Jay Emmerich > Recent Status Updates

A large essay about linguistics and how silly alien names can be before it gets unserious. It also talked about how various creative have been documented of coming up with their names (ie: Tolkien, Lucas and LeGuin) and it's all very cool to read about. I've said it before but when we get to weirder things in the show, this series is more interesting.

Surprised to see a reference to Doogal here... but okay. More good stuff with some overly complex essays about how time travel and time should work in this universe (which i can't care to really absorb because there's never going to be rules for this).

Another bit that stood out to me: there's a fairly dismissive comment to a event that a lot of people in fandom seem to think is a good scene, but the writer seems to dislike. If the wording had said "I don't like it" instead of "some don't like it" I probably wouldn't bat an eye at it. But other than that I'm still enjoying the book.

Good essays!! Getting back into the weirder side of the show makes the essays more interesting. I'm here for it. Also nice to get back to the Daleks. Yippee yippee.

This section made a bit of the tone click for me. It feels like the writer finds this era of the show being written for a younger demographic which he liked as a kid, but at the same time, "grew up" and doesn't think it's hot shit anymore and doesn't like that everybody doesn't agree. Maybe this will be consistent as I go through... only time will tell.

Kinda fascinated by how they broke these stories up. Some have 15-20 pages and then some, which don't seem to have any more significance than the others, have 30+ pages. It's crazy. This section has more good stuff, I think I'm getting out of the less interesting part of the show (at least for this era).

TV is made in a very different style to film but there's a lot of nice consistencies that feel familiar to me. I'm gonna finish this book by the end of the year if it kills me.

Very fitting that a book with insects all over the cover as being swarmed with insects while I read outside. But this is actually getting to some weird and higher concept stuff that I love reading about. So I'm kinda on board again.

A lengthy bit here about the UK sensibilities around comics, but there's also a bit here that makes something curious for more. It's so clearly locked at a point in the shows timeline that I'd be very curious to see what the show since that point would have to say. There's been lore touches here and there that I'm sure the writers of this could have a field day with.

Justice for Pigbin Josh. Realized there was something I pointed out a few days ago that actually wasn't right. There's not a missing essay, they just changed the name and made it bigger.

Chugging along. Very curious to see what the next section is like. There's a bit here that just feels like an arguement started by a line in the first version that then people had problems with when it was published and the authors wanted to just be like "umm actually" which isn't the most enjoyable read...

Brainwashing stuff is what I was looking forward to reading about. 2 volumes of this in a row that have connections to stuff I learned in class!

Talking about pop art and also breaking down hypnotism to an actual scientific level... you never know what to expect from this kind of book

Yeah it's a lot of dense text and it doesn't make the process of reading super enjoyable. Most fascinating thing is that it feels like there was something removed from the first edition to the second edition that just disappeared somewhere in between.

Talking about how repetitive this season is, is in fact, repetitive. But i do like how this version mentions what songs were popular in the charts at this time. It's a nice like connection another part of the history.

Talking about the goo. This isn't my era of Doctor Who or really the most enjoyable read for me right now, but I'm riding it out. There's a good essay in this chunk about how bizarre the show sounded at the time and it was fascinating to read about.

Yeah I could finish it but I have a plan here okay

Interesting to read about what the UK was trying to do in the space race, as it's not something widely discussed. We're chugging away with a bunch of information here.

Crazy reading through the glossary at the end here and just realizing that there's some terms that I never caught on to. What do you mean there's a "flying Dutchman in space" I don't remember that at all.

Loving the presentation of the work here. Treating it like historic text is so cool for a fictional thing. But it's cool. All superfluous stuff but it's cool.

There's a lot of digressions and information. I know that this is no longer being written by the same group (its only half of the two, one of them walked away I guess) and I'm not sure if it's because of that that I'm not enjoying it as much, or because the era of the show is so different or for some other reason. It's more of the same for sure. And that's not bad.

This is a lot of interesting stuff that is fairly extraneous, but I respect Herbert for doing it. Gives the narrative and the larger picture this feeling of an internal logic, even if all of it isn't registering for me at the moment.

And with that... I'm done with the core of the book. I keep trying to figure out who's the main character, who's the protagonist, who goes through a character arc. I think it could be argued its BOTH Paul and Jessica. But I'll think on this some more. It's good stuff though. Now to get through the appendices.

Sometimes, points are made in this book series that really makes me sit and go "huh. I guess that's right." And it just makes me clock why I like some parts of this series more than others. It's all good, but sometimes sensibilities cause aliens to be more like monsters than other cultures, for example. I just like how it spells it out.

The final fight here snuck up on me. There's a lot of good lines but I didn't realize how close I was to the end. I'll probably finish tomorrow and read through the appendices as I watch the movies.

If you're telling me that the most accurate adaptation from book to screen would've had Timothée Chalamet dreaming about Zendaya, Anya Taylor-Joy and Florence Pugh I would think you're crazy but apparently that is what Paul is going through in the text....

It's nice to be taken back to a point where people liked this show and it didn't feel like a dirty word. I'm sure I'm not gonna get a lot of enjoyment over the stuff discussed for season 7, but after that I'm really gonna dig in for sure.

I can feel the end in sight. Paul is so efficient that it's scary.

Getting so close to the end of the main narrative that I'm just comparing the book to the movies and all the deviations the movie made. Curious to look back at them soon and to see how much of this gets moved into the beginning of the third film.

There's a lot more historical ties to some of these stories than I'd have thought originally. The hollow earth conspiracy theory is at the root of some of it which is a complete surprise to me. Love it though.