So there’s my ‘attempt’ to explain this bizarre twist of events 😀 What would you do if you had to rebuild a person with a VW Bus and an 8-Track?
FYI, there is an increased chance of update gaps in Back Office at the moment. I had planned to have a couple buffer pages made by now, but at the moment I am producing these pages a few days ahead of the update day. This is down to the Bata Neart one-shot manga taking up more time than I though, but it also due to another important project that I’m about to do. This situation will only last for the next 10 weeks, so I’m going to try my best to hold out. But please be aware that I might have to drop one or two updates in the coming weeks. Sorry about this again.
Well, you know, if you want a proper 70’s upgrade, there’s always these guys:
These ‘upgrades’ were somewhat Cyberman inspired. A lot of the Q-Matic stuff in the last story was also a reference to the Cybermen. Some of the more classic lines have come from them I feel 😀
I thought the Q-Matic stuff had much more of a Borg feel to it than Cybermen. Of course the Borg themselves are closely based on the Cybermen. I’m pretty sure that “Resistance is futile,” is actually a paraphrase of a line from an early Doctor Who ep. I’m thinking something from the Patrick Troughton era, but I’m not sure.
‘Resistance is futile’ is the kind of saying that may be as old as speech itself. Surely it can be found in some ancient writings… if only I knew ancient Greek, and not just their alphabet!
If I had to rebuild a person with a VW bus and an 8-track? I hope I would be able to say to myself ‘Dude, you’re in a comic for goodness sake’, then punch a hole through the fourth wall, climb out of that hole and go give my creator a really really hard time about it. And a few other weird things in my life. However, most of the weird things in my life, I really ought to thank that creator for. Hmm, probably should lead with that part, says some sort of social teacher in the back of my head…
/rambling
Update gaps are expected and nothing to be concerned about. Say hi to your kid and your wife from us, and concern yourself with them instead 🙂
@Kessy: Ooooo, early Cybermen episodes. By far at their best and creepiest. The following scene is by far my favourite, and it was only their second appearance in the franchise.
The great thing about the 60’s version of the Cybermen is that they really emphasized that they used to be human, and were trying to turn everyone else into beings like themselves. That kinda got lost in the 80’s version, I think, which is the version I grew up with. One of the things I loved about the David Tennant era is that they really tried to recapture a lot of the original themes back when adversaries like the Cybermen were first introduced. And now the series writing is going downhill again, and they seem to be becoming just generic monsters again. I suppose it’s a cycle of history or something.
One thing I really don’t like about the 60’s Cybermen tho is that I have a really hard time understanding those early electronic voices. Was that a vocorder they were using? Or was that before vocorders?
@O8h7w: Very likely that you are right on that. The whole ‘resistance is futile’ is likely very old, predating most modern references (such as Cybermen / The Borg). Star Trek did a pretty good job at attaching that phrase to their particular monster.
Thank you for understanding on the potential update gaps 🙂
Although are you ok? You speak of weird stuff happening in life. Sounds like you might need an ‘Aoife-gram’ to cheer you up. I just gotta find an envelope big enough to send her in…
@Kessy: Totally agree Kessy. I kinda miss the Tennant years (and the early Matt Smith years too). Now the show has gone to hell, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if cancellation was on the cards in the next year or so.
I could go on for ages ranting on about how Moffat went from making the show awesome, to then slowly but very surely ruining it. Also, although many ‘whovians’ are into Clara, she just annoys the hell out of me. She was supposed to have died off in the last X-mas special, but they kept her on. I then learn later that they would have actually cancelled the show with her departure. It doesn’t bode well if Moffat & Co. are more invested in the companion, than the doctor of the day. On that note, I really wanted Hugh Laurie to be that doctor. (Can you imagine? Doctor Who House? :D)
Now the ‘whovians’ are going ga-ga about the idea of the next doctor being female…instead of, you know…going ga-ga about the next doctor being any good. (Caprani is ok, but he is….meh). The trailer for the next season was also very….meh.
Sorry for the negativity there, it’s just annoying to see a show you’ve enjoyed since childhood being diluted horribly for the sake of fan-boys/girls.
Regarding the 60’s Cybermen, I think that was actually an early vocorder they were using for that. BBC were putting a lot of the latest technology into the show once it had shown to be a popular (profitable) franchise.
LOL! House as Doctor Who – I like that. Cranky and cantankerous, it’d be like bringing back William Hartnell’s Doctor.
I understand the negativity and pretty much agree with it, but I tend to look at it philosophically. The Doctor has entered the age of Shiva the destroyer – the show goes crap, then goes on hiatus for a while until the next Russel Davies comes along to revive it. Like the Doctor himself, the show will never die, it just regenerates itself into a new form. The stage the show is in right now reminds me a lot of the Sylvester McCoy years. If you think about it, it’s been ten years since the Doctor came back (Gah! Now I feel old!) and how many shows run for ten years at all?
I’ve never really been one to get all *that* excited about a new Doctor – it seems to me that the quality of the show is almost always about the quality of the writing, not the acting. McCoy is a great example. I always liked his portrayal of the Doctor, but the writing was just terrible. (I’m having visions of the Doctor’s companion killing Cybermen by shooting gold coins at them with a slingshot here…) On the other hand, I was never a huge fan of Eccleston as the Doctor, but the writing was really good.
Personally I think that Moffat is just a bad writer. I stopped watching the show regularly after Matt Smith’s first season. The beginning of his second year, when they introduced the Silence, was just too much for me. I felt like they took a years’ worth of scripts, threw them up in the air and picked a handful of pages at random to stitch together an episode.
I guess I am ok. As I said, most of the weird stuff I really ought to thank the creator for. And a lot of it is tied to someone quite like Aoife, just with more moods and less hugs… :/
Also I just came back from a quick roadtrip through Norway 🙂 I drove to a small place called Svelgen and back in five days. Had good company for half of it. Got to see a lot, for example by taking the small old road over Strynefjell, and it was beautiful.
About the Doctor… I really should watch some of that show. It seems my inner nerd is lacking a vital piece of nerd-dom. So, dear Mark and Kessy, where do I start?
@O8h7w: Glad you are ok. Sending Aoife to Sweden may have been unwise anyway, given that I doubt she’s be able to behave herself around Swedish girls 😀 I can certainly understand the kind of difficulty you are possibly facing, and the only nuggets of helpful wisdom I can offer is to be best of yourself irregardless (or even in spite of) those people who may make you feel doubt. I know that advise cliched as hell, but I think it helps whenever I’m feeling that.
Wow, all the way to Sveigen?! That’s one long mountain-drive there 😀 Agreed, much of Norway’s highlands are beautiful and are pretty damn inspiring. Fairly often I cheat in Bata Neart backgrounds and use Norwegian landscapes whenever I need to render the Wicklow mountains. Some of Wicklow is similar to Norway, so I think that’s only a small cheat. I haven’t been to the part of Norway you have visited alas. The closest to there I have been is Anna’s cabin up at Hemsedal. The drive in itself is en experience going through the glacial Hallingdal valley, followed by the dramatic climb up the mountain-roads around Hemesdal itself. It’s pretty nice up there. Hope you had fun and didn’t get too slammed on local Hjemmebrent 😀
Getting into Doctor Who? The show certainly presses all of the nerd-buttons…but where to start? For myself (and probably Kessy by the looks of it), I started with the ‘Classic’ Doctor Who serials (which is pretty much the first 3 decades of the show from the 60s to the 80s.) If you don’t mind retro sci-fi this will be a good place to start. Be warned that a good few early Doctor Who stories from the 60’s have been lost forever due to the BBC deleting their archives. Things pick up a lot I feel with Colin Baker’s ‘Fourth Doctor’ onwards. The show starts to go to hell in the 80’s and is eventually cancelled.
I got Anna into the re-launched 2005 Doctor Who series by showing her the adventures of the 10th Doctor, as played by David Tennant. She really got into the show after that, and proceeded to watch the 9th Doctor (which she didn’t like), before finally loving the show with the 11th Doctor played by Matt Smith.
The subsequent introduction of companion ‘Clara’ in the more recent seasons, as well the introducion of the 12th Doctor and the general slide of quality of Doctor Who has now alas put us both off the show entirely for now. But that said, there is a huge amount of very good sci-fi to watch in this show up until that point and it is well worth the look.
My recommendation: Start with the 2005 Series, and then have a look back at the classic series once you’ve got a feel of it 🙂
@Rawr: I think at least one of my friends would have trouble behaving herself around Aoife! 😀 Oh, and as cliché as it may sound, I’m reasonably sure the only one making me feel doubt is myself. Provided I do count my feelings as a part of myself, which I often have a hard time doing.
While I did travel north of Hemsedal and Hallingdal, by looking at the map, the better part of my route seems a lot less scenic. It is also quite farther east which means more boring nature. Well, up to Otta. The E6 was downright dreary but the Rv15 more than made up for it 🙂 And when you start the descent towards the coastline the nature goes absolutely mad. The scenery is like pornography, it will grab hold of your mind, you will desire it like nothing else. If there is a God who created Earth, that God has an eye for beauty, and that part of the Earth is Gods masterpiece.
And yeah, a long drive, essentially two full days of driving. One way – so not a single day had less than five hours of driving. And my company didn’t have a license, so no Hjemmebrent for me… not that I like the stuff in the first place. Getting smashed is not for me. However we did enjoy a nice black beer from Florø one evening, I’m up for anything with a good amount of taste to it 🙂
Now to go hunt down the 2005 series of Doctor Who 🙂
@O8h7w: Agreed on the dreary E6. Been on the route to Trondheim (so no lovely Rv15 for me). It really is your generic long-distance Norwegian Euroroute, interspersed by Statoil stations, the occasional street-kitchen, and tunnels that go on for friggin’ever 😀 The branch roads do make for a more beautiful and interesting drive. The nature is simply too formidable for them to plow a straight ling through it. They even have to close some of these roads due to heavy snow during winter!
I don’t blame you on not liking Hjemmebrent. I tend to only partake when it’s offered (and I’m not driving).
I do have one tip for breaking up the dreariness along the E6. Unless you cross over to Rv3 in Hamar, I guess. By sheer luck (and setting my GPS to avoid toll roads but not gravel roads) I stumbled on restaurant in Tretten that I think was called “Cadillac Diner”. N 61.31572, E 10.300765. A very America-nostalgic place and they do serve some mean hamburgers. I’m *really* not a fan of their pommes frites, and yet I will stop there again and again. The large hamburger buns makes the pommes unnecessary anyway.