Deep Orchid, you are the bloom of my life.

And now, after a rather unexpected return to infrequent blogging, I give you a post. To take up where we left off, my 19th was great, I had so much fun with friends and happiness was had. The mystery gift turned out to be a talking Dalek. When you squeeze him, he says "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE!!!" and "YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DALEK!"

Surprisingly the first shot has a way more awkward face than the theatrical grimace below. 

I also feel compelled to mention that I know, I know: power ranger Dalek, but the reality is that they were comical because they were so clearly meant for "collect them all" merchandising, and what better way to embrace that? If Doctor Who is anything, it's corny with a touch of lame, and that's why we love it!

Having a very good Thanksgiving weekend as well, and a lot of happy feelings can be attributed to the fact that I've finally had some real inspiration for writing my novel (trying so hard to say that without feeling like a twat). For a little over a year I've been trying to dig myself out of this plot-planning, world-building hole and get some actual work done. Without a doubt, all of the planning and research is important, but if you don't stop yourself it'll never end. There will always be something that you could probably flesh out a bit more before you put it into the story. No! Sometimes you just have to write the damn thing and see what wordlings come out. 

I like to say that I've been on the road to recovery for a while, but I can attribute a lot of my inspiration to the movie Looper, which I saw Saturday afternoon, and loved it despite the awkward eyebrows on Joseph Gordon Levitt. A lot of the ideas in the movie are present in my story, which I don't feel bad about, because first of all it means that they're probably pretty sweet ideas if they ended up in a cool movie, and second of all I started this story in 2010, so if I wanted to be the first to the idea (which, realistically, I wasn't in 2010) I should have maybe done a little more than I have in 24 months. (If you're interested, this picture is from what is probably the best scene in the movie. Love 'dat snappy dialogue.)

I'm at the stage where I need to turn my writing into a job, with schedules and deadlines and all that stuff, because I know that's the only way I'll ever finish anything at all. I've never been particularly skilled at schedules, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give up. I can do it!

Also I've started watching Dexter and Andromeda, and I'm quite enjoying them both. Andromeda seems to be a proto-Firefly, so it's kind of an automatic win, and Dexter was a little surprising because ordinarily I'm not very attracted to "cop shows", but my brother insisted, and now I've found a new show!

In blog news, I think I might do a post recommending all of the webcomics I read, because that way I can justify the crazy amount of time I spend reading them.

Deep Space Galactica.

While making my way through the only Star Trek series whose re-runs had never really matched my TV watching, Deep Space Nine, I've had a few interesting surprises.

First of all, I'm becoming pretty attached to the show.

I'm just making headway into season two, and it's taken a long, long time to get this far. Season one was rough, and only started to turn the corner towards the end. Eventually, though, something wonderful happened: I started to like the characters.

You know how when you first start watching the show, even more so if you've already heard little snippets of information about it, you're always trying to guess which characters you're going to like? I'm always picking sides within the first five minutes. It takes a lot of time and development to sway me from these early biases, but a few characters in Deep Space Nine are starting to wear me down.

My initial impressions were that I hated Sisko. Star Trek fans will be happy to know that this feeling stuck. To this day I can't understand what possessed them to hire that actor. Anyway, I had also decided against Major Kira, feeling that she was one of those poorly done strong female types(Lookin' at you, River Song). I liked Odo 'cause he seemed cool and Quark because... well, I challenge anyone to not like Quark. Ferengi, man, that's where it's at. I swear it has nothing to do with the fact that he was in Buffy for a couple years. Nothing at all. I loved Dr. Bashir simply because I'd heard him be compared (with a grimace) to the great Baltar of Galactica, and Dax because I've always been a hardcore Star Gate Gal.

Then as the first season progressed (roughly), Odo seemed less great, Dax was getting boring, and the show didn't seem to know how to focus on anyone but Sisko and Kira. Towards the end of the season, things started to change. First of all, the relationship between Odo and Quark is quite possibly my favorite part of the show. It's pulled off extremely well, and the lack of Sisko makes for some great acting. It's one of the best frenemy bromances I've seen.

Through a lot of hard work on her part, I'm actually warming up to Kira. Kinda. Sorta. Sorta-kinda. I still dislike her a lot, and find many of her little Bajoran rants and tantrums boring and worse, aggrivating. But I'm starting to like HER. Also, Bajoran clothes are fucking great, I'm loving the 90s Sci-Fi hippie look. It being probably the only fashion I'd ever get behind, I really can't see it coming back (not that it ever came) any time soon.

While watching the show today I had a strange thought- I really wanted to watch Battlestar Galactica again. It's then that I realized that Deep Space Nine is really a corny 90s version of that sci-fi drama that started really well, before getting really confused.

In an era of light and fluffy science fiction shows, Deep Space Nine is more gritty, the Federation feels out of place on the old Cardassian station. I love O'Brian, in likeness to the Chief he adds a lot of realism to the station with frequent mechanical problems (also- Kaeko meets Boomer, anyone?). There's also the heavy use of politics, which yes, is a common theme in most Star Trek shows, but none more so than in DS9. Then there's that general feeling of being forced into an unlikely and very unstable situation. Even similarly weird and cokey religions are used.

Plenty of 'lols' to be found in this comparison since Ron Moore's Battlestar Bible thingy places a lot of stress on NOT being like Star Trek, it seems as though BSG was more of a modern twist on an old Trekkie idea, Deep Space Nine.

But here's hopin' that DS9 continues it's trend of getting better and better with time, unlike it's successor.

Doctor Whoed.

In six days I watched seasons one to five of the 'new' Doctor Who series. I would be proud of this, but I have a feeling that I could and should have done it in five, but as my brother was kind enough to explain to me, I found it difficult to continue on the fifth day because I was going through David Tennant withdrawal.

I have one thing to say to anyone reading this who hasn't watched Doctor Who; WATCH IT. I was a little sceptical about it at first, but now I really don't know how I ever lived without it. Really and truly it's one of the most interesting and creative shows out there, especially today, where television has become something of a joke with every show falling into one of two categories: reality TV, or something to do with ghosts/vampires. How exciting.

From the first episode, I was drawn deeply into it, and I place it all on The Doctor, who in six days has become one of my favourite characters of all time.

One of the greatest things about Doctor Who is that every Doctor changes the show in almost every way, so it never get's old. Even though each episode follows the same basic plot line of "The Doctor and his companion go somewhere in the TARDIS and do something cool." I wont start on how absolutely incredible the tenth doctor was to the series, but I will say that those of you who've watched it know EXACTLY what I mean.

I did have one problem though, and it was so strange to everyone that I talked to about it that my brother told me I must have watched the show wrong. Maybe I did and maybe I didn't, but either way, I DIDN'T LIKE ROSE. Most people I talked to responded with "But I liked Rose!" or "She was better than MARTHA." For me, Rose was a Fred (from Angel). Everyone seemed to love her, and I mean LOVE her, without having any real reason for it.

The eleventh Doctor. I still sort of feel that he isn't the best, but having finished the fifth season, I don't think he's that bad. He's his own Doctor in his own right, and I like him. Although I do think that he had a rather violent experience falling down the ugly tree at some point in his childhood. I think what really made me sad was finding out that Robert Carlyle was on the list for possible eleventh Doctors, and he WASN'T chosen. Although I suppose he could have been busy doing SGU anyway. So come on everyone, ROBERT CARLYLE FOR NUMBER TWELVE!

The TARDIS is another one of the high points of the show, for me it became like Serenity in that it was a beloved character of it's own. Who doesn't love getting attached to space ships?

Finally there's THE TITLE THEME. It pissed me off when they changed it slightly for season four, but the fifth season made me hate it a little. I loved how lame the old one was, with the corny-sounding beeps and whirring noises typical of classic science fiction. They seemed to be continuously trying to make it "cool". I don't like cool. I liked the lame-ass geeky version. I liked it A LOT.

Oh, I lied, I have another thing to say to people who haven't seen Doctor Who, if you're gonna watch it, awesome, but you MAY consider waiting until closer to Christmas or else you'll be like the rest of us, sitting around with around six months of going cold, cold turkey on the horizon.