In a move that will probably go down like the proverbial lead balloon in certain quarters, and in what is certainly an interesting counterpoint to the slow moves to even get a woman Bishop in this country, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the USA has narrowly elected Katharine Jefferts Schori as the first ever female primate of an Anglican Church. For those of you who don’t know much about the Church hierarchy, this roughly equivalent to us having a woman as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Putting aside that many parts of the worldwide Church don’t even have women priests, let a lone female bishops, she also voted for the election of Gene Robinson three years ago, and is supportive of blessing same-sex unions. A split in the Church is probably now a foregone conclusion.
Monthly Archives: June 2006
New Pictures
I’ve uploaded a few new pictures from our pretty busy weekend. There is a nice picture of all the family, taken this lunchtime when we took Dad out for Fathers Day. There is also a photoset of our trip to Cambridge yesterday. I’m sorry to say that as it was a Church trip, the usual rules about pictures of any young people apply, so any shots that include recognisable images of any of the junior choir are not on general access. If you are a choir member and want to see the other shots, give me a shout and I will give you access to the additional pictures on Flickr.
Love and Monsters
Back in the early years of Doctor Who, when the series used to run for the majority of the year with only a short summer break, there would periodically be episodes where the Doctor would be incapacitated, or somehow removed from the action for pretty much an entire episode in order to give the lead actor a break. Last night the new series of Doctor Who did something similar. Thanks to a heavy shooting schedule on other episodes in the series, Love and Monsters was largely filmed by a second crew, alongside filming of the preceding episodes, and with very little involvement from either David Tennant or Billie Piper.
The central character of the episode was called Elton Pope, and he had first met the Doctor as a child, when he heard a strange noise during the night, and came downstairs to find him stood in his living room. Later in life, after prominent events such as the Auton invasion, the Slytheen and Sycorax invasions seen in previous episodes (all of which we see from Elton’s point of view), Elton finds a group of people who have also had encounters with the Doctor. Whilst it is their need to find out more that brings them together, they ultimately end up as a group of friends. However this all changes when the strange Victor Kennedy joins the group and takes over, pushing them forward in their search. Through this, Elton meets Jackie Tyler, Rose’s mother, and makes friends. However all is not as it seems with Victor Kennedy, and quite how will Jackie respond when she finds out that Elton was really looking for the Doctor through her?
Alongside the fairly rare device of telling the story from a point of view other than the Doctor, the story was also very light – featuring comedian Peter Kay as Victor Kennedy. Camille Coduri also gets a good chance to shine as Jackie Tyler, rather than her more usual supporting role. Great Jackie moments being her quite blatant seducing of Elton – as he comments at one point, with the number of fuses that seemed to blow in her flat, she needs to call the Electricity board! The episode is also notable as it includes the Abzorbaloff, the prize winner in the recent Blue Peter Design a Monster competition. Not only did William Grantham, the nine-year old who won get a visit to the set to see the programme being made, but he even got an ‘Abzorbaloff created by…’ credit in the closing credits. The creature seemed to have turned out well, certainly from the comments he made in Doctor Who Confidential. It was certainly pretty impressive, as the faces of all the recently absorbed, partially digested victims could be seen over the creatures body – talking too…
In all, for what was essentially a cheap filler episode between the big budget two parters, I thought it was good. As an attempt to do something different I think it worked well, with the story being told from a different point of view. Finally, I didn’t ever think I’d see an episode of Doctor Who that featured both Elton John, and Mr Blue Sky from ELO – but now I have…
Vista vs Apple – The Comeback
Last month I commented on the PC Pro Vista vs Apple comparison article, highlighting the fact it compared a Vista beta with a soon-to-be replaced version of MacOS X. I also mentioned the fact that they down-marked MacOS X for having a poor selection of included software by ignoring the iLife suite.
Anyway, this month they have published two, of the apparently many e-mails and letters they received criticising the article and accusing it of bias. Needless to say they aren’t giving any ground, they again justify the comparison by blaming Apple for not releasing Leopard beta code to them for review – bear in mind that they haven’t shown Leopard to Mac magazines, so they’re hardly likely to let a PC magazine see it. With regards to iLife they make the comment ‘and some people may have received bonus software such as iLife with their iMac‘ – lets just make this clear, whatever PC Pro may think, iLife ships with every Mac that Apple sell, just go through all the machines on their web site and it is listed. Microsoft maintained to the EU that software such as Windows Media Player and the like was no part of their operating system – it has to be said that they weren’t believed – but the only real difference is that Apple charge separately for the upgrade versions of iLife whereas upgrades to Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker are free upgrades, or come along with the OS upgrades.
The final point they address is the accusation of bias, which is effectively an agreement, but justified by saying that everybody else would be biased anyway.
To the credit of the magazine, despite their acknowledged bias, they have reviewed all the new Apple hardware in recent months, and although they review it from the point of view of putting on Windows – something Howard thinks is a bit of a waste of time – all the hardware has got pretty good reviews, with this month them conceding that the MacBook is a better compact laptop than many of the PC’s in their group test elsewhere in the magazine. So whilst they admit to being biased, even they are starting to succumb to the nice new Apple hardware!
Billie Piper Finally Confirms Her Departure
News came today, that the BBC has confirmed that Billie Piper will be leaving Doctor Who in the final episode of the series. A number of sources report that the character will be killed off too, further backed up by the prophecy made in the most recent episode that Rose would die in battle. However, the BBC has refused to confirm this.
Rumours of Piper’s departure have been around as far back as November 2005, when the Daily Mirror reported that she would be leaving. At that point, the corporation dodged the question, however as late as March this year, the BBC reported that both Tennant and Piper were on board for series three.
Certainly with the new style more character based Doctor Who, if Rose does indeed die at the conclusion of this series, I’m sure we can expect a much more subdued and contemplative Doctor when the series returns, as he tries to come to terms with her death, and not having kept his promise to Jackie to keep her daughter safe. It will also be interesting to see whether the series continues to include Jackie with both Rose and Mickey gone, or whether the series again moves on to a different era in terms of the stories and locations.