I just watched the pre-titles teaser of the Doctor Who season finale. The final moment of it was … well, no spoilers here. It was good.
Now I have to go give an exam before I can watch the rest of it. Argh!
"Austro" as in Rothbard and Wittgenstein, "Athenian" as in Aristotle and smashing-the-plutocracy.
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
And now I’ve seen it. Wow, that was one packed episode — makes me wonder where they’ll find the ten minutes to cut out of it when they run it on BBC America.
I liked the nods to an exchange from “Vampires of Venice” and another from “The Lodger.” And the setup for next season was intriguing. My biggest laugh-out-loud moments were a) when someone says something is going to be complicated, and b) when somebody punches somebody. And the coolest moment was when somebody emerges from the shadows.
I won’t say any more — “spoilers,” as River Song would say if she hadn’t been erased from time and space along with Amy, Rory, the Doctor, and those surprisingly scary ducks.
Oh, there was also a nod to the little girl in “Silence in the Library,” I think.
I have to wonder, though, about why one character waited so long before adopting a less noticeable wardrobe….
So … um … trying to ask this question in a non-spoilerish way: why does person X have to wait such a long time if person Y could just come back a moment after leaving and pick up person X then?
You’re teaching summer school? I figured with a full professorship in hand you’d be lounging around eating a block of cheese the size of a car battery, that’s what I’d do.
As long as I’m still paying the State of Alabama $650 a month, then yup, I’m teaching summer school.
Considering what’s in cheese I think you wouldn’t have long to live on a diet like that.
Nice Costanza reference
Another thought: a lot of people have criticised the new season’s title sequence — they didn’t like the lightning flashes. Having now watched the whole season, I suspect that title sequence was telling us more than we realised. Don’t the lightning flashes look a lot like the spacetime cracks we’ve been seeing? And the fiery glow that succeeds them looks a lot like — something in the last episode. So the title sequence is a mini-map of the whole season.
A couple of other great scenes:
a) The fate of some headgear.
b) Someone’s face when someone else begs for mercy.
The episode reminds me of this.
One thing Wittgenstein and Rand agree on: imaginary numbers could never have caused philosophical consternation unless philosophers had been confused about the nature of mathematics.
I wonder if River is the Doctor’s Anima (in the Jungian sense and partly the Aristotelian sense)…
Another great line I almost forgot: “I don’t want her joining one of those star cults when she grows up. I don’t like that Richard Dawkins.”