Okay, time to pull the trigger on this thing. It's not 100%, but it's good enough, and if I keep posting to my Wordpress blog, I'll never ship this thing.
Welcome to my new static blog. Built with Eleventy.
I'm still working on it. I'm not happy with how "themes" work in Eleventy. So I don't have one. It means I need to dust off my ancient CSS knowledge.
As well as fixing problems with old posts, I have plans to do more with the site, the idea being to make this the central repository of all my Internet nonsense. I don't know if anyone else cares about this, but I do. I want to have this as an archive. And if you enjoy reading any of it, great!
I'm happy to have my old 2001-2007 blog posts and my 2007-2025 Wordpress blog posts in one place. I've got the comments archived, but you can't see them. Debating if that's a bug or a feature. I love going back over the old comments, but I turned Wordpress comments off ages ago and haven't missed the spam. Comments on a static site is a total faff. But maybe I'll figure out some way to archive mastodon replies.
I've been busy the last few months working on the house. Painting, mostly. We are, amazingly, approaching the end. I'd love to tell you all about it. It's been a journey.
An exhausting journey.
I did eventually get into Cyberpunk 2077. And I finished it. Once I resigned myself to the nihilism, I found myself enjoying it.
At the moment I'm playing Hades. There may be a post about it later. Maybe!
Happy Doctor Who Day! The extent of my celebration was listening to Stranded while I painted.
The little guy managed to re-activate my Netflix subscription. At the end of the month, I’ll have to remember to uninstall the Chromecast app, because it’s apparently too easy for him to just click buttons until Blippi shows up.
K-Pop Demon Hunters is pretty great. I needed something to put on in the background while I was doing housework, and this was that. But I ended up being really drawn into it.
It reminded me a lot of Seeing Red, but also that K/DA Pop Stars video I’m still kind of obsessed with.
Anyway, recommended. The songs are still stuck in my head. I could criticise the autotune and the script maybe needed a polish, but honestly, it’s silly fun. It seems to be finding its audience, which is great, cuz I’d love to see more stuff like this.
Look. I’m kind of getting old. I turn 50 in a few weeks. So I’m fine with any modern iteration of franchises I loved in my childhood not being made for me anymore. It’s cool. Doctor Who is a kids’ show. Make it for the kids.
Also, I’ve always been a bit tepid on Russell T Davies. Yeah, he deserves a lot of credit for bringing the show back 20 years ago (to the day, almost!). But he’s terrible at finales. He’s always been terrible at finales. All of his season arcs have been stupid. I accept that season arcs are a necessity of TV these days. I don’t have to like it. Give me a monster of the week any day. Like I said, I’m getting old.
Russell can definitely craft a good episode, tho. And he made some crucially good decisions when he brought the show back. I hated the idea of the Time War and killing off the Time Lords at the time, but, in retrospect, it was genius. It gave the show a mythos that 2000s audience can obssess about that wasn’t mired in nonsense from the 70s and 80s.
And I love the nonsense from the 70s and 80s.
But these days? Russell? I appreciate the urge to bring back Sutekh or Susan or the Rani or Omega, but if we’re going to, can it maybe actually mean something? Other than a pointless cameo or an easily dispatched CG blob? Or a “dance” partner who’d never previously expressed an interest?
I love Big Finish. I’m not going to claim that they’re the gold standard in nostalgic fanwank, but I think they rank at least a silver. When they had Susan meet up with the Eighth Doctor again, there was a reason for it. And it laid seeds for future adventures. And it wasn’t just there to answer some question nobody really needed the answer to. It made for good character moments. A bit of closure without a closing off.
Carole Ann Ford is eighty-five years old, bless her, so maybe she’d like a bit of closing off.
When Big Finish brought back Sutekh, it was for a four-part box set starring Bernice Summerfield. An archeologist who’s really into Mars. Where Sutekh is. It made sense. It’s great. And not just because I’m a big Bernice Summerfield fan.
I don’t know what’s next for the show. I suspect few people do. I’ll watch whatever comes next. I certainly didn’t hate Ncuti Gatwa’s tenure as the Doctor, even if my eyes were frequently rolling, especially at finale time.
I was really hoping RTD2 would be an opportunity for the show to bring up new showrunners. It’s clear that running a show like Doctor Who is not something very many people can do. But I don’t see anybody in the wings willing or able to take over. Which is a bit sad.
