. HOOOO. Moffat is as usual cruelly over stimulating.

I am not ready for next week, and I am gonna be a mess.

#meta #The Master #Simm Master #dw spoilers #John Simm #Michelle Gomez #Missy #Gomez Master #World Enough and Time

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wristwatchjournal · 5 years ago

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Hands-on: A. Lange & Söhne Lange 1 Time Zone Ref. 136.032 Watch

BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN

In 2016 we got to go on a tour of the A. Lange & Söhne manufactory. A part of that tour was spending some time in the building which housed the original workshops in Glashütte. It’s an office space now, and a place to meet and interview staff (this is where we met Product Direct Anthony de Haas). We also got to spend time in a room full of watches for us to try out, and there were watches from every product range there from the Double Split to the Richard Lange Perpetual Terraluna to the simple Saxonia Thin. I took photos of a lot of them, but while I was doing that I was wearing one of their watches: the old Lange 1 Timezone. It fitted my wrist so well and was comfortable too. The dial was elegant and well thought out. It was close to the perfect watch, so imagine how I felt when I saw this new one for the first time.

Anxious. That’s how I felt. I wasn’t sure about it when I first saw the press photos. But, we know that press photos don’t convey everything about a watch; you need some real hands-on images to get a better sense of a timepiece. When the opportunity to go hands-on with the new piece arose, I made sure to clear my calendar for it.

The watch measures in at 41.9mm in diameter and 10.9mm in thickness, which puts it in the middle ground of the watch category it aims to compete with. While I’m sure the fine folks at A. Lange & Söhne will say that their watch is in a class of its own (and it kind of is), it should be noted that for a watch with this complication at this price point there is some competition. For example, Patek Philippe’s 5230 world-time. A Traditional world-time watch displaying all 24 timezones simultaneously, that watch has a 38.5mm case but is more affordable than the Lange 1 Timezone. The other alternative could be the Classique Hora Mundi 5717 from Breguet. That watch features a unique setup which allows you to switch between two timezones with the push of a button. The Hora Mundi is bigger than the Lange 1 Timezone, measuring at 43mm in diameter, it’s also more expensive.

The Lange 1 Timezone sits at a happy medium, at least between those two watches which I think are the main competitors for it. With a price tag of €48,000, the Lange 1 Timezone feels as expensive as it is.

The wearing experience

To use the same cliché I always use when writing about my hands-on experience with watches from A. Lange & Söhne, the watch felt extremely solid, robust and German. The word German isn’t an adjective in any sense, but it often becomes one when describing a German-made product. Watch a few episodes of the old-school Top Gear with Clarkson, Hammond & May, and you’ll probably find them waxing lyrical about how solid and powerful an AMG Mercedes-Benz feels, or how precise a BMW M car is. They’re not just doing that for the TV appeal, either, stepping into any BMW in the range these days feels like climbing the social ladder, even their smallest cars feel like they’ve been made with more care than their more affordable European and Japanese counterparts, but I digress.

The watch in hand feels heavier than the 111-gram reading from our VSS (Very Scientific (Kitchen) Scales) lets on. This makes it 32 grams lighter than our reference timepiece, the Rolex GMT Master 2 126710 BLNR and 43 grams lighter than the Odysseus I had a go with back in February. Those watches are steel, though, and come on a steel bracelet. If the Lange 1 Timezone were to be presented on a rose gold bracelet (like some of the older Lange 1s had), it would probably break into the 200-gram category. Despite being relatively easy to scratch, the gold in the case is still very dense and coupled with a rose gold pin-buckle it makes for a reassuring watch to wear. You know where your money went with this one, you can feel it in your hands.

The pushers feel precise, they require a little force (especially the city ring), but it does feel like you’re moving gears in there which is a nice feeling. The only tricky part I found was decoupling the time dials (more on that later), you have to push the city ring in so far without clicking it forwards to set the hours of the second timezone separately, and it’s really easy to overdo it and have to start all over again. It’s a very small point, and I only had to do it once (the watch came set up for Berlin time, to get the city ring dial set up correctly on GMT I had to decouple the dials). It would be easier to put this decoupling feature in the crown, so it pulls out to a third position.

For me, the tangible feel of the piece is the most important part, knowing where my €48,000 went is extremely important, more important than whether the watch will still be worth that much in the future. Maybe I’m a simpleton for living in the here and now when it comes to watches?

The movement

Although I like to focus on the things I can feel with my hands, it always pays to take a loupe to the things that are trapped behind sapphire crystal. You’d be forgiven for thinking that A. Lange & Söhne hasn’t changed much in the calibre L141.1, it looks the same as all the other Lange 1 movements after all. While it’s not had a completely revolutionary upgrade, there are still some changes worth noting.

First of all, updates of spring technologies and efficiency mean that the new calibre L141.1 retains the 72-hour power reserve of the outgoing calibre L031.1, but it only has one mainspring rather than two. You’ll see on the old model that the word Doppelfederhaus – double spring house – was printed on the dial, whereas now it says Gangreserve 72 Stunden which means ‘Power reserve (of) 72 hours’. A. Lange & Söhne has also started producing its hairsprings in-house as well, so while the old L031.1 used a Nivarox hairspring, the new L141.1 uses an in-house made spring, it’s a little detail in reality, but it means a lot for a watchmaker to produce their own hairsprings.

The watch also has a new indication which has been implemented into the second timezone subdial. Inside the arrow is a window that turns red or white, depending on whether the indicated timezone uses daylight saving. The watch can’t adjust itself for that, but it is nice that it tells you that you may need to change it according to the timezone you’ve just arrived in. Despite being a small window, it was legible when on the wrist, as there are only two possible colours, it could be it was easy to tell the difference.

The movement retains the 3Hz oscillation rate of the outgoing model, as well as the high level of finishing. A. Lange & Söhne applies the same level of detailing to all of its watches, no matter how expensive they are. The balance cock has been engraved by hand, along with the cock for the exposed wheels that connect the second timezone to the first. The patterns carved into the two cocks are unique to the artisan that engraved them, and everyone in the small engraving department has their own theme which they meticulously apply. The three-quarter baseplate (a Glashütte tradition) has also been finished with precision and features Glashütte stripes as the main eye-catcher. The edges have been polished to remove signs of machining, and a couple of the jewels are sat in polished gold chatons, a throwback to old-school watchmaking where chatons were the only way to hold a jewel in place. There’s even a cutout to view the top of the click (the ratchet that stops the watch unwinding when using the crown), and it’s been given the same level of attention as every other piece. You’ll also find heat-blued screws dotted about the place, while they aren’t necessary to the overall function of the timepiece, their addition shows the extra steps the folks at A. Lange & Söhne take when making a watch.

The movement may have been remade from the ground up, but its appearance is still quite similar to the old model. Both calibres have the same 34.1mm diameter, but the new movement is flatter and looks larger when viewed through the caseback.

The dial

The dial is where most changes have occurred. It still features the A. Lange & Söhne typeface, the Outsize Date, the Up/Down power reserve and the city ring around the edge, but a couple of things have changed. As well as the replacement of the Doppelfederhaus text, the day/night indicators have been moved inside the time dials. Before, they were an arrow sat on a rotating disc, now though they encompass the pinion the hands sit on and perform one rotation per 24 hours. When the hour hand goes across the blue semicircular line, the watch is indicating that it’s night time. Though, of course, if you look out the window, you can tell it’s night time.

The dial is laid out in the classic A. Lange & Söhne way, with all the different elements spaced out in such a manner that they are subconsciously pleasing to look at. For an in-depth explanation, read my Fortnight Review of the Grand Lange 1. The same principles apply here, the centre of the larger time dial, the centre of the Outsize Date and the centre of the away dial all join together to form a triangle which has perfect proportions (the ‘Golden Triangle’). Because of how our brains process and interpret their surroundings, this shape always seems correct to us, even if we ourselves don’t entirely know why and can’t really explain it.

The lancet hands common on watches from the Saxon brand make an appearance here, made of rose gold, so they match the case and provide contrast to the silver argenté dial. While the main dial itself has a subtle matte-style finish to it, the time dials have had concentric circles engraved onto them to break it all up a little.

Reading the time is very easy, although there is no lume on the watch at all. When staying put at the home timezone, both dials display the same time, which I think is visually appealing. When you travel abroad, depress the lower pusher to advance the hand on the smaller dial forwards by one hour, this will move the day/night indicator as well. It’s then simply a matter of advancing the hour ring forwards until you hit the city of your choice, all very easy stuff. Winding the watch is easy as well, there’s no screw-down crown, so you don’t need to unscrew it to wind the watch.

Conclusion

This is a classical dress watch with complications done in the right way. Instead of being confusing for the sake of ‘heritage’ that I find a lot of Swiss manufacturers are doing, A. Lange & Söhne has taken extra steps to simplify the world-time watch. The updates to the watch have been successful as they bring it into line with the Saxon brand’s new releases (let’s face it, this needed an update as it was launched in 2005 and not really updated since), and it looks contemporary. The fact that they launched the redesigned piece not long after they unveiled a limited-edition 25th-anniversary edition of the Lange 1 Timezone using the old model should bode well for the secondary market prices of that piece too.

Visit A. Lange & Söhne here.

The post Hands-on: A. Lange & Söhne Lange 1 Time Zone Ref. 136.032 Watch appeared first on Wristwatch Journal.

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esonetwork · 6 years ago

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Timestamp #193: Utopia & The Sound of Drums & Last of the Time Lords

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Timestamp #193: Utopia & The Sound of Drums & Last of the Time Lords

Doctor Who: Utopia Doctor Who: The Sound of Drums Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords (3 episodes, s03e11-e13, 2007)

From the end of the universe to the end of the world.

Utopia

The TARDIS materializes on the Cardiff Rift in the modern day in order to refuel. They only expect to be there for twenty seconds, during which Martha and the Doctor discuss a little problem with the Slitheen on the Rift, and the Doctor almost avoids picking up an immortal hitch-hiker. Something propels the TARDIS to the year 100 trillion, at the very end of the universe, and Captain Jack Harkness is hanging on through time and space for the ride.

In that far future, a human hunt is underway by the Futurekind. Professor Yana and his assistant Chantho regret the event in motion, but they cannot spare the guards to save the lost soul. They are on a quest for a place called Utopia. When asked for a status report, Yana is unable to focus due to the sound of drums in his head.

They also detect a new arrival as the TARDIS touches down.

The Doctor is apprehensive – almost scared – since this place is farther than any Time Lord has gone before. (Remember that there was a rule among Time Lords that they shouldn’t travel beyond a certain time.) As they leave the TARDIS, they find Jack’s dead body. Luckily, he springs back to life. The Doctor dissuades Jack from hitting on Martha as they exchange tense pleasantries. Jack notes the Doctor’s new face and asks after Rose, relieved to know that she’s still alive.

As they explore, Jack shares his story with Martha as the Doctor criticizes his method of time travel. Jack used his vortex manipulator to bounce from the battle with the Daleks to Earth in 1869. From there, he waited for the Doctor to arrive, eventually settling on the Rift. Martha frets about being left behind like Jack was, but the Doctor focuses them back on their task. They have found a city (or hive) and the Doctor muses on the decline of the universe as it dies around them. They then spot the hunted human and rush to his aid.

Jack draws his revolver and fires warning shots into the air. The horde stops long enough for the travelers to set their sights on the Silo, a safe space for humanity. The Silo is also home to Yana’s lab, and he is excited to learn that a doctor (of everything) has arrived. As the humans in the Silo offer aid, the Doctor asks them to bring his TARDIS to the camp.

As they walk through the refugee camp, the Doctor praises the indomitable spirit of humanity. They also figure out (by almost falling to the bottom) that the Silo is a literal missile silo, home to a rocket to take people to Utopia.

Professor Yana finds the Doctor and puts him to work as a consultant, but the Time Lord doesn’t recognize any of it. Meanwhile, Martha finds out that Jack is carrying the Doctor’s discarded hand, prompting a discussion of the Doctor’s status as the last of the Time Lords. Chantho is also the last of her kind, and Martha is downright obsessed with the Doctor’s new hand.

She’s never seen him regenerate, so this is all new to her.

Yana introduces the Doctor to Utopia: A signal from the depths that calls to the last of the humans scattered across the night. The Doctor is intrigued but also concerned as the professor has another attack of the drums. He also recognizes that the rocket will not be able to fly, and with a wave of his sonic screwdriver the circuits are complete.

Humanity is ready to fly.

As the Futurekind watch from beyond the gates, the humans board the rocket. Martha talks briefly with the young child they met on their arrival, unaware of a Futurekind spy nearby. Meanwhile, the Doctor praises Yana’s work which he recognizes a system of “food and string and staples.” Yana reveals that he will be staying behind with Chantho, and the drums intensify as he sees the TARDIS on a nearby monitor.

As the Doctor uses the TARDIS to help make final launch preparations, he seems to recognize the professor’s symptoms. Meanwhile, Martha bonds with Chantho (who begins each sentence with “chan” and ends it with “tho”) before aiding the professor with monitoring a coupling room. The room is flooded with Stet radiation, but it also controls the gravity footprint on the ship.

While work proceeds in the coupling room, the Futurekind spy sabotages the system. As radiation rises, Jack jumpstarts the override by passing the current through himself. It kills him momentarily, but his resurrection proves useful as they need someone to go in and finish the work.

As Jack enters the flooded chamber, the Doctor reveals that he’s known about the immortality since the battle with the Daleks. Jack, a single person, is a fixed point in time. That’s something that should never happen. Rose’s power as the Bad Wolf gave him that gift. The Doctor asks him if he wants to die, and Jack says that he doesn’t know.

While Martha and Chantho monitor Jack’s progress, Yana’s internal drumbeat intensifies again as he learns about traveling in time and space. The discussion between the Doctor and Jack reverberates through Yana.

The Gallifrey theme (“This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home“) punctuates every step, but comes crashing to a stop as Yana produces a pocket watch. He’s had it since he was found as a child, and he’s never been able to open it.

Martha recognizes it. She goes to find the Doctor.

Jack finishes his work and the countdown commences. As they work, Martha tells the Doctor about the watch. The Doctor is shaken by this news because it means that he is not the last of his kind. But the perception filter is slipping. Familiar words and voices flit through Yana’s mind as the rocket lifts off, and he opens the watch.

Remember Boe’s last words: You are not alone. YANA.

Professor Yana is the Master.

He locks the Doctor’s team in the launch control room and opens the Silo to the Futurekind. The Doctor breaks out, but he’s too late to stop the Master from killing Chantho. The Master takes the disc regarding Utopia, puts the jar with the hand in the TARDIS, and disconnects the TARDIS from the laboratory. He takes a fatal gunshot from a mortally wounded Chantho before jumping into the capsule and locking the door.

The Doctor breaks into the lab and begs with him to let him in, but the Master takes the opportunity to regenerate. He taunts the Doctor with a voice that Martha recognizes, but despite the Doctor’s apology and attempt to stop him with the sonic screwdriver, the Master dematerializes with the TARDIS.

The travelers are stranded in the future and left to fight the invading Futurekind.

The Sound of Drums

The Doctor fixes the vortex manipulator and is able to jump the travelers to modern-day London. As Martha and Jack discuss how they’ll find the Master, they realize that they have arrived on the day after Election Day.

The Master has been elected Prime Minister, and his name is Harold Saxon.

On Saxon’s first day, he’s a little overwhelmed by the demands of the job, but he’s happy to have Martha’s sister Tish on his staff. His cabinet is dismayed by his odd behavior, particularly when he calls them all traitors.

He rewards their loyalty by killing them all with toxic gas.

Martha, Jack, and the Doctor retreat to Martha’s apartment to research Saxon. She’s stunned to realize that they’ve only been away for four days since she first met the Doctor, but the Master was able to use the TARDIS to change history for the duration of his campaign. All of it started after the downfall of Harriet Jones.

In a sense, the Doctor paved the way for the Master’s ascendancy.

Meanwhile, Vivien Rook of the Sunday Mirror tries to convince Lucy Saxon, Harold’s wife, that her husband is an imposter. She provides proof that his life is a forgery, starting only eighteen months before around the launch of the Archangel project. Lucy is faithful to her husband, however, and Rook ends up dead shortly thereafter by the hands of the Master’s death probes.

Lucy is beside herself that someone could put it all together, but Saxon reassures her that everything ends the next morning.

In Martha’s apartment, the Doctor reveals that he fused the TARDIS controls when the Master stole the capsule. It had no choice but to land eighteen months before their current location. The Doctor recognizes that Saxon’s campaign speeches were laced with the drumbeat, impregnating it in the minds of the electorate.

They watch as Saxon announces the arrival of the Toclafane, reassuring the viewers that this won’t be like the previous alien encounters – namely the destruction of Big Ben, the ghosts and Cybermen, and the Christmas Star – before cueing the Doctor that Martha’s apartment is boobytrapped (complete with a Magpie Electricals television set). They escape before it blows up, and Martha tries to warn her family that they are in danger. Saxon’s forces are faster, and her entire family is locked away while the travelers run.

The Master intercepts Martha’s call to her brother, and the Doctor takes the opportunity to talk with his friend and rival. The Doctor reveals the fate of Gallifrey. He also learns that the Master was resurrected by the Time Lords to fight in the Last Great Time War, but that he ran when the Dalek Emperor took the Cruciform and used a Chameleon Arch to become human.

The Master refuses the Doctor’s offer of help, showing the Doctor on television that he and his friends are now enemies of the state. He’s also dispatched Torchwood Three to the Himalayas on a wild goose chase. When he disconnects, the travelers have no choice but to run.

The Master is later contacted by one of the Toclafane – the spheres of death – demanding to know if the machine is ready. The Master says that it will be by the next morning, and despite the threat of the coming darkness from which the Toclafane must run, there’s nothing he can do to speed it up.

The Doctor, Martha, and Jack hide in an abandoned warehouse. While snacking on takeaway chips, they discuss the origins of the Master. The Doctor speaks highly of the known image of Gallifrey. At the age of eight, initiates are taken to look upon a gap in the fabric of reality known as the Untempered Schism, a window into the temporal vortex. It inspired the Doctor to run but it probably drove the Master mad.

Jack reveals that he works for Torchwood, but promises that he rebuilt it from the ashes of the old, corrupt regime. He downloads a video sent to Torchwood about the Archangel Network, a new phone service that the Master controls. The carrier wave is the sound of drums, whispering to the world to trust the Master. The Doctor devises perception filters for three TARDIS keys, one for each of them. He also reveals that Time Lords can detect other Time Lords, even through regenerations.

The team moves from the warehouse as Air Force One delivers President Arthur Winters to London. The President orders Saxon to cede control to UNIT and is dismayed by the Prime Minister’s childish antics. The President has arranged for first contact on the USS Valiant, a UNIT aircraft carrier. The travelers watch the goings-on from the side of the runway, and the Master is suspicious but overall unaware. Martha is upset to see her family paraded on the tarmac, and the Doctor reinforces that he wants to save the Master, not kill him. They use the vortex manipulator to travel to the Valiant, where they discover that it is an aircraft carrier in the sky.

As morning dawns, the Master prepares for the first contact meeting while eating jelly babies. The travelers find the TARDIS, but subdued lighting and the Cloister Bell alert the Doctor that something is wrong. It has been configured to be a paradox machine, set to go off at 8:02 AM.

But the Doctor has a plan.

They sneak into the meeting room, intent on putting a key around the Master’s neck and canceling his perception filter. The first contact begins, but the Toclafane specifically (by name) request to see the Master. Saxon reveals himself as the Master and assassinates the President. The Doctor is taken into custody before the Master kills Jack with a laser screwdriver.

The Master uses the Lazarus experiment and the Doctor’s genetic code (courtesy of the hand in a jar) to advance the Doctor a century in age. He then brings in Martha’s family for the main event.

A crack tears open in the sky above the carrier as six billion Toclafane emerge and start murdering humans without prejudice. Ten percent are killed immediately. Martha takes one last look at her friends and family before using the vortex manipulator to teleport away. She emerges on the planet below and runs into hiding, promising to return.

Until then, the Master has won.

So it came to pass that the human race fell and the Earth was no more. And I looked down upon my new dominion as Master of all. And I thought it good.

Last of the Time Lords

It’s been one year since the invasion of the Toclafane. The planet Earth has been quarantined as it enters its final extinction. Martha, still fighting the good fight, is traveling the world. She just returned home to find Professor Alison Docherty, and her liaison Tom Milligan believes the legend that she can save the world.

On the carrier Valiant, the Master is still riding high as lord of the planet. He treats the Doctor like a pet dog, Martha’s family like slaves, Jack an eternal prisoner, and his wife like an abused plaything. He also knows that the Doctor has worked out who the Toclafane are, and that the epiphany has broken his hearts.

The Doctor sends Francine a signal – the number three – which she passes along. Meanwhile, Martha and Tom come across a field of thousands of spaceships, ready to wage war with the universe. They are challenged by the Tocalafane, but Tom is a doctor and Martha still has her perception filter.

On the Valiant, the prisoners revolt at 3:00pm as planned. In the chaos, the Doctor gets ahold of the Master’s laser screwdriver but can’t operate it due to isomorphic controls keyed to the Master alone. Martha’s family is locked up, Jack is killed (again), and the Doctor is back to being taunted in a leather chair.

The taunting includes mentions of The Sea Devils, The Claws of Axos, and something about closing the rift at the Medusa Cascade.

Martha and Tom find Professor Docherty. She tunes into a broadcast from the Master during which he ages the Doctor through his entire lifespan regardless of regenerations. The now thousand-year-old form of the Doctor has withered into a being unable to fit his own clothes, but Martha finds hope in the fact that he still lives.

Docherty says that the Archangel Network is continuously broadcasting a fear signal to the planet, keeping the humans in line. Martha produces a disc with information about one Toclafane sphere that was destroyed in a lightning strike and using that data they experiment on a sphere.

The Master and Lucy visit the Doctor, contained in a birdcage suspended from the ceiling, and tell him that they will launch a fleet through a hole in the Braccatolian space. He will only stop when there is a new Gallifrey in the heavens, and that the Doctor should be proud. After all, he’s doing this for the Toclafane, which the Doctor loves very, very much.

The Toclafane that Martha experiments on is the orphan kid from the end of the universe. The whole race is built from the humans who were launched toward Utopia. The Master took Lucy there and discovered them, transformed into the spheres, regressing into children. There was no Utopia. Just death.

The TARDIS, the paradox machine, keeps the fabric of time in place while the Toclafane exist.

Docherty asks Martha if the legends are true. She shows them a gun developed by Torchwood and UNIT that supposedly halts regeneration and kills a Time Lord permanently. She needs one last chemical component, apparently housed at an old UNIT base. After Martha and Tom leave for a safehouse, Docherty transmits Martha’s location to the Master in exchange for information about the professor’s son.

As Martha tells the assembled survivors in the safehouse about the Doctor, the Master comes for Martha. He flushes her out by threatening the survivors around her. He destroys the anti-regeneration gun, kills Milligan when he defends her, and takes Martha back to the carrier to kill her in front of the Doctor.

At the moment of her execution, the moment when the fleet is due to launch, Martha starts to laugh. The gun was a ruse since the Doctor would never endorse her killing the Master. Instead, the weapon was the story of the Doctor. If the world thinks of one word at the same moment within the Archangel Network’s telepathic field, it would restore the world.

The word: “Doctor.”

The world turns against the Master and the Doctor is restored, having spent the year integrating himself into the network. The power of his restoration is so strong that the laser screwdriver is useless against him. The Doctor corners the Master and shatters his world with one phrase: “I forgive you.”

Which is better than the Master’s actual fear concerning the Doctor.

The Master rallies the Toclafane to protect the Paradox Machine, then teleports the two Time Lords to the planet below using Jack’s vortex manipulator. The Master threatens to detonate the Toclafane, each with a black hole converter capable of destroying the Earth.

Meanwhile, the humans on the Valiant defend the ship against the Toclafane assault. Just as Jack destroys the paradox device, the Doctor manages to teleport himself and the Master back to the Valiant. The previous year is reversed to the point just after the President of the United States was assassinated. Everyone on the Valiant will remember the year that never was, but the rest of the universe will not.

The Master is apprehended, but Francine threatens to kill him. The Doctor stops her and decides to keep the Master on the TARDIS. Unfortunately, the plan is destroyed when Lucy shoots the Master. He collapses in the Doctor’s arms, but faced with the prospect of being locked away forever in the TARDIS with the Doctor, he refuses to regenerate.

Once again, the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords. The drumming stops. The Master is dead.

The Doctor’s raw fury and sorrow resonate thanks to David Tennant’s wonderful acting talent.

Later, the Doctor cremates the Master’s remains, ensuring that no one can harvest the Time Lord’s DNA. Martha finds Docherty and forgives her, even though the professor has no idea what’s going on. Martha and Jack say their farewells – Jack loses his ability to use the vortex manipulator – and Jack inadvertently reveals his nickname from his home on the Boeshane Peninsula: The Face of Boe.

The looks of simultaneous shock and amusement on Martha’s and the Doctor’s faces are incredible.

The Doctor prepares to leave, complete with the hand in a jar. All that’s left is Martha Jones. Unfortunately for the Doctor, Martha takes her leave of the TARDIS. She can’t continue on with all those people left for her to care for. She gives the Doctor her phone number, reminding the Time Lord that she’s not second best, and finally reveals her unrequited feelings for him. She makes him promise to come running if she needs him, and steps out of the TARDIS one last time.

The Doctor dematerializes the TARDIS, alone once again, unaware that the Master’s signet ring has been taken by unknown forces. But the moment is broken when a ship crashes through the TARDIS walls.

Her name is Titanic.

This trilogy of episodes earns every bit of the high ratings, from the drama and the effects to the characters that bind the whole thing together. Oh, the look on Francine Jones’s face when she realized that she had been used this whole time to get to the Doctor and Martha.

In terms of the overall franchise, this is a return to classic form. This is the first three-part story since Survival (the last story of the classic era). If you count the Torchwood episodes, this is the first story with more than four parts since The Armageddon Factor (or Shada, had it been fully completed and aired).

We also get the first appearance in the revival era of the Doctor’s best friend and nemesis, the Master. The callbacks to the classic era are a welcome addition with lines from Roger Delgado (prominent through the Third Doctor’s era and last seen in Frontier in Space) and trademark laughter from Anthony Ainley (who took up the role in The Keeper of Traken and carried it all the way to Survival). It’s worth noting that Eric Roberts (the Master from the TV movie) gave his permission to include his voice, but Fox refused.

The Roger Delgado lines were doubled by Sir Derek Jacobi (Professor Yana), who previously appeared in Scream of the Shalka as an alternative version of the Master. After this performance and the 50th anniversary televised special, he also worked with Big Finish to tell the story of his Master during the Time War.

The Master’s heritage was also on display with John Simm’s costumes, from the black single-breasted suit, white shirt, and black tie ensemble (from Planet of Fire) to a Pertwee nod (black overcoat with red satin lining) and the trademark evil Time Lord black leather gloves. The young Master also wore an outift similar to the Time Lords in The War Games.

Doctor Who mythology also makes a couple of debuts here.

First, we get to see Gallifreyan children on screen. Sure, we’ve heard about time tots before – lest we forget the tales of röntgen-bricks in the nursery – but the youngest Gallifreyan we had ever seen was Susan, and she was 15 during An Unearthly Child.

We also get introduced to the concept that regenerations are far more controllable than we saw from Romana in Destiny of the Daleks. The Master bypasses the Doctor’s regenerations to artificially age him – this is certainly not a new trick for either the Doctor or the Master – and he also willingly halts the process after being shot by Lucy. We will see this crop up again in the future.

The Ninth Doctor’s dark line – “I win, how ’bout that?” – also echoes from beyond Dalek as the Master (supposedly) dies.

I previously mentioned the majestic Gallifrey theme, which can be found on YouTube, but Murray Gold was also on fire with the haunting “Martha’s Theme” and the purely energetic “All the Strange, Strange Creatures” throughout this story. The use of modern pop music (also as digetic music) was fun, including “Voodoo Child” by the Rogue Traders – “So here it comes/the sound of drums/Here come the drums here come the drums…” – and “I Can’t Decide” by the Scissor Sisters.

Basically pulling out all the stops, as they should for the last full-time adventure with Martha Jones, an exemplary hero and companion. She saved the day, and (in my eyes) is better than Rose Tyler ever was.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Series Three Summary

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

#Doctor Who #Tenth Doctor #Timestamps Project

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hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff · 6 years ago

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WHEN I THINK ABOUT J. R. R. Tolkien’s unpublished writings, I think of them in terms that probably would please the old master: as the literary equivalent of the Staffordshire hoard in England’s West Midlands. Discovered in 2009 by a fortune hunter with a very good metal detector, the hoard contains mangled Anglo-Saxon weapons, golden jewelry, military implements, other metalwork, and rings inscribed with runic characters (though not the language of Mordor). All of it gives us — thanks to a team of devoted archaeologists — a richer understanding of the era of Anglo-Saxon Britain.

The same can be said of the “Tolkien hoard” — the reams of drafts, faded notes, indecipherable scribbles, and fragmented stories that were never published in Tolkien’s lifetime. But because of the tireless work of his son, Christopher, we have an even richer understanding today of Middle-earth than we did when his father died in 1973.

Ever since the publication of The Silmarillion in 1977, Tolkien fils has slowly worked through these materials and produced annotated versions of tales taking place long before the events chronicled in The Hobbit (1937) and Lord of the Rings (1954–’55). Now, with nearly 30 works added to his father’s oeuvre, Christopher Tolkien is finished. His service as his father’s literary guardian and interpreter ended last August with the publication of the earliest story of Middle-earth that Tolkien ever wrote, The Fall of Gondolin. “I ‘presumed’ […] that Beren and Lúthien would be my last,” he writes in the new book’s preface, referring to another story that he edited and published in 2017. “I must now say that ‘in my ninety-fourth year The Fall of Gondolin is (indubitably) the last.’”

What a long and distinguished run — and what a high note to end on. Christopher Tolkien’s edition of his father’s Gondolin manuscripts is nothing less than a triumph — a substantial contribution to our understanding of his father’s early vision of the Middle-earth cosmogony and a gift to all lovers of Tolkien, young and old. And Alan Lee’s accompanying illustrations — along with a foldout map — enrich this book even more, giving Tolkien’s First Age a vivid physical reality that Westeros and Narnia just don’t have.

Not everyone will agree, I’m sure; Philip Pullman certainly won’t. Last fall, Pullman published the essay collection Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling, in which he doesn’t hesitate to dismiss Tolkien’s world-making. For him, Tolkien’s characterizations are shallow and the settings “no more real than the horse-brasses and the posthorns in an Olde English theme-pub — a place called The Hobbit and Firkin,” he writes in the essay “The Republic of Heaven.”

“C’mon now,” I’d like to tell him, “lighten up.” There’s room enough for everyone in fantasy, isn’t there? Pullman’s certainly free to dismiss whomever he likes, of course, but it seems beneath the dignity of Lyra Belacqua’s creator to sound so jealous of another’s success.

At the very least the publication of this book gives us a reason to applaud the son’s long commitment to his father’s work … and to readers (like this reviewer) who see Tolkien’s early vision of Middle-earth in the tale of Gondolin’s destruction.

The human hero at the center of The Fall of Gondolin is Tuor — Elrond of Rivendell is descended from him — who searches for the hidden city of Gondolin, an elven stronghold that has escaped enslavement by the evil Melkor, also known as Morgoth, predecessor of Sauron.

In the original 1916 version of the story — which opens the book and runs to about 75 pages — Tuor is sent on his quest by the sea god Ulmo, one of the Valar. Ulmo wants Gondolin to raise its army against Melkor and his shadowy legions of Orcs, Balrogs, and other ghoulish creatures before they find and attack the city. But Tuor fails to persuade them to fight — they are confident (too confident) that Melkor will never find them — and he decides to join them in their idyllic seclusion instead. He gives up the goal of his quest and weds the king’s lovely daughter, Idril.

Whenever an author introduces a note of hubris, you know it’s a bad sign — and suffice to say that the smugness of the citizens of Gondolin is the key to their undoing (like Théoden’s flawed conviction, in 1954’s The Two Towers, that the Hornburg can resist any force).

But that isn’t the only version of the Gondolin story in this book. Many of the best Tolkien scholars, especially Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger, have reminded us that Tolkien’s vision of Middle-earth was constantly evolving. And as that vision evolved, Tolkien struggled to adapt and adjust his material to harmonize with these changes. His son provides us with other draft variations assembled in chronological order, with commentary. Over 35 years, Tolkien continued to change and expand the story before finally abandoning another version — to his son’s initial perplexity — in 1951 (a version of which appears in 1980’s Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth).

All of these drafts display a style that’s far from the conventional storytelling you find in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. The Gondolin drafts are steeped in grandiose, archaic expressions and the kind of reversed syntax that Yoda would probably like: “Here they abode very long indeed,” or “Timber he had that came down the hidden river; a goodly wood it was.” At first the style makes for tough reading, but soon it grows on you like moss on Treebeard’s chin.

To be fair, these drafts are First Age stories, and they’re supposed to sound like the foundational myths of Western civilization. Tolkien didn’t hide the fact that he believed his vision of Middle-earth’s ancient days deserved to be placed alongside the world’s great epics. Gondolin’s fall wasn’t just some quaint fairy tale that he scribbled as he recovered from trench fever during World War I. For him, its tragic fate ranked — outranked, actually — what happened to some of the greatest cities of antiquity:

Glory dwelt in that city of Gondolin of the Seven Names, and its ruin was the most dread of all the sacks of cities upon the face of Earth. Nor Bablon, nor Ninwi, nor the towers of Trui, nor all the many takings of Rûm that is greatest among Men, saw such terror as fell that day …

Even though the collapse of Troy and the sacking of Rome don’t measure up to the tale of Gondolin’s terrible destruction, Tolkien couldn’t finish it. Why not? Was his artistic vision just too big for his talents? Hardly. Even as late as 1951, long after he’d demonstrated his artistry with The Hobbit and had Lord of the Rings under his belt, Tolkien’s last attempt at the story takes us only as far as Tuor’s arrival at the Gate of the Noldor (a name for the craftsman elves). In this draft, he doesn’t fall in love with Idril or help the city-dwellers escape destruction. All Tuor gets is a glimpse of Gondolin’s gleaming armies before the narrative breaks off.

So what happened? For Tolkien’s son, in a chapter near the end of the book called “The Evolution of the Story,” what finally snuffed his father’s enthusiasm for his Gondolin narrative (and other uncompleted First Age works forming the core of The Silmarillion) was his pessimism over publishing them despite the success of The Hobbit. Tolkien wanted these stories published with Lord of the Rings as “one long Saga of the Jewels and the Rings,” but in the years right after World War II, that was an unrealistic expectation. Everything was in short supply, especially paper, and this would have been a ridiculously expensive undertaking for any publisher. Tolkien realized that. Disappointedly, he gave up, and his son describes his gloom in another work, Morgoth’s Ring (1993):

[L]ittle of all the work begun at that time was completed. The new Lay of Leithian, the new tale of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin, the Grey Annals (of Beleriand), the revision of the Quenta Silmarillion, were all abandoned. I have little doubt that despair of publication, at least in the form that he regarded as essential, was the prime cause.

“Despair of publication” — it is hard to believe that Tolkien ever worried about such things. But he did. He worried about publication, and he worried about making money, just like any writer. His doubts that Gondolin and the other heroic tales would ever be published in a form “he regarded as essential” were enough to discourage him.

Of course, that didn’t end his career. Far from it. Three years later, Lord of the Rings appeared in three volumes, followed by other stories, works of scholarship, and translations. Tolkien was fêted and celebrated as the modern-day equivalent of an Icelandic skald crossed with a medieval scholiast. Fans wouldn’t leave him alone; the counterculture movement (and Led Zeppelin) embraced his mythology as their own; awards and money flowed in — his old friend and colleague C. S. Lewis nominated him for a Nobel Prize. Life was good.

And yet. One can’t help seeing something in those photos of him tucking on his pipe — something wistful about the eyes — that suggests the master was still thinking, even then, at the peak of his success, about all those precious pieces of his legendarium that remained in fragments at home.

Anything, even a fragment — as the Staffordshire archaeologists know well — can be valuable. They can tell us a great deal, despite what’s missing. That is certainly true of the Gondolin fragments. They provide us with an opportunity to glimpse some of the first great figures and dramatic situations of Tolkien’s mythology — figures and situations that would later resurface, more fully integrated and realized, in the pages of Lord of the Rings.

Already in 1916 we have the golden-armored elf Glorfindel — second only to Elrond in Rivendell — long before his crucial appearance late in The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), when he stops the Black Riders from nabbing Frodo. Glorfindel plays a similar role in the 1916 fragment as the Gondolin citizens flee the burning city. But instead of the Nazgûl, he faces a terrifying Balrog — its whips blazing and crackling — that bars the people’s escape. As Glorfindel leaps to the rescue, Tolkien writes,

[his] left hand sought a dirk, and this he thrust up that it pierced the Balrog’s belly nigh his own face (for that demon was double his stature); and it shrieked, and fell backward from the rock, and falling clutched Glorfindel’s yellow locks beneath his cap, and those twain fell into the abyss.

Their deadly combat should be familiar to any student of Tolkien. In Fellowship, Gandalf replaces Glorfindel in a fight with the horrific Balrog known as Durin’s Bane in the Mines of Moria. They take a similar plunge into the abyss, too … but with a much better result for Gandalf.

The Gondolin drafts anticipate and echo the famous stories of Middle-earth’s Third Age in other ways as well. We encounter Elrond’s father, Eärendil, as well as Círdan the Shipwright, who is the master of the Grey Havens. We meet the elf Legolas Greenleaf — who, despite his name, is not the warrior of Lord of the Rings. This Legolas isn’t gifted with a bow, but he is “night-sighted,” which enables him to lead the Gondolin citizens through pitch darkness to safety. These drafts also contain plenty of wolves, Orcs, eagles, and dragons — and Melkor’s evil influence hovers over the landscape with the same shapeless menace as Sauron’s.

What also hovers over these drafts — particularly the 1916 version — is Tolkien’s brief experience of World War I. Some critics have been reluctant to draw too close a connection between Gondolin’s destruction and Tolkien’s experience of the Battle of the Somme, but it seems equally bizarre to ignore it. That battle was fresh in Tolkien’s mind when he was invalided back to England — ironically, to Staffordshire, where that Anglo-Saxon booty would stay hidden for nearly another 100 years — and started writing about Gondolin as he recovered.

In the draft that opens this book, as Melkor’s forces drive toward Gondolin’s walls, they employ strange, armored machines — “things of iron that could coil themselves around and above all obstacles before them.” At the mention of those coils, one can’t help imagining the caterpillar treads of a tank (the first ones ever used in warfare appeared on the Western Front) that Tolkien might have seen while he was there:

[T]heir hollow bellies clanged beneath the buffeting, yet it availed not for they might not be broken, and the fires rolled off them. Then were the topmost opened about their middles, and an innumerable host of the Orcs, the goblins of hatred, poured therefrom into the breach.

The 1916 fragment alone is worth the price of this book. It is thrilling to consider — even if some would object — that in this apocalyptic scene we have a veiled reference to the horrors Tolkien might have witnessed on the Western Front.

Late in his life, when Tolkien looked back on his first yearnings to create a fresh mythology for England, he said that he had had in mind

a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story […] I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.

But it really wasn’t absurd, even if Tolkien pretended to be embarrassed by his own grandiose vision. In the end, though he died far sooner than he expected, Tolkien had achieved this goal. Gondolin and the other pieces remained unfinished, but that is okay: their state of incompletion fits with his vision of the legendarium. Some tales are complete, others aren’t, and “other minds and hands” are welcome to step forward and contribute, too.

Tolkien’s son certainly seems to be the best example of one of these. The same can be said of Alan Lee … and John Howe. Howe’s A Middle-earth Traveler: Sketches from Bag End to Mordor gives us not only the massive vistas of Tolkien’s world (the majestic view from atop Minas Tirith or Ilúvatar’s creation of the universe) but also a great deal of minutiae — what you’ll find in a hobbit’s kitchen, the variety of axes and war hammers used by dwarves, the styles of armor worn by Orcs, the mess and disorder of Radagast’s leaning study, and the details carved into the logs of the skin-changer Beorn’s home.

A conceptual artist (alongside Lee) on Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films, Howe gives us in his book a rich and exhaustive — though not exhausting — taxonomy of goblin faces, twisting forests and passageways, fortresses, castles, and caves inhabited by the human and nonhuman citizens of Tolkien’s work and Jackson’s franchise. His tome is a lovely addition to anyone’s expanding collection of Tolkienana and an ideal shelf companion for the book — brought out a few years ago by the same publisher — of Tolkien’s own drawings of the world of The Hobbit.

In his introduction, Howe says that, as he began to create his own versions of Tolkien’s world, he realized that a “sense of reality, of personal experience, pervades much of Middle-earth.” That sense is so strong, in fact, that “we are tempted to seek out a real place for every locality he describes,” whether it’s the Shire’s resemblance to the English countryside or Tolkien’s 1911 walking tour of Switzerland that inspired Esgaroth, the wooden Lake-town destroyed by Smaug.

But the same can be said of Howe’s drawings, too — many of these were inspired by New Zealand localities as he worked on Jackson’s films. “So many of the fantastical landscapes we painted to replace the green screens were almost directly taken from real landscapes we wandered through,” he writes. Howe likens himself and the films’ other artists to “hobbits with sketchbooks, drawing the world as they went. There. Back again. And the journey between, which is of course the best part.”

He’s right; often the journey is the best part, in writing and in many other parts of life, too. Christopher Tolkien would probably agree. His own journey with his father’s work has lasted more than four decades and has given us so much that is essential to the legendarium.

And now, with that journey done, the only thing left to say to him is also the simplest: thank you.

Nick Owchar is a PhD candidate in English at Claremont Graduate University and the founder of Impressive Content, an editing and content production service. He was formerly the deputy book review editor of the Los Angeles Times.

The post The Final Treasure from the Tolkien Hoard appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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topmixtrends · 6 years ago

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In the original 1916 version of the story — which opens the book and runs to about 75 pages — Tuor is sent on his quest by the sea god Ulmo, one of the Valar. Ulmo wants Gondolin to raise its army against Melko and his shadowy legions of Orcs, Balrogs, and other ghoulish creatures before they find and attack the city. But Tuor fails to persuade them to fight — they are confident (too confident) that Melko will never find them — and he decides to join them in their idyllic seclusion instead. He gives up the goal of his quest and weds the king’s lovely daughter, Idril.

The Gondolin drafts anticipate and echo the famous stories of Middle-earth’s Third Age in other ways as well. We encounter Elrond’s father, Eärendil, as well as Círdan the Shipwright, who is the master of the Grey Havens. We meet the elf Legolas Greenleaf — who, despite his name, is not the warrior of Lord of the Rings. This Legolas isn’t gifted with a bow, but he is “night-sighted,” which enables him to lead the Gondolin citizens through pitch darkness to safety. These drafts also contain plenty of wolves, Orcs, eagles, and dragons — and Melko’s evil influence hovers over the landscape with the same shapeless menace as Sauron’s.

In the draft that opens this book, as Melko’s forces drive toward Gondolin’s walls, they employ strange, armored machines — “things of iron that could coil themselves around and above all obstacles before them.” At the mention of those coils, one can’t help imagining the caterpillar treads of a tank (the first ones ever used in warfare appeared on the Western Front) that Tolkien might have seen while he was there:

Late in his life, when Tolkien looked back on his first yearnings to create a fresh mythology for England, he said that he had had in mind

And now, with that journey done, the only thing left to say to him is also the simplest: thank you.

The post The Final Treasure from the Tolkien Hoard appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2WlPwNc

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wstewartanim1004-blog · 8 years ago

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Character & Characterisation -character development-

Choosing a Character for my assignment brief:

Personally I don’t read much so thinking of a character to begin with was very difficult for me personally, I decided to ask friends for recommendations on a story to get a character from and the Book series “the Final empire” was that chosen book series.

The book is based on Mystical powers and old style almost pre-Victorian era environments. My chosen character ‘Camon’ is a master thief, Old and pudgy looking now but still just as sly and cunning. Camon was quickly described in the first chapter of the first book where features like his ‘pudgy face’, ‘Nobleman’s suit’ and ‘matching black hat’ really helped describe the look and feel of the character. “The thief master looked very convincing in his nobleman’s suit. It was as rich a costume as Vin had ever seen—it had a white shirt overlaid by a deep green vest with engraved gold buttons. The black suit coat was long, after the current fashion, and he wore a matching black hat” Chapter 1.

Camon is not a good character in this story, in fact he is killed quite soon after the end of Chapter 1, but he still causes a lot of issues and trouble for the main antagonist during these first few pages of the story, just proving how important the Author: Brandon Sanderson, made every character in his novel.

Although Camon was a thief he did often dress as a nobleman to confuse others, he was very good at this and even though he didn’t have the money to afford it. his clothes were made of fine material, including expensive golden buttons. “Camon did an excellent job of imitating a nobleman—when it came to playing a role, there were few thieves more competent than Camon. Assuming he could keep his temper under control.” Chapter 1.

Setting and Environment:

The book is based in a mystical citadel - “the city of Luthadel - Seat of the Lord Ruler” it’s a gloomy sight with most buildings being made of stone and as little metal as possible. Most buildings, unless owned by the higher noblemen, were bland - designed to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. “ Every structure in Luthadel—virtually every structure Kelsier had ever seen—had been blackened to some degree. Even the city wall” page 28 Structures were packed closely together with the odd Stone built monolithic keeps placed here and there around the city. The only open space really available to anyone was around these stone keeps. “The patches of space amidst the tenements were like clearings in a forest”

Environment research:

For the environment that my character is designed around “the city of Luthadel” I have taken a lot of inspiration from the game Warhammer - and the expansion Warhammer 40k & 30k, this is because the building sets in this expansion are very resembling of the environments as described in the first few chapters of the book.

I also took examples from Anglo Saxon design architecture with it’s use of stone and wood.

In the opening pages to the book the environment is described as a “gloomy Sight” with muted colours and dark buildings, high walls all covered in a later of ash. Using this description from the book and images as seen above I craeted some environmental sketches to better show my own interpretation of the world.

Character Development:

To start bringing my character to life I looked at silhouttes, this was to help me come to a conclusion on the shape and feel of the character i wanted to see.

It was at this point when I came to stop as I already knew what i wanted, After a few pages of scribbling and messing around with character forms and shapes I drew something that I really liked the loof of and wanted to carry further into development. This is seen on the image, made clear with the arrows pointing to the particular drawing.

Clothing:

once a shape and initial Idea was thought of I had to know what sort of clothes people in this themed era would wear, My Character - Camon - was already described as wearing “nobleman’s suit, white shirt overlaid by a deep green vest with engraved gold buttons, matching black hat”

So i had an idea what i was going to draw him wearing already, but just to get an idea of the style of clothes I wanted to do some quick research online.

The Site: https://www.gentlemansemporium.com/mens-early-victorian-clothing.php had a lot of clothing styles from the familiar long coat and cane to Vests and waist coats.

Although not a green vest with golden buttons in sight, It was still helpful to know the materials used as it gave me a better idea of the thickness and texture these items of clothing would have.

Facial Features

A lot of a character is shown through a face,my character - Camon - is a pudgy looking mean fella with red cheeks, this is as described in the novel, however my own interpretation also added a few things more because i pictured him with sickly looking green-ish yellow skin thanks to the lower style of living as thief.

I knew that Camon was a strong character as some pages have him thrown into violent situations where he usually comes out on top: “Camon’s hurled wooden stool hit her square in the back, throwing her to the ground. Pain flared between her shoulders; several crewmembers cried out as the stool bounced off of her and thumped against the floorboards nearby.”

To show this sort of attitude in a still image is not easy so I did it with his facial expressions.

I looked closely at skin tones and hair styles to match the characters clothes, style, attitude and environment as best as possible. The longer style of hair - un cut and un clean represents his lower stature as a thief, his sickly skin also reflects this.

Turn Around:

Camon’s style and attitude is described well in the story, everything from his green and golden vest to his cane is mentioned and described so I have tried my best to implement it into the turn around of the character.

I tried my best to make him look as noble as possible but almost in a fake way, his clothes don’t fit perfectly, as you can see with his long to the shoes trousers and big wavy over coat. The fabric is thick like any expensive clothing of Victorian time period i designed them after.

The green vest is clearly visible, so Is the black hat and cane which all help to tie in the character as an individual.

Conclusion and Reflection:

Drawing human formed characters was new to me and so was the idea of character concept design using extracts from book, however I am still pleased with my overall resulting work. The Character Camon was mentioned early on in the story and died almost just as quickly as he was created. This didn’t however mean that the character was under developed, in face he was one of the main villains for the first short part of the opening chapters.

From the descriptions given I firstly envisioned some fat oaf, laid back in his home surrounded by his stolen spoils. It was after much further deduction and research into the character and story that a more accurate description was explained, changing my overall idea of the character almost completely to someone more likely to get up and do something about his problems. There is no doubting that Camon is a bad guy, a mean person with a nasty temper so incorporating this into the final design was important and although human faces and features are a new area for me I feel that I have expressed this anger though the images I drew well.

Camon’s style of clothing and style worn by the ‘noblemen’ in the story made me think of Victorian style clothing of the upper class; with their long coats, canes and waist coats. Although Camon’s clothes were described well and in detail in the novel some things like the style of hat and over coat was left to the reader’s imagination, thanks to this some unique ideas came to mine, like the idea to replace to traditional style top hat of the Victorian era to a more common Bowler hat that would usually belong to the middle and lower class. This was a decision I made to represent his thieving nature and the fact that he was only pretending to be a nobleman.

Camon’s figure and attitude was described as “pudgy”, “ill tempered” and “violent”. These things were key description pieces that really showed throughout the whole development of my character from the fat and lazy silhouettes of him sat on a park bench, to the arms folded – cold attitude of the more finished initial drawings.

Trying to incorporate everything and all the features of the character Camon as mentioned in the book did prove harder than I thought. There are a few things that on second thought and with more research I have realised I have missed out on including in the concept, such as his golden pocket watch and ring covered fingers. Still though, even on reflection of this, I personally feel very pleased with the way my design from research to initial concept and then concept to finalised design and turnaround turned out. I have stretched myself to drawing new things with this brief, such as human figures and faces. I have learnt a lot about how important initial stages of development are like silhouettes to creating a finalised character with the right attitude and feel to match the referenced piece. I do feel that the character is finished now and I am happy with all the work I have put into this assignment.

Bibliography:

Ent, D. (2017) Mistborn chapter One. Available at: http://brandonsanderson.com/mistborn-chapter-one/ (Accessed: 13 January 2017)

Early Victorian clothing for men at Gentlemans Emporium Available at: https://www.gentlemansemporium.com/mens-early-victorian-clothing.php (Accessed: 13 January 2017).

OCP Timeline (2007) Available at: http://www.nottsopenchurches.org.uk/education-secondary-timeline.php (Accessed: 13 January 2017).

2016 (2000) Warhammer 40k. Available at: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Warhammer_40k_Wiki (Accessed: 12 January 2017

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