"The Eleventh Hour" and the return of Doctor Who

As the Good Ones among you O Constant Listenerz no doubt know, DOCTOR WHO has most recently returned with it's new series (numbered 5th, 1st or 31st depending on who is doing the reckoning). Although the first appearance by Matt Smith (the Doctor; specifically the Eleventh Doctor of the title, witty eh?) and Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) was better than we Heretics had hoped, the episode itself was not altogether wonderful. Something was missing. I found what that something was when I read the following review. We thought best to share it, from IMDB poster pstancer in Hong Kong, "In the first episode, the only black face belongs to a Rottweiler!":

The first thing I noticed with the new Doctor Who is that the only black face in the first episode belongs to a Rottweiler. And that the only sexual reference is a heterosexual one.

Is Steven Moffat, the new Producer, trying to make a point here?

While I sometimes tired of the histrionics of Russell T Davies's plots, I could always chuckle at the thought of middle-class parents cowering behind their sofas while their children were entertained with stories of black/white/gay/lesbian/alien love-triangles, and heroes drawn from the Daily Mail's hate list: single mothers on benefit; gay ex-servicemen; chavs and hoodies a.k.a the working class. Even his first timelord came from that little know northern suburb of Gallifrey: Salford, near Manchester.

Contrarily, Mr Moffat's first solo-offering seems to hark back to days of old. All the episode was missing was some understated misogamy [I think pstancer meant misogyny here, but I am not certain], the Brigadier, and morris dancers dancing around a maypole on the village green, and you have a rehash of the 70's classic: The Dæmons.

Hopefully I am prejudging, Steven Moffat did create Captain Jack in "The Empty Child" back in Series 1. Already there is the hint of child abandonment for young Amy Pond, and maybe she has a whole Belle-De-Jour back-story from her "kiss-a-gram" days? Doctor Who meets Pretty Women anyone?

So despite what I have just said, sheepishly, I would say the omens are good. Karen Gillan and Matt Smith can certainly act and have a curious chemistry - hopefully more Mulder and Scully than Romeo and Juliet - and with Moffat's fine pedigree of past episodes (Blink/ Silence in the Library) it would appear that we have an exciting journey ahead of us.

*

The immediate next episode-- "The Beast Below" --is both better and less stark white-on-white. We are ever hopeful. Also, linguistically interesting is how very Canadian Ms. Gillan/Ms. Pond's accent is most of the time.

W o t W: Lugubrious (P, S)

The Word for this Week is

Lugubrious

...Is an excellent word because it sounds like it means. It is like emotional onomatopoeia; especially if you draw out the vowels. I came across it in Richard Dawkins' newest book, The Greatest Show on Earth (p190) in the following quote describing a colleague W. D. Hamilton:

"he had a lugubrious manner reminiscent of A. A. Milne's Eeyore (not the deplorable Walt Disney version, of course)." When stung by a wasp "knowing what a great entomologist he was, his companion said, 'Bill, do you know the name of that wasp?' 'Yes,' Bill murmured gloomily in his most Eeyoreish voice. 'As a matter of fact it's named after me.'"

Lugubrious is meaningful and phonetically pleasing. Use it sparingly to avoid sounding pretentious like me, but oh do use it.

W o t W: Grue (S,P)

The Word of the Week is:

"Grue" a linguistic term used to replace colour words in languages that do not distinguish between green and blue.

See for reference the discussion of colour in linguistics. A good survey is here at the Font of all Wisdom and Knowledge.

This entry gets a nod for semantic (it is a purely semantic construct; not really even a proper word) and the phonetic. And it is a portmanteau. O how we love the portmanteaus!

Thank-you.

W o t W: 猪头 Zhu tou "Pig head" (S,P)

The Word of the Week is:

"豬頭" (traditional characters; 猪头 simplified characters; in pinyin: Zhūtóu; in English "Pig head") in Mandarin is a commonly used insult.

Although not an expletive per se it does have a similar sense to the usage of the English word "bastard" which is frequently used between friends but is not remotely appropriate with non-intimates or one's employer.

My dearest friend, Hung Pei-hsin, referred to me almost exclusively as 大豬頭, or Big Pig Head.

For more fun with Mandarin expletives and slang go here for a list of transliterated and translated Mandarin expletives. I also tried here (Insultmonger/Swearsaurus) but the link seems to be dead. However, I also highly recommend the English Wikipedia page here or here for 中文 (Zhōngwén) (the Chinese language article). (Nous adorons aussi les sacres québécois d'ici, bien sûr! En anglais d'ici.)

(There's also this blog post which ends with a good list with the simplified characters and translations and (with a scroll over) transliterations into pinyin...but the context of the list is a rather puerile absolutist Free Speech RAWKS! screed. Just scroll down or don't bother with it. More expressions, although not necessarily expletives are listed here on a webpage detailing the Chinese used in the film Serenity and the programme Firefly. Kinda fun, but with nerdiness and citations.)

謝謝 (谢谢)