fajrdrako | Torchwood, Buffy, chatter and a few thoughts... (Reply)

I had a great evening. First I met

commodorified and a friend of theirs at the locks of the Canal, and we visited the The Fair Jeanne, a brigantine wintering in the Rideau Locks just beside the Bytown Museum. Even covered in snow and tarps and ice she was beautiful, and so well kept. My tallship love leaped to the fore and I felt like worshipping at her bow. Why do I have such an emotional reaction to vessels like that?

Then they all walked me home, which was fun, except for the really icy bits. We talked about books, and authors, and the list of Hugo Award nominees, and Enid Blyton. We agreed how well we walk together. Really, we do. It's remarkable. Good walking companions are worth their weight in gold.

I had supper with

maaseru and

maaboroshi. We watched Coronation Street and then I rashly mentioned Buffy to

maaboroshi, who wanted to see an episode or two. She wanted to slip right over to "What's My Line, part 1" but I insisted on going chronologically, so we watched "The Dark Age" first - and now I'm ahead of schedule (yay!) and it was fun watching with different people, even if it was people who had seen it before - which really added to the fun, though they are troopers and were careful not to utter spoilers. Much laughter. Much commentary. Much discussion of Giles and Ethan.

A thought: that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the vanguard of a sort of self-referential TV style created by and for one of the first generations to grow up entirely on television. In some ways it's an amalgam of our collective TV memories - with a good dollop of comic book lore, but comic books follow the same timeframe, too. So it's all built on what came before, like a pyramid, and it isn't just a tribute or a pastiche to shows, ideas, images and icons of the past, it's a sort of art form based on pop culture foundations, the way Renaissance art was based on biblical and classical lore.

And now Doctor Who and Torchwood follow the same trend. Other shows may well do the same; I don't know because I'm not watching other shows.

Also cleared a lot of old stuff off my DVD hard drive, like season 3 Veronica Mars and season 2 Heroes. I discovered that I'd recorded the first half of the Doctor Who story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", but not the second half - I hadn't realized it was being aired on BBCK later on Sunday. How... sneaky of them. Drat.