TV: Finally watched the first two seasons of new Doctor Who as a whole. Noted that Eccleston's season had a theme of self sacrifice and Tennant's first season had a continuing theme of the relationships between parents and children. It will be interesting to see if Russell Davies always has a single theme unifying each season of his shows.
Started watching the first season of Luther. I'm enjoying it, though I can tell that I won't be able to make a strong judgement on the show until I finish the first season. Strong cast, with Idris Elba in the lead, and good, meaty scripts with crunchy bits.
Watched two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation in my ST rewatch, those being episodes 4 and 5 of the first season, the introduction of the Ferengi and the Traveller.
I'm halfway through the current season of 24. It has everything I've enjoyed in previous seasons of the show with more of the fat cut out. Really good performances from all involved and characters I enjoy spending time with.
Movies: Finally saw two films that I missed: The Avengers and the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars that came out in 2008. SW was fun, though it seemed the baby Hutt was the most intelligent character in the film. What can I say about The Avengers that hasn't been said? Nothing. I really liked it, and if Scarlet Johansson wants a Black Widow film, they should give her one.
Books: Reading Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey. I started it a month or so ago and put it away when stress and depression made it hard for me to read for s few weeks. (When I'm too stressed, angry, or depressed to read, I'm way too whichever, yes.) Abaddon's Gate is a good fleshing out of Ty Franck's Expanse universe. For once, Holden doesn't seem to be the lead, though he holds a quarter of the book. The characters with agency are the other three chapter viewpoint characters whose lives are on a collision course with Holden's and his crew.
If you enjoyed the previous two Expanse novels, you'll probably like this one. If you haven't read it, but love space opera set in the solar system, read the first in the Expanse series, Caliban's War.
From Dangerous Women, an anthology edited by Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin, I read "Nora's Song" by Cecelia Holland (a historical, looking at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Henry II of England, as seen through the eyes of Eleanor "Nora"), "The Hands That Are Not There" by Melinda Snodgrass (space opera in a human dominated empire and how one dangerous woman with a mission can reshape the empire, as told by an unreliable narrator), "Bombshells" by Jim Butcher (a Dresden Files short starring Harry Dresden's apprentice Molly), "Raisa Stepanova" by Carrie Vaughn (about the Soviet World War II flyers the Night Witches), "Wrestling Jesus" by Joe Lansdale (a woman controls the conflicts between two wrestlers even unto their old age), and "Neighbors" by Megan Lindholm (a very heartbreaking story about an old woman trying to keep her independence and her life together in the face of Alzheimer's, the loss of friends, and , yes, the thefts from age that, if we're lucky, will hit us all).
From Rogues, again edited by Dozois & Martin, I read "How the Marquis Got His Coat Back" by Neil Gaiman. The Marquis de Carabas returns and we get an answer to one of the mysteries left from Neil's novel/tv series Neverwhere.
From Engineering Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan, I read "Bit Rot" by Charles Stross. This story can be read on its own but is set in his "Freyaverse" stories. This series/sequence is set in a future where humanity is extinct and the characters are all robots and AIs. "Bit Rot" is a hard science fiction tale with a hint of space opera and spiced by a currently popular subgenre of horror that shouldn't work in a robot story, but does here. Very nice, and highly recommended.
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