OMFG Torchwood
Loved Children of Earth so much! Watched it on iPlayer with the boyfriend, and I’m so glad I didn’t use it for background noise while I was sewing, it was far too good for that. It went placed Doctor Who only wishes it could go; this is what Torchwood was meant to be about from the start! Although, I think Children of Earth has set it apart from Doctor Who now, it’s much more than just ‘the grown-up Doctor Who’.
Though it has to be said, while partially explained by Gwen at the beginning of episode 5, I still don’t really understand how that big of a shit storm could go down without the Doctor being involved. Particularly when it involves such great sacrifice – I love the fact that he wasn’t involved because we all know that it would have been a happy ending had the TARDIS showed up a Thames House, but regardless, this is a Universe where not only is the Doctor known, but known as someone who can save the Earth in dire need. We’ve seen the government turn to him before, so why no mention of him? Martha’s on honeymoon, so what? Think that would have stopped her making the phonecall when kids started to chant in unison?
That’s the only thing that bothered me anyway, but like I said, I’m glad the Doctor wasn’t involved because the reason Children of Earth was so good was because everything wasn’t OK, it wasn’t all hunky dory, there was no solution without sacrifice – even if it was thoroughly disturbing to watch. (The guy who played John Frobisher deserves some kind of award, seriously)
This kind of stuff can’t fail to get a reaction, but it seems as though the Torchwood fandom has exploded because of this. People were actually sending insults to one of the writers via Twitter (can read his blog post about it here) which is just unfair. I’d hate for this interactivity between creators and fans due to Twitter, blogs etc. to go sour because fans can’t hack what a creator does with their creations. People are upset that most of the cast has been killed off, and what with the news that Russell T Davies is heading Stateside, a fair few people are wondering if the intention was to leave Torchwood in a state in which it couldn’t come back. I don’t really know, I think it will come back because the ratings speak for themselves. How it’ll come back, I don’t know, but I hope it doesn’t jump straight back into what Torchwood used to be, because it can’t really. We’ll see anyway. I hear John Barrowman is lined up for David Tennant’s last episode as the Doctor, so I hope some Jack-fixing goes on there and that’ll give way to a new Torchwood team.
Bad Blogger! Bad!
Arghhh I totally promised myself that I’d write more, but I’ve been such a lazy arse – actually strictly speaking, for once, it’s not down to laziness, it’s been down to being so goddamned busy!
However, as I did want to document the Germany year abroad process, this is a bad move on my part as I’ve failed to write about this whole shebang finally getting a move on! Last time I updated, I’d just received a letter about the induction course near Cologne. About a week ago now, I received a big fat scary German letter through the post – after trying to decipher it by myself, I eventually got to the bottom of what it was actually telling me to do with the help of my old German teacher.
So! I know where I’m going, finally! Dortmund, Nordrhein Westfalen is where I shall be spending the next academic year as a Foreign Language Assistant in a Gymnasium. The next step : making the scary phonecall… I had planned on emailing or using good old snail mail, but my German teacher pointed me towards this handy website which details when the schools in each German state break up for their holidays. Mine was closing for the Summer holidays the very next day, so I had to act quick and take the plunge.
My Betreuungslehrerin (the teacher who’ll be looking after me) sounded really really nice, and I think she could tell that I was ridiculously nervous. I didn’t want to just take the easy route and speak English, but I didn’t exactly speak a whole lot of German either – mostly just sentences I’d pre-prepared and an awful lot of ‘ja’. Unfortunately, the school was unable to secure me any accommodation, but I don’t mind too much. The way I look at it, this gives me a chance to make some friends outside of the school, which can only improve my German.
Since then, I’ve been trawling through German accommodation websites, sending emails left right and centre. So far only one bite, but I haven’t emailed them back due to my computer going stupid on me, and wanting to have a few more options before choosing. I really hope I can get this sorted by the end of the month, or I’m a bit screwed.
So there’s a real quick update for you. Things seem to be happening really fast now, will probably be booking my flights to Cologne tonight.
Other than all the German stuff, I’ve been getting all crafty and stuff this past week! Will probably blog more about it later… well, we’ll see how successful it turns out!
