Anniversary overload

[shewhomust]

We are weathering a perfect storm of significant anniversaries.

This is subjective, but certainly the anniversary of the death of President Kennedy was the first to impinge on my consciousness: that is, where I recall seeing the earliest signs that there would be a lot of fuss made of the anniversary. This isn't in itself surprising, though I hadn't expected the extent to which all the revelations and criticisms would be set aside, and we find ourselves back in Camelot. However...

Like most fantasy / SF fans, I've known for a long time that C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley died on the same day as Kennedy. The press found out a month or so ago, and we've had a little flurry of articles about Lewis, readings from The Screwtape Letters, news stories about his plaque in Poets' Corner ("between John Betjeman and William Blake," according to The Guardian) - occasionally accompanied by a footnote saying oh, yes, and Aldous Huxley, too...

For the last couple of weeks, all this seemed likely to be washed away by a rising tide of Doctor Who. Anything I watched on television or listened to on the radio was preceded by a trailer: for the anniversary programme itself, for the online 'prequel' (which is surely a trailer itself, so that a trailer for it is a meta-trailer), for a documentary or a chat show or the after show party (the WHAT?)...

We've watched our share of it. At least, we've watched a couple of programmes, which seems a fair share: Mark Gatiss's film-length Adventure in Time and Space told the origin story of Doctor Who (the show, that is, not the Doctor) with a particularly sympathetic portrait of William Hartnell, and a documentary in which Matthew Sweet got to wander around and talk to people, which was more fun than it sounds. But I wouldn't want to overdo it. I could have watched the moon landing, but I was so sickened by all the advance hype (how can you hype men landing on the moon? it shouldn't be possible to overstate the importance and excitement of this, but my recollection is that they managed it) that I went to bed rather than sit up and endure more of it. I've come to regret that decision.

So this evening we watched The Day of the Doctor. It was trying very hard to offer something for everyone, and didn't make a bad job of it. Of course, what's put in to please one person will be the very thing that irritates another person (I have heard quite enough about the Doctor's Tragic Past, and may have rolled my eyes a bit at this point), and the overall effect gets a bit busy, but there also some generally clever bits.

The anniversary fun isn't over yet: tomorrow is Robin Williamson's 70th birthday. Surely we can think of a way to celebrate that? This isn't entirely the most appropriate song, but it came high up in my search results, and I do love it:

Comments

[sovay]

For the last couple of weeks, all this seemed likely to be washed away by a rising tide of Doctor Who.

My mother was disappointed this morning that I did not have a Kennedy conspiracy theory, so I explained that the reason no one has ever been able to go back in time successfully and prevent the assassination was that Doctor Who did not exist until the next day; by then it was too late.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I am looking forward to your thoughts, once you have seen it: it had a good proportion of John Hart, I thought, and only the tiniest hint of Peter Capaldi...

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

You may not be easily shocked or impressed but here´s my try: I´ve never seen a single Doctor Who episode in my whole life. It is, further, fully possible, I never will.
JFK...was murdered by fanatic fans for having treated a bottle-blonde badly, I thought, everyone knows that?
However,
Huxley: there ought to be an Aldous Day with a silent minute in his honour. Hollywood should make an effort, I find, after all, he used to live there too just like all those peroxide beauties. Talking of blondes: Balliol hosted both Lord Peter and Aldous. This must tell them something. A cricket game (Aldous vs. Death) could be named after them, don´t you think?
And to think, he taught http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Blair French at Eton! But was remembered, as I just gobbledygooked; as an incompetent and hopeless teacher who couldn’t keep discipline. Nevertheless, Blair and others were impressed by his use of words...for which there could be yet another rememberance day in honour of Teachers who are not bores.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I did not know this about Huxley and Blair, and it makes me very happy. Thank you.

And in fact I know several people who have never seen Doctor Who. I saw the first one, and many of the first two or three Doctors, but there are whole Doctors who passed me by.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

'October Song' remains my favourite closely followed by 'Cold Days of February'.

The man's a genius, so he is. :o)