A reaction to Stephen Bloom

Relatively recently, Stephen Bloom wrote an article for The Atlantic on how he viewed Iowa. He refers to it as “a place of bizarre contrasts”, mentioning its status as the second state to allow gay marriage, and then spends the rest of the article explaining how very rural and conservative it is.

The thing that got to me the most about this article was not how very rural and conservative Iowa is – there are certainly many conservative things about Iowa and many Iowans, although Bloom himself says at the beginning that it’s a state of contrasts, with a very liberal Democrat as one of its senators – but this sentence here: In a perfect world, no way would Iowa ever be considered representative of America, or even a small part of it. 

Why? Why would a state that is ranked 30^th in population (out of 50, obviously – so just under halfway, and about half a million people off of exactly halfway in the rankings) not be considered representative of America? Why would a state that has one conservative and one liberal Senator not be considered representative of America? And, here’s my biggest question, if Iowa is not representative of America, what state is?

My experience of Iowa – as someone who grew up on the Missouri River, just over the border from Iowa, who has family in Iowa, but who also has family on the East Coast, West Coast, and overseas – is one of the contrasts that Bloom mentions, not just the rural conservatism he focuses on. Do I know people who hunt? Sure. And they then have venison or pheasant for meals the rest of the season. Do I know people who are rabidly anti-gun,vegetarian or vegan, and wouldn’t dream of killing an animal even to eat it? Of course. One of the best places I know to get organic food and vegan food is in Iowa. Do I know people who go to church on a regular basis? Sure. Do I know atheists, Jews, Hindus, Mormons, and people who claim Christianity but haven’t been inside  a church in years? Of course. Towns in Iowa are insular? So are neighborhoods in Nottingham – and, I would imagine, New York.

Iowa has cities – not New York style cities, but only 2% of the US population lives in New York City –  as well as small towns. Iowa has symphony orchestras, and rock concerts, and films. Iowa has public radio and television, and art galleries, and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Iowa has a plethora of small businesses as well as big box stores. Iowa has universities and colleges, airports, and the hometown of a former President. This may surprise Stephen Bloom, even though he’s lived in Iowa for 20 years or so, but Iowa has electricity, running water, telephones, and access to the internet.

I also couldn’t help but notice that most of his ridicule was about the older generation of Iowans – at least 50 years old and over. They wear hats, they carry a penknife, they answer the phone with their last names, etc. Somehow I don’t think some of those are unique to Iowa.

But my main question to Stephen Bloom is this: If Iowa, a microcosm of both liberal and conservative, containing elements of both urban and rural, isn’t representative of the US, what is? Should we focus on the eleven biggest states, which Wikipedia says have 56% of the population, and ignore the other 39 with 44%? Do we need to revisit the arguments that led to the House of Representatives having proportional representation while the Senate had equal representation? Do I need to remind him that the US is supposed to be for all people, regardless of creed, colour, or political stripe?

Also, if you really hate it that much, there’s nothing stopping you from leaving. I-80 (I’ve only ever heard it called simply the Interstate by people who don’t have access to another interstate – like, say, I-29 or I-35, also in Iowa – or to distinguish it from one of the many US or state highways that also criss-cross the state, when giving driving directions) is right there. Oh, wait, you say that academia is facing many of the same employability problems that you mention about farming and manufacturing? Funny how that didn’t make it into your article.....I suppose it was just too easy to fall back onto the rural stereotypes that people have been using for the last hundred and fifty years or more.

P.S. If you've read Bloom's article, please please read this one too - it's another, better-than-mine, response.

Thinking about the future

I’ve been reading through the Wordpress.com Post-a-day prompts, and I have noticed that there is some repetition. This isn’t totally surprising, as it would be very difficult to come up with 365 completely unique post ideas. It is often said that there are no truly original ideas - just adaptations and original ways of portraying them - and that is what I’ve noticed among these prompts. It also helps that the vaguely repetitive ideas are spaced out quite a lot, so, if you were doing these prompts in a timely manner, you might not notice. Certainly there’s possibility for wide variation in the treatment of the prompts: later prompts about protesting, for example, pull in reactions to the Occupy movement where earlier ones might be less specific and more philosophical.

One of the trends I noticed among the prompts is thinking about the future.  Write a letter to yourself to be read in a year. Or ten years. Where do you want to be in ten years. Come up with a bucket list. Or a list of life goals. Is 2011 anything like you’d thought it would be in 2001, and what do you think 2021 will be like.

I sometimes think about doing these prompts, but I run into problems. I write a bucket list, but then realise that there’s nothing preventing me from accomplishing some of these things apart from spending my time writing a bucket list (or surfing the internet or watching TV) instead of getting started on things like learning Japanese/French/Arabic or revising my novel. I have a list of books I want to read, and there’s nothing actively preventing me from reading them except my own relative apathy and procrastination.

The other problem I have is just thinking about the future. I learned very quickly that the future rarely turns out like you expect it to. I certainly didn’t expect to end up in Slovakia. I didn’t expect that the only full-time work I’d be able to find with a Master’s degree would be as a barista. I didn’t expect to find Jon. It’s good to have goals, of course, but I have found that setting those goals too far in the future almost guarantees that something will come up to change them.

I can’t think about the future. At this point, I can’t see past February, when my current visa runs out. (Goal for today: at least one job application and compiling the paperwork for the next visa.) I can’t even fathom what my 31st birthday will be like. I certainly can’t think as far ahead as 2021. Will we be married? Have kids? Still be in Nottingham? Still working? I have no idea. It’s completely dark to me. And this isn’t a depression-based thing, either - I don’t think that I’ll be dead or anything. I just don’t have an image for what it will be.

I have goals, of course. I want to stay in the UK, get a non-minimum-wage job, stay with Jon. But those are all either short-term or continual goals, not ticks on a long-term list.

Ramblings about the EU and the Euro

I feel like writing, but I don’t quite have the inspiration or attention span to focus on fiction and/or poetry, so instead I’m just going to ramble. I keep being fascinated by Wordpress’s Post-a-Day topics,  even though I don’t have the discipline to actually do them. So I’m going to ramble based on some of these topics.

First up: The Euro.

Well, more accurately, the EU. The topic as given by Wordpress is “What is the future of the Euro? With all the trouble in Greece, Spain and Italy, do you think the currency will survive? Do you understand why there are multiple currencies in the world? Do you wonder why there isn’t just one kind of currency? Do you think your nation’s money is better looking, or worse, than other nations?”

I’m just going to adapt that to my general feelings on the EU, touching on the monetary issues even though I don’t quite have the expertise to completely understand it all.

First of all, sometimes I have heard the EU referred to as “The United States of Europe”, mostly in a derogatory way. This frustrates me no end, and not because I am from the US. No, it’s because that’s inaccurate. The EU is not like the US is now. It’s so much more like the US was under the Articles of Confederation.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the states were much more like independent countries. They had much more control over both their internal and external policies, and could opt in or opt out of the “national” demands. The national government had a bit of control over defense, but not the range of responsibilities that the current federal government has. In the same way, Brussels has certain responsibilites, but the member states can opt in or opt out of some things. And the Euro is probably the best example of this. If the EU were like the current US, the Euro would be used across the region, Brussels would have the responsibility for minting and regulation, and when one member state went bankrupt, it wouldn’t completely demolish the overall economy. California was bankrupt a few years ago, but the US didn’t completely implode. (*note: this is one of those areas where I don’t have details or expertise to back up my statements - just the vague impressions that I’ve gotten from headlines*)

But, just from living in the UK, I do know that the EU doesn’t have the same control or influence over its member states that the US has over its. At the moment, it’s an alliance, not even close to a nation - more like NATO than the US. I don’t know if it will survive in its current form - the Articles of Confederation didn’t - and certainly the Euro problems at the moment are shaking things up.

I think the Euro will survive, at least within the Schengen group (and, yes, I know that there are a few countries in Schengen that aren’t on the Euro yet). I think the convenience of not having to convert money, for both individuals and corporations, will outweigh any drawbacks or pride issues involved with switching currencies. It only makes sense for a region with no (or almost no) border checks to have the same currency. If you’re taking the bureaucratic hassles out of international travel through a region, take them all out.

The problem with the Euro, as with all currency, is that it’s an intermediary in a barter system, and based almost entirely on trust. We trust that our little pieces of metal and bits of fabric-paper will be accepted in place of actual goods or services. And when we travel, we are assured that our historically relevant bits of fabric-paper can be translated into somewhere else’s historically relevant bits of fabric-paper. And the reason that a global single currency won’t work in the foreseeable future is because of that trust aspect. There are plenty of places in the world right now where there is no trust - not just places like Greece, which is publicly melting down, but places like Egypt where the government is in transition, or North Korea, which doesn’t trust anybody. Until there is global economic trust, there will be no global currency.

The last bit of the WordPress prompt is about currency appearance, something I am also a bit fascinated with at the moment. First, US currency is ridiculously boring. It’s a bit better now that they’ve added colours to some of the bills, but overall it’s one of the most monotonous currencies I’ve seen. I kind of can’t believe that in a country with so much emphasis on disabled rights and access and all - there are Braille instructions on drive-through ATMs - the paper currency is still all one size.

Second, I work in retail, so I handle money almost every day. Every once in a while someone hands over a Scottish note - and once even a note from Northern Ireland - and I can’t resist looking at it, over and over again. I wonder so many things about currency - who the figures are, mostly, and why they were chosen for specific denominations. Whenever I travel, I study the money. Euros can be fun sometimes because, although its a single pan-European currency, the coins are marked with specific countries’ designs, so it can become a collecting mania. Same with quarters in the US, and the newest designs of coins in the UK with the partial shields.

Third, money can be an important cultural touchstone. When I was teaching, I always did at least one class about the currency of the US and the UK (and Canada, when I could find pictures). There are linguistic nuances to money - buck, quid, etc. - cultural differences with prices and taxes, and also just appearance differences.  By going through currencies with my students (and the associated cultural things), I hope I made them a bit more prepared for experiences in those countries, so that they don’t just hold out their hands saying “Your money baffles me,” spend twenty minutes ranting about why a little kiosk won’t take their traveller’s checks, or expect to pay with a $20.00 for something marked at $19.99 in the US.

Wordpress post on Blogspot!

The wordpress “post-a-day” prompt a while ago was “Name one thing you wish you could go back and change about your education.” My wordpress blog is dedicated to my reading life, so I’m blathering about it here.

From a quality perspective, I have no dissatisfaction with my education. I went to excellent schools for high school, undergraduate, and postgraduate studies. What I would change, if I had the chance, would be some of my choices. There’s more than one thing that plays into it. Some of it is the difficulty that English non-education majors have in finding appropriate paid work. (I currently work as a barista.) Some of it is the fascination of the paths not taken.

The main thing I would change would be studying more math and statistics. I am not uneducated in math – I took AP Calculus in high school and a refresher calculus course at Luther that ended up being far too easy to keep me motivated. I wish that I had bothered to continue on with it. I wish I had studied more statistics so that I could have moved more easily from literature to linguistics – a field that is coming to fascinate me more and more.

The other thing that I would change about my educational experience, if I could, would be to pay more (read: any) attention to career possibilities. It’s all well and good to say “You have a liberal arts education; you can do anything” but in a world where specialisation has become the norm, a liberal arts degree – the idea of a Renaissance man (person) – has become archaic and dismissed. I support liberal arts degrees. I think it’s important that people have experience, education, and interests in a wide variety of things, and that liberal arts educations are more likely to provide analytical and communication skills that are necessary in every field. But as I have learned to my cost over the last decade, employers want the relevant piece of paper. If I had documented proof of my math/stats/linguistics/scientific interests, I would find it a bit easier to find gainful employment. If I had work experience in a field, I would be more able to find a career in that field.

There’s also the problem of paralysis of choice. Sure, I *can* do anything with a liberal arts education; by extension, though, I can also do nothing. It might have been easier to start with a specific career that I could then change from, rather than drifting from job to job, trying to find something I enjoy, answering “anything but this” to the question of what I want to do with my life. I am an educated, literate and numerate individual. Unfortunately, some hiring managers look at the English degree and assume that the last part of that description isn’t valid. And my last few jobs in retail haven’t done much to change that perspective on paper.

Of course, just having more of an emphasis on math and stats may not have made much of a difference to my life and career, but I can’t help thinking – looking at all the job descriptions requiring someone with a numerate degree – that it would have helped a little.

Requests for customers, from your friendly neighborhood barista

Requests for customers, from your friendly chain store barista

1. Two things we need to know when you’re ordering: the size of your drink, and whether you’re staying in or taking away. Everything else is stuff you want us to know.

2. Try to at least glance at the pricing board. This has all sorts of useful information on it, like how many sizes we offer, what they’re called, and the price. This way you won’t be surprised by how much your total is.

3. “Normal,” “ordinary,” and “regular” don’t tell us anything about either the size or the type of drink you want. What is normal to you may be unthinkable to someone else. Ordering “coffee” has the same effect.*

4. When there are three options for sizes, you can’t go wrong calling them “small,” “medium,” and “large.”

5. Please don’t come to the till before the cashier at least makes eye contact. We may have things to do to finish off the previous order, other non-till-related responsibilities, or be at the end of our shift. It will save frustration for everyone if you wait.

6. If you have asked for drinks in takeaway cups, please take them away. The same goes for food or drink from somewhere else: if you finish it in our store, please dispose of it yourself.

*True story: A customer once asked for “black Americano, and a coffee with soya” – and then got upset with me when I made her an Americano with soya milk, because she had wanted a soya latte.

Depression Is.... (My symptoms)

Depression is…..

- Uncontrollable tears – not sobbing, just tears – whenever you’re alone and sometimes when you’re not.

- Oversensitivity to rejection, real or imagined

o Guilt about feeling rejected

§ Frustration at yourself for feeling guilty about feeling rejected

- Complete lack of appetite

o Nausea when you don’t eat

o Nausea when you do eat

- Physical exhaustion from anything that expends either mental or physical energy

- Attempting to be cheerful when other people are around

o Physical and mental exhaustion at trying to be cheerful

o Resentment that other people won’t understand how hard you’re trying to be cheerful

§ Guilt over feeling resentful

- Uncontrollable annoyance at other people’s cheerfulness or good fortune

o Guilt over feeling annoyed

§ Frustration with yourself for feeling guilty about being annoyed

- Seesawing between insomnia and sleeping fourteen hours per day

- Uncontrollable annoyance or anger over things that are minor or even funny when you’re normal

- The desire to do nothing but stare at the wall, or maybe the TV, for hours

o Guilt that you’re not spending your time being more productive

§ Frustration that even when you try to be productive, things don’t happen the way you want them to

o Flitting from activity to activity trying to find something that will distract you for more than five minutes

It’s my birthday too, yeah…

I turn thirty this weekend. I’m only slightly freaking out about it. Mostly, I just can’t believe that I’m (almost) thirty. Where did my twenties go? (answer: mostly to Slovakia)

I’ve been thinking a lot about birthdays and my past birthday celebrations lately – mostly because people keep asking what I’m going to do to mark thirty. For the record, I’m not doing anything huge. I’ve invited a few friends out for dinner and then back to mine to play very interactive video games (like, Rock Band, or Kinect Adventures). There are a few reasons for this. Mostly, it comes down to the fact that I’m not a big-group type person. I would so much rather hang out with a few close friends than go out clubbing or something with a big group.

Another reason is that my last two birthdays have had massive celebrations. Two years ago, when I turned 28, my good friend (and now housemate) turned 22 just a couple of weeks later. The coincidence of our ages adding up to 50 was too good to pass up, so we had our joint 50th birthday party – an epically huge celebration. I mostly remember that party for being the “I am surrounded by guys now!” party [I never really made it out of the kitchen, and looked around at one point to realize that I was the only girl in the kitchen, and I was surrounded by about 7 guys, all listening and talking to me. This has been a fairly rare occurrence in my life. It was cool.] as well as my “I am a beautiful princess” party.

Last year, I turned 29, my friend turned 23, and the boys in our house turned 24, all in February and March. Add those ages together, and you get 100. So we had our cumulative 100th birthday party – another epically huge celebration. There are several memorable things about that party: the costumes, some of the attendees….but for me the best part was staying up until 5:30 am talking to my housemate – who is now my boyfriend.  (And then mock-blaming him the next week for having gotten me sick for my birthday.)

Nothing could really beat the last two years in scale, so this year I’m going smaller.

The last reason that I’m doing something low-key for my thirtieth is because my favourite birthday celebrations have been the smaller ones. My twelfth birthday is memorable not for a party, but for the Twinkies that took the place of my golden birthday cake, in part because we were road tripping to see some distantish cousins. For my 24th birthday, my first in Slovakia, my friends from one of the other schools made the trek down to my village to surprise me (and surprise me they did!). It was wonderful. And my 22nd birthday was simultaneously one of my worst and best birthdays. It was a good day, overall: my three closest friends and I hung out in my room, eating cake and pizza, watching Friends episodes, and talking. That was pretty much my ideal birthday, and is kind of what I want to recreate this year. [The “worst” part came about 9:30 that night, when my parents called to tell me that my grandma had just died, and happy birthday. But since I have no more living grandparents, I’m pretty sure that I won’t be recreating that part…]

I can’t let a discussion of my birthday go without a shoutout to my two best birthday buddies: Adrienne, my actual birthday buddy – we met in kindergarten and have lost touch since I moved away, but I always think of her on our birthday [happy 30th, Adrienne!] – and Dwight, my somethingth cousin somethingth removed and surrogate grandfather for a while.

Be nice to your baristas

I work at a coffee shop now, if you didn’t know. It’s a very busy franchise coffee shop; it kind of runs us all off our feet. Now, I don’t drink coffee, and before this I’d never made coffee. The learning curve was steep. But here are some things that I’ve picked up over the last month that I want to share with you, our potential customers.

1. Your default is not necessarily our default. There’s a reason that certain things say “By request” on our menu board – skim milk, decaffeinated coffee, soya. It means you have to request them. The time to request them is when you are ordering. If the barista has time, she’ll confirm whether it’s skim milk or not (for example) as she’s making your drink. Usually we don’t have time. Please don’t ask, as we’re handing it over, whether or not it’s skim. Certainly don’t ask, as we’re handing it over, whether or not it’s skim when you haven’t mentioned skim before. We will remake your drink if you want us to. We will then bitch about you in the back room. To summarize: if you want one of our “by request” options, request it.

2. Most drinks cannot be made simultaneously. This is why the queue gets so long. It’s not even the espresso in most cases. It takes 25 seconds for a normal double shot of espresso and 35 seconds for a normal triple shot. The part that takes so long is the milk.

The following kinds of coffees/hot drinks cannot be made simultaneously: lattes, cappuccinos, Americanos, hot chocolate, flat whites. Drinks with skim milk, soya milk, and whole milk also cannot be made simultaneously. Each espresso machine has three drip slots, so we can’t make more than three drinks at a time. Our favourite orders are the ones with three or fewer identical drinks. Our least favourite orders are the ones with four or more different drinks.

If you come in with an order of two lattes, one with skim milk, a cappuccino, and a hot chocolate, your order will take longer simply because we can’t make any of those drinks at the same time. We’re working as fast as we can, but we are limited by the fact that we can’t make any of these drinks simultaneously.

3. If the details don’t matter, then don’t let the details matter. If there is a genuine reason to have us remake your drink, we will apologetically do so. Genuine reasons include making the wrong drink (i.e., a cappuccino instead of a latte) or using something which, for a medical reason, you can’t have (not making decaf, for example). Using the wrong milk (whole instead of skim), especially if you didn’t request skim at the till, is not necessarily a valid reason to have us remake your drink. Putting too much or too little flavoured syrups into the drink is definitely not a valid reason to have us remake your drink. (see below) We’ll remake it if you ask us to, of course. We will then bitch about you in the back room.

4. The person making your drinks doesn’t usually know that they are your drinks. Here’s what happened to me the other day: I had an order for two vanilla lattes and a something else (can’t remember, not important to the story). As I was making the vanilla lattes, one of the customers waiting asked, “Is that the vanilla latte? Can you add a bit more vanilla?” I hadn’t seen the order be taken, so it was reasonable for me to assume that this order was for this customer, so I added a bit more vanilla (maybe two pumps more). It wasn’t until she asked where her muffin was that I discovered that her vanilla lattes were actually at the other counter, and that the vanilla lattes I had made were for someone else. (Who then said, “there’s extra vanilla in that one? I only want the normal amount of vanilla.” And I had to remake the drink. Seriously, the amount of flavoured syrup is not a valid reason to remake a drink.)

5. If you’re sitting in, please sit at a table that doesn’t have dirty dishes on it. When we’re clearing tables, we look for tables that don’t have anyone at them, but do have dishes. If there are dishes on an occupied table, we assume that they are your drinks and sandwiches, and we’ll wait until you leave to clear them. If you do choose to sit at an uncleared table, don’t give us sarcastic looks if we do realise that the empty trays aren’t yours. It was your choice to sit at an uncleared table. I have never known there to be literally no empty tables. I have known customers who bring the empty trays up to the till, because “there was nowhere to sit” even though I can see at least two empty tables within sight of the one they chose to sit at. These are the people who annoy me.

6. Please don’t complain to us about the queue. We’re sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re honestly going as fast as we can. As I said above, we’re limited by the drinks that can be made simultaneously. I know it’s not your fault that the person two in front of you has five different drinks to be made and three sandwiches to toast, but it’s not our fault either. As with the tables, you chose to wait in this line. There are other options. We appreciate your waiting and your custom, we’re sorry about the length of the queue (from 8:00 am or earlier until almost 7 pm, sometimes with a momentary lull around 3:30), but we honestly are working as fast as we can.

I am a nerd. This is not news.

So I have been embracing my nerdiness recently. I’m in a Doctor Who phase, for one thing. This is mostly sparked by Christmas and the Christmas special being so well-done. Also, when my boyfriend and I went Christmas shopping, we saw a figurine collection of all eleven doctors, with their signature accessories (usually the sonic screwdriver), and it was actually well-done. Not all eleven doctors looked like their portrayer, but let’s say 8 out of 11 did. Which is pretty good for plastic. I’ve also been listening to the audio plays from Big Finish. I also blame Christmas for this: they’re kind of perfect for long flights when there’s nothing good being shown on the actual airline TVs. I read a lot of the time as well, of course, but would turn on the Big Finish when I just wanted to phase out. Also, Tor.com did “The Twelve Days of the Doctor” over the Christmas season, which just fed the obsession.

The other day, while I was home alone (since my actual Full-Time Job didn’t start until today), I extended the obsession. I watched all of the regeneration scenes, for each of the Doctors. And after each regeneration scene, I watched the first scene or two (or three) with the new Doctor – enough to see him reintroduce himself to the companion(s) and the situation and establish himself as a personality. The only one I didn’t watch this time was Four into Five, because I’ve seen Castrovalva a few times, and the last time was just a couple of months ago. Oh, and I limited myself to the “classic” Doctors, because obviously I’ve seen the new regenerations and establishing scenes more than a few times. They’ve kind of imprinted on me.

It was really interesting to see how the actors, writers, and directors established the departure of each Doctor and the arrival of each new Doctor. There were a few similarities, but mostly they were individual. One into Two is, sadly, lost as a video. There are reconstructions (which I watched) but the quality was so bad, and my understanding of the plot was so bad, that I didn’t really get a lot of it. I would wish, if it were any use, that there were more Troughton bits available – I think I would like him as a Doctor. I’ll watch what I can, when I can, though.

Two into Three was the forced regeneration. It was interesting that the Time Lords gave the Doctor a choice of face for this one – even though Pertwee wasn’t one of the choices. I wonder, had Pertwee been cast at this point? Or did they just want to surprise people at the start of the next episode? Pertwee started off as you would expect a disgraced, exiled, regenerated Time Lord to act: secretive, angry, upset and disappointed. It didn’t help that the Brigadier didn’t recognize him, and then he almost got kidnapped and had to escape in a wheelchair with masking tape over his mouth. There was a touch of “crazy man” about him, but not as much as the next one.

Three into Four was tricky. Sarah Jane had no idea what to expect, the Brigadier was surprised but quickly resigned himself to it, and a helper from, I assume, previous episodes had to come and speed things along a bit. And then Tom Baker appeared and “crazy man” absolutely took over. He is so….I’m not sure what the right word is. It’s not manic, because he’s more laid back than that. It’s not “crazy” with the negative connotations. But he’s kind of amnesiac at first, and then he absolutely refuses anyone’s assistance, advice, or presence. He disappears into the Tardis, apparently about to abandon Sarah Jane and the Brigadier, when it’s like something clicks back into place. That smile appears, his eyes go happily wide instead of the alert and wary wide they’ve been so far, and he snaps into place. In one episode – not even one episode – you know exactly what his Doctor is going to be like, and the key word is going to be “unpredictable”. He won’t hesitate to tie someone up in a closet by his bootlaces; he also won’t hear of anyone putting themselves in danger for him. You’ll think he’s placid until he explodes into a fury of activity.

Four into Five is different again. As he regenerates, Four sees visions of all of his previous enemies and companions. He’s also been warned by the Watcher (a white-wrapped figure, theoretically the Doctor’s potential next self, I think?) that a regeneration is coming, so it’s not as violent a “death” as some of the others (Three was attacked by mutant spiders, if I recall…). And then Five comes along and takes over the role. There’s a touch of amnesia, as is becoming usual, but it’s more that Five doesn’t know who Five is rather than he doesn’t know who the Doctor is. He progresses through each of his previous personalities – and is spot-on in doing so – before establishing himself. It’s a nice touch of continuity in a show that is notoriously – and necessarily – bad with continuity.

And it couldn’t be more different than Five into Six. The regeneration itself is fairly standard – it helped that both Peter Davison and Colin Baker had blond hair – but the establishing scenes make a very definite statement: this is not the same Doctor. After watching that bit, I can absolutely see why Colin Baker had trouble in the role. I can absolutely see why many fans didn’t like him, and why the ratings dropped so precipitously. He comes in to this established and loved series and says, paraphrasing only slightly, “I am not the Doctor that you have known and loved. I reject everything that has come before me, and if you don’t like it, too bad.” He dismisses Peri’s affection for the Doctor, he literally rejects every costume that his predecessors wore and chooses something (a garish coat-of-many-colours) that they themselves would have rejected.

I don’t see this as even mostly Colin Baker’s fault. He’s been wonderful in the audio dramas. His Doctor, when given a chance, is not really that different from the other Doctors – he’s just less gentle on first acquaintance. But first acquaintance is all that some people will give you – and when you reject and abandon the aspects that drew them to you in the first place, they won’t stick around to find out what you’re really like. And, like I say, this isn’t Colin Baker’s fault. He didn’t write the lines – he just delivered them. And I would imagine that he was given some input on how to deliver them. It can’t have been entirely his idea to make the first appearance of the Doctor so inherently unlikable.

With all that, and the behind-the-scenes BBC drama, it’s no wonder that Colin Baker, the public face of the Doctor, was fired – or that he refused to film a regeneration scene. So Six to Seven is a bit different again. The regeneration happens fairly quickly – I don’t even know how much lead-up to it there was in the previous episode – and then Seven is thrown straight into the new situation. No amnesia, no character-establishing scenes where he’s picking out a costume or looking at his new face. He wakes up, he’s face to face with the Rani, and he’s just there, dealing with it, the end.

I’ll stop there for now. There’s still the movie and New Who to get through, plus reactions to the Christmas special and excitement about the new season, and the audio plays, and I’ve read a couple of the novelizations (and got one for Christmas, yay)… plus there’s the additional geekery of getting into World of Warcraft for the first time (hey, it gives me contact time with the boy) and Eternal Sonata and a couple of anime shows….