Archive for December, 2011

Doctor Who and Kyoto

Posted: December 15, 2011 in Debra Martens, London
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Among the top items on the BBC news on December 13 was Canada’s announcement that it is withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol. The Beeb played an excerpt of the Minister of Environment Canada, Peter Kent, saying something about how we Canadians wouldn’t be able to drive cars and that meeting our target of a 6% reduction in GHG emissions would be too costly. The following day the Guardian newspaper linked Canada’s withdrawal to the “highly polluting” extraction of oil from the tar sands.

aerial view of tar sands

tar pit - by Garth Lenz, Huffington Post

To stop squirming from embarrassment at this conclusion to years of inaction on global warming by Canadian governments, I’ll turn to another top item on the BBC news, this one the day before (December 12). The BBC announced that two lost television episodes of Doctor Who have been recovered. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16136521

What is Doctor Who and why is this news? Imagine a television show from the 1960s that you watched regularly, something that brings back your childhood in a snap, like the Friendly Giant or Superman. Then imagine that its content was created by Bob McDonald (Wonderstruck, Quirks and Quarks), but set as a drama, with a hero who is terrifically keen, terribly intelligent and who can regenerate. That should give you some idea of the emotions aroused by a television show that first aired in 1963, continued with eight different doctors until 1996 and then was reborn in 2005. Because the early episodes were on tape, which took up a lot of space and was expensive, the BBC folks erased the shows and reused the tape. Since the second go at Doctor Who is wildly popular and people are demanding the originals, BBC has been searching for the missing episodes. 105 are still missing.

The Doctor is a time lord from the planet Gallifrey. You’d think if you could live outside of time that you’d kick back and read some short stories. Not the Doctor. He hurtles from one crisis to the next, saving planets, species and whole civilizations. And he’s funny while he’s at it. What I love about the Doctor is that he shows up, assesses the scene with a Sherlockian glance, then fixes the broken thingy with a bit of wire and saves the day. The Doctor rattles through space and time in his Tardis, which takes the appearance of a blue police box on landing. Inside it has levers that look remarkably like beer taps, its control panel has an old typewriter worked into it, and it makes this great noise when it starts up. Then there’s his sonic screwdriver and his latest incarnation’s cool bow tie. Oh yes, the bow tie: the 11th Doctor’s outfit sold for thousands of pounds in a charity auction.

The Doctor and monsters

Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor -- BBC photo

Even the bad guys use everyday tools, such as the Daleks that sucked dry someone’s brain with toilet plungers applied to the ears. Compared to the 1960s bad guys in Superman who mainly commit crimes of theft, the bad guys in Doctor Who are far more sinister — they want to take over the world or destroy the earth, or both. The Doctor often succeeds in persuading the human bad guys that they are just confused and to abandon their destructive course. The alien bad guys look scary: the tin man turned evil, the spider-crab monster, the giant worm-like shape-shifter, and the Daleks with their inhuman voice ordering “Exterminate.” They don’t look anything like the environment minister.

More on Doctor Who: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw

More on the tar sands: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/kunzig-text

Compare and Contrast

Posted: December 9, 2011 in Debra Martens, India, London
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I start making comparisons as soon as we arrive at our flat in London. “Oh, look, the furniture is the same as in our place in Vienna.” And New Delhi and Nairobi. We live in assigned furnished accommodation, paying rent to the Canadian government, or to the Crown. Most of the furniture comes from Canada, proudly made in Belleville or Napanee, or somewhere in Canada. It is the sort of furniture that comes with skirts and includes dining room suites that wish they were mahogany.

On learning that the water in our bathroom is not potable because it comes from a cistern in the building rather than a tap, I mentally exclaim, “Just like our house in New Delhi!” There we had bottles of boiled filtered water placed by the sink for our use. Occasionally the cistern at that house would be cleaned, and they would find “dead things, Madame,” and when I pressed for an answer to what things, I was met with a solemn shake of the head, telling me I didn’t really want to know if they were toads or rats. Why not rats, since we had those in our bathroom in New Delhi? I look carefully at the London bathroom walls, at the joints of floor and window and under the sink at the pipes in the wall. I hope there the similarity ends.

At times I feel like a student doing a class writing exercise. Compare and contrast your life in London to your life in Canada or elsewhere. I can’t stop myself from doing it. What I find interesting is that first I seek the similarities. I pore over newspapers, content that here too they are discussing global warming, the economy, the decline of independent bookstores, the decline of the printed word. Then, later, comes the noting of difference. Is it a survival instinct, this adapting to the unfamiliar by first finding the familiar?

During a nature walk in the park near our apartment one Saturday morning, the guide points out the green parakeets. Parakeets! I remember the gang that lived in the tree near the house in New Delhi, remember lying in the hammock with the baby late in the day and watching them flock home. Hearing them first thing in the morning, and loving the racket. The guide explains that they escaped from an aviary, and the climate suits them fine, now that winters are milder. He adds, in his soft voice, “Some people think of them as invaders pushing out the native species, and others think of them as a spot of colour in our dreary winters.”

There was a spot of colour in the paper today, a review of a book by a Mr. Black. The Guardian seems not entirely sympathetic about the woes of Conrad and Barbara.

Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel in costume

A spot of colour

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/dec/08/poor-conrad-black-tale-poverty