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Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder Review UPDATE Cue Amy Farah Fowler

Posted: December 4, 2023 by datechguy in culture, doctor who, entertainment
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Plot: The Doctor and Donna are lost at a spaceship at the end of the universe. The Tardis has skedaddled and they are only left with each other a robot and each other and each other but who is who?

Writing: It’s a tough call because it’s such a different type of episode. It’s both deep and loose with various clues all over the place. Also given the nature of the episode we don’t know how much is necessary to set up the final special, how much is just for the sake of now and how much is just for fun. I think it’s the type of episode you need to watch 2 or 3 times to really judge and thanks to the nature of the specials you might not be able to judge it standing alone till you see number three but one thing is certain, it’s head and shoulders above the last one and more in keeping with the hopes of fans. Too bad they couldn’t have led with this one but I guess you needed Donna on board and functional to do so.

Acting: With the exception of the very start and the very end it’s pretty much Tate and Tennant and they carry it very well. I’m likely biased because I’m fond of him but Bernard Cribbins appearance at the end is the icing on the cake.

Best Moment: The penultimate appearance of Wilfred Mott (like it could be anything else)

Worst Moment: The whole “War Song” Debate and why would British Choir students be singing the US Airforce Hymn anyways?

Oh Brother Moment: The “why is Mrs. Bean funny?” business. The answer should be obvious to a brit: “because it reminds you of Mr. Bean which is hilarious.” How do you not get that?

The What’s going on? Moment(s): Why is Tennant 2.0 constantly crashing the TARDIS into things. Is that basically what the revised Tennant does when flying the TARDIS these days, just crash?

The Ah HA moment: The HADS. You see a lot of it in Big Finish Doctor Who but not so much of it on TV.

The “I Don’t Give a Fig about Newton” moment: Again the Newton stuff might all be a one off gag although the “Mavity” stuff suggests otherwise. Newton is mentioned a bit in the original series and a bit in Big Finish. (For the best of the batch see David Warner as Sir Isaac in the 30 min 5th Doctor and Nyssa story “Summer” in the Circular Time CD. You can buy it here for under $4 )

The Elephant in the Room Part 2: Is it just me or was there a solid attempt to cement the new canon during one of those exchanges?

Bottom Line: Again this isn’t the type of story I’m generally into and to some degree is was CGI driven, possibly to make the writing easier but it generally works as straight Sci-fi, as a psychological thriller and as a deep dive into the characters. It has an unfair advantage as it not only so much better than the one before it and by default so much better than anything of the last few years and it’s slightly hurt by references to said episode but that’s just talking about established events and thus not something that should effect this as it’s own story which it is. But even if The Star Beast and the Jodi Whitaker era didn’t exist this story would stand as a solid if not spectacular Tennant Era story.

4 1/2 stars, but I reserve the right to go as high as 4 3/4 or down to 4 1/4 after watching it a few more times and that’s the thing that gives this a real advantage. Jacqueline King‘s performance not withstand I have absolutely no interest in watching The Star Beast a 2nd time. This story however is very re-watchable in fact it almost demands it.

Ranking in the current season (counting the children in need special)

  1. Destination Skaro
  2. The Wild Blue Yonder
  3. The Star Beast

I wasn’t ranking my top 10 of an era during the Tennant Years as quite a few of them predated the blog but if you take my top 10 of the Capaldi era which is the last list I made from 2017 (via the wayback machine)

1st The Husbands of River Song
2nd World Enough and Time
3rd. Last Christmas 
4th. The Caretaker
5th  Extremis
6th. The Return of Doctor Mysterio
7th. The Girl who Died
8th. The Witch’s Familiar
9th. Hell Bent
10th. Mummy on the Orient Express

And consider the bottom episode on the list: (reviewed via wayback here) it doesn’t make this list, although in fairness it’s again not the type of episode I usually go for.

Update: It just hit me after I published that The other than corrupting the English language the Doctor doesn’t actually save anyone or have any real effect on events except to almost screw things up. If he never lands there the ship explodes and the bad guys are defeated, it just happens without Donna & he almost dying in the process.

Cue Amy Farah Fowler:

15 Thoughts on 15 Years of Blogging Under the Fedora. Thoughts 11 to 15 Back to Blogging… The Truth, WQPH, Trump and my boys, The Fall and One More Year

Posted: December 3, 2023 by datechguy in blogs, catholic, catholic devotions, dablog, under the fedora
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I talked about Stacy McCain being most influential on me and he mentioned something in a post yesterday that really hit the lesson he taught me:

 I was talking to a nice Republican lady who, remarking on what I’d said about liberal bias in the media, asked, “What makes you different?” That is to say, why am I not part of the liberal hivemind? On the spot, the best answer I could come up with was, “Well, I was a reporter before I got into politics.” I didn’t get into journalism because I wanted to change the world. I got into journalism because I needed a job. I started out on the bottom rung of the newspaper business, as a staff writer for a local weekly, and worked my way up, spending five years as a sports editor before landing a gig as an assistant special projects editor at the daily Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune. It wasn’t until I’d been in the business about seven years that I became interested in politics, during the first term of the Clinton presidency, when I had my own road-to-Damascus epiphany and abandoned the Democratic Party, of which I had hitherto been a staunch supporter.

The point of that digression is that I cut my teeth as a reporter covering local stories that had nothing to do with politics, and thereby developed the belief that the three most important things in journalism are accuracy, accuracy and accuracy

Having a Computer Science degree back from 1985 the idea of the importance of facts was already imbedded. The biggest lesson I learned from being credentialed press and sharing rooms with them as they wrote and talked is that this is not the norm for journalists. It was all about producing spin and a particular result. That (along with a natural degree of sloth) is why you never see my videos edited. Like the images from the Ghost of Christmas Past they are what they are.

That reputation for accuracy and the reputation as “The hardest working blogger at CPAC” are still a source of pride to me.

The biggest thing to come from the blog and the Radio show that came from it has been my association with WQPH 89.3 FM Catholic Radio which began around 2012 when I was approached by Mary Ann Harold the head of the station. I had at first thought it would be a full time job but instead it’s was more of a Special project for the blog that continues to this day.

In 2017 My Catholic Radio Show “Your Prayer Intentions” now in its 6th year, premiered on WQPH every Saturday at noon. 2017 also saw the publication of my book “Hail Mary the perfect Protestant (and Catholic) Prayer adapted from a blog post which you can still buy at Amazon or from me directly if you want it autographed. The most significant thing from WQPH came in 2014 a few months after the Harvard Satanic Mass scandal & the MIT procession on a trip to Alabama, but if that story is ever posted it will be after I’m gone.

What I thought would be the biggest moment of my blogging career was when I was called on twice during the 2016 presidential campaign by Donald Trump during press conferences. The first in Derry NH which I had to cover after the contract job

The second when I covered his rally in Worcester before going to work at what was then a temp warehouse job on the 10:30 to 7 am shift. He recognized me and gave me the complement that remains on the top of the blog to this day.

Covering Trump fairly didn’t endear me to the GOP in MA and neither did my endorsement of Trump when he won the primaries or my famous post defending Trump after the Billy Bush bit came out which called out the left for trying to use our own morality against us while repeating these words which turned out to be a prophetic after the 2020 steal:

…I know that there will be times that Donald Trump will disappointment me just as I expected Mitt Romney to disappoint me on social issues and John McCain to disappoint me on immigration and George W Bush who disappointed me on spending and the bank bailouts.

But while Trump will occasionally disappoint me (when he does I’ll call him on it) I am convinced he will neither persecute me nor strip me of my rights for holding my Conservative Catholic beliefs and acting on them.

I am very sorry to say I can not make that same statement about Hillary Clinton, and I’m even sorrier to see the day when I would say this about a presidential candidate.

but this led to the real high point of blogging for me was CPAC 2018 where my two sons came with me as credentialed press. It made for a better CPAC:

In other words, he make sure that I was OUTSIDE the activist/msm/news/blogger bubble for at least a few hours. This not only decreased my tension level immensely but it provided me the chance to speak to actual Marylanders and Virginians who were not there specifically to serve me as a CPAC convention goer and thus more free to be themselves and give their own opinions in conversation.

No blogging moment will beat that EVAH!

Despite the two highs of 2016 & 2018 the blog’s decline in traffic seemed to start in 2014 after my Jeffrey Epstein post to the point where contract work was necessary.

In 2016 the decline in traffic and rank (this blog was once in the top 100,000 in the world) meant I took a 3rd shift temp job. The job became permanent in 2017 and any lingering dreams of the blog becoming more than a part time job at best were gone and my ability to go to cover any event had to be sub servant to the steady income to pay bills that came from attendance at work.

Problems at GoDaddy led me to finally leave them by 2019. After election 2020 like many others I found myself suspected from Twitter multiple times while the election was in dispute over false charges that led to a pattern of suspension, appeal, apology and reinstatement then suspension again until the courts ruled against Trump. This was shortly followed by my banning by Youtube erasing more than a decade of work. Meanwhile the new owner of my hosting company became invisible I was not only forced back to my old wordpress blog, but had lost my domain, more than 75% of my daily traffic, all of my ad and guest post revenue and a decline in DaTipJar revenue and subscribers to the point where the blog has become an expense rather than an asset.

The fall was slow, then gradual then like the fall of communism all at once. Right now after paying my writers I barely bring in enough to pay the annual fees to wordpress let alone the costs of covering Pintastic NE or any other event that I can manage on days off or using vacation time.

So here we are 15 years later like Sam Rothstein in Casino back where we started at our original site.

I’m drawing about a 1/3 of the traffic that I did back in the Scott Brown days but not worrying about trying to regain lost glory. Still giving our opinion and occasionally covering something from the Catholic Men’s Conference to Pintastic NE and writing about the news of the day and my online baseball leagues.

Barring a sudden change in fortune allowing the blog covering its costs as it once did I figure I can afford to hang around one more year for the election before the blog becomes too much of an expense to carry.

So you can expect me and my magnificent seven writers to be here for the election and to at least finish year 16. After that, who know but for all those who have stopped by over the last 15 years and especially to those who have contributed over the years and those few remaining stalwarts who still do, let me say this.

Thanks so much, it’s been an incredible 15 year ride. We’ve done and learned a lot together. I’ve seen a lot of the country and those who run it. I’ve seen many incredible things and I’ve met many incredible people along the way including quite a few of you dear readers. None of it would have been remotely possible without you. Me and mine are better for having been on this ride. I hope that you feel the same.

This Explains a lot on Fauci

Posted: December 2, 2023 by datechguy in catholic
Tags: ,

Saw this quote via Instapundit today that explains an awful lot about why a Doctor who was old enough to take the actual Hippocratic oath did what he did over the last four years:

Next up, they walk past the church at Georgetown where Fauci got married. We then find out that the good doctor no longer practices religion, as he is guided by a higher moral authority: “my own personal ethics.”

As a rule it’s usually doesn’t end one when you decide to remake God in your own image particularly when you’re a Catholic as you should know better.

Fauci lives a comfortable life at 82 (83 on Christmas Eve) but as he is 83 I would remind him of this quote:

What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?

Matt 16:26

Fortunately the last rights (now called the sacrament of the sick) carries with it the same absolution of sins that confession does.

Pray for Fauci & his family and if you’re reading this and are part of those who have or are threating him or his family may I suggest this two step plan:

  1. Cut it out at once
  2. Go to confession

It may or may not end well for him but trust me Hell will be no more bearable and Heaven no less glorious if you turn and see Fauci next to you there.

15 Thoughts on 15 Years of Blogging Under the Fedora. Thoughts 6 to 10 …The Glory Days…

Posted: December 1, 2023 by datechguy in blogs, dablog
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Part one of this post: In the Beginning is here.

I mentioned how Robert Stacy McCain made a huge difference in my life. That came from this post titled “Send DaTechGuy to CPAC” :

Before I left Massachusetts a week ago, I told him that if he’d create a PayPal account, I’d make sure the tip-jar hitters sent him to CPAC. He said, “I need $800 a week, plus expenses.” And today, I noticed he’d created the “Do It Myself Fund.”

To the shock of everyone including me the money came in and I attended what would be the 1st of many CPACS during the 2010’s

At CPAC 2010 I created a Youtube account for the videos I shot. It began with this interview of Steve Eggleston of No Runny Eggs.

This would eventually become DaTechGuy’s Field Guide to Bloggers. Some like Nice Deb who have gone on to bigger things, Some like the Lonely Conservative who would put me up when covering events in NY. And some who have become huge names like Dana Loesch, Kurt Schlichter and Professor William Jacobson.

All this became ten years of videos and interviews from covering events that were a big deal on youtube until a year ago but that’s a story for part 3.

The Trip to CPAC was the catalyst but the thing that pushed me over the line was April 14th in Boston MA when the Tea Party Express came to town for a rally. I decided to go and cover it getting video like this of Sarah Palin taking the stage

and plenty of great photos But the real shock was that I found myself I was invited onto the bus heading for the DC rally and decided to accept with only the clothes on my back, a laptop in need of a charge, no place to stay in DC just the credit cards in my wallet. It was a leap of faith and what a leap it was.

It was during the course of this bus trip that I bought my first flip phone (Standing behind Victoria Jackson in line at the Radio Shack) which was used to call DaWife and tell her where I was and what I was doing. She was not pleased.

This Trip however was the trip that made me as a blogger. I interviewed Byron York who was the 1st member of the MSM I ever encountered who had heard of me.

I interviewed Tucker Carlson, I interviewed Andrew Breitbart for the 1st time and most importantly interviewed Clara Csiong who having fled the communists in China & Cubs saw what was coming today more clearly than anyone else

When Glenn Reynolds instalanched my tipjar shake to cover the expenses of this unscheduled trip I decided to see if I could make a living blogging.

It would all become a whirl. It led to a radio gig, DaTechGuy on DaRadio on WCRN Worcester and then syndicated on stations in the Money Matters Radio network. I would write for the examiner and pick up other writing gigs making a few bucks here and there.

But the real deal came as I earned my catchphrase: “Have fedora will travel” by the grace of my readers. I who had not even been on a commercial flight since my honeymoon would thanks to the generosity of my readers travel across the country. I would fly to Arizona, Colorado and Georgia to cover campaigns. I would drive with Stacy McCain through 7 states covering the big red wave of 2010. CPAC 2010 became CPAC 2011 and more. The tip jar hits and the interviews with people like Steve Bannon before the Trump years when he was a CPAC outcast , Pam Geller and Robert Spencer who were warning the world of the things we are now seeing kept coming. And during Weinergate I would have one of my blog posts appear as a column in the New York Post and lead to an appearance on the local Fox Station in Boston.

I would cover the 2012 and 2016 election campaigns being credentialed press at the Mitt Romney Victory Party. The blog would expand to it’s own domain and I would hire my magnificent seven writers, who even now still produce content on the blog (although of the original team only John Ruberry still remains) and it seemed for a while that I might be able to make it in this business.

But as I was to discover notoriety is not the same as income.

To be concluded on Sunday…

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