Meme and Science Fiction Dreams
19 October 2007 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3rdragonNo, really, I haven't forgotten! Operafloozy asked about seven of my interests, and here they are. If you reply for the meme, I can ask about seven of yours (or as this went for me, you can reply and then make sure that you have more than seven interests, and then I can ask about them.
So here goes:
batik - Batik is a system of resist-dyeing. Now that most of you are still confused, I'll explain. To do batik, one puts wax on cloth, lets the wax harden, crinkles it a bit so that there are cracks in the wax, and then pops the whole thing into a vat of dye. You can also repeat the process with more colors. It creates a really cool effect, because the dye doesn't stick where the wax is, but it does stick in the cracks between the wax, but generally not as well. So the batik tablecloth that I have hanging on my wall at home has a light blue dye, a dark blue dye, and then many variations in a marblization running all through the white background. I had a batiking party for my birthday several years ago. It was a lot of fun, even though we had difficulty getting the wax out of the fabric properly.
duct tape - Who doesn't like duct tape? I have a large supply of it stuck to my water bottle, not because my water bottle is broken (except for that little bit on the piece of plastic that holds the lid on), but so that I will always have a supply of duct tape with me, wherever I go. It's like rope - you'll want it if you haven't got it. Besides, duct tape is like the Force.
gift ninjas - Ziskind House has a tradition of Big Z/Little z, where every first year/transfer/AMS student has a Big Z whose identity is secret and who leaves gifts outside her door for a week. Last year I really enjoyed having a Big Z (who doesn't like getting presents outside their door? and mine was really good), and then this year I got a chance to be a Big Z. It was very ninja, and I enjoyed the challenge of not getting caught, particuarly if there was something that made it more difficult (like my little z's door being open at the time!).
kitemaking - I have a great fondness for kites. I like flying them, I like looking at them, I like reading about unusual ones - and I like making them. Some of the ones I've made have actually flown; others have been purely decorational (or so ornate that I didn't want to risk plowing them into the ground).
my carpet if clean - My room was clean two weeks ago. It is very much not clean right now. This interest was originally, "my carpet when I can see it," but that was too long, and I had to shorten it. It's a very nice carpet. It looks a lot like the carpet in the Ziskind hallways, actually, but it has a zigzag pattern instead of diagonals, nicer colors, and thicker pile. It was given to me by a friend from home.
Edit from the more recent version: I cleaned it a week and a half ago, and, admittedly, it isn't really clean at this particular moment, but it will only take about 2 minutes to make clean again.
nice paintbrushes - I'm very picky about my paintbrushes, and unfortunately, the ones I like are generally the most expensive ones in the store (not really. I don't look at the ones they keep locked in glass cases, though). However, I needed something "bigger than an 8" for my Costume I class, and I had a 6 and a 14, so I decided that a really nice 10 could be considered a class expense. It's cherry wood, with gold-colored metal and something nice for the tip. I haven't used it yet, and it sits in my cup of paintbrushes and calligraphy supplies, which is currently next to my computer because I still haven't gotten around to finding a better home for it.
not being dr. so-and-so - Last year I would occasionally get calls in the middle of the night. "Would Dr. So-and-so please call line three. Dr. So-and-so, line three. There is a patient that needs him." Now you have to understand that I'm not really my best at 2:00 in the morning, and I generally wasted about 2 rings wishing that people would stop calling Renee in the middle of the night (which was somewhat reasonable, since hardly anyone called me, and those few didn't do so in the middle of the night, whereas Renee's dad had been known to call her at 6:45 on a Friday morning when she didn't have any morning classes on Fridays that semester, and her boyfriend thought nothing of calling after 11, although we did manage to persuade him not to do that after the first few times) before realizing that it was actually my phone ringing. The first time I was too sleepy and confused to do more than pick up the phone and blink a few times before the woman hung up. There was a certain camp who believed that these were prank calls, but I really think not; there was a certain professionalism that I've never found in prank calls (maybe, if you have the ability to be that professional, you don't waste your time calling random college students in the middle of the night).
The second time I determined that I was going to get the phone number of the person who was calling. Of course, this time it was 4:30 in the morning, and I didn't manage to get the number beyond realizing that it was a local number - but not a Smith number - and I didn't react quickly enough to actually pick the phone up before it went to the answering machine. The answering machine did get the phone number, but it was an 11 digit number. I presumed that this meant an extension, but I didn't want to call the wrong person in the middle of the night if it wasn't, and right after that I lost my cell phone for a month and couldn't call out.
talking mathematically - I do not consider myself a math person. Yes, I'm good at math, yes, I enjoy it at times, yes, I'm voluntarily taking a math class this semester, but I'm not passionate about it the way, for example, my mother is. I don't consider balancing my checkbook to be a nice leisure-time activity, and I haven't done math problems just for the fun of it since elementary school (after all, if the teachers aren't going to teach, you have to do something to keep yourself from going mad of boredom). But I do like to hang out with math people. Aside from the fact that many of them are just cool people, on average, they tend to think in a slightly more sensible manner than most people (at least from my point of view), which makes them easier to understand. (Let A equal the set of all people. Let M equal the set of math people such that M is a proper subset of A. The average level of mathy precision in M > the average level mathy precision in A > the average level of mathy precision in the set A-M.) Yes, sometimes they are a bit esoteric, but I consider myself to be fluent in math. Sarah-Marie says that one of the things she likes about me is that I'm good at talking mathematically. One of the things that I like about Sarah-Marie is that she appreciates this talent.
Dreams
I haven't been dreaming very much this year. I attribute this to the fact that I seem to dream towards the end of the 9th hour of sleep through the 10th hour. Since I've only been getting about 8 hours a night this semester, 8.5 if I'm lucky, it's no surprise that the dreams have been few and far between, but I miss having them, and therefore savor the few I have had all the more. And these few have been particularly excellent specimens, with higher than average levels of plot (although generally less character development) and more fandom references.
Are you a techie? Or do you crave adventure? Come work for the Transmat Police! Explore the galaxies! Meet cool people! Fight monsters! Do every day what most people only get for vacation!
In this dream, Our Protagonist went on an internship with the Transmat Police (rather like the Transit Police in most urban centers, but way cooler). Unsurprisingly, he decided that he should join the Transmat Police full-time, since the Transmat Police are actually as cool as their slogans, and have an awesome benefits package. The Transmat Police take recruits in groups of five, which become the working teams for the Transmat Police (a bit like the teams of cats that work the worldgates in Diane Duane's books, but more hands-on).
So as soon as Our Protagonist got home, he sent word out to all of his friends and acquaintances that he was looking for people to be his group in applying to join the Transmat Police. He got one of his good friends - a guy - two nice kick-ass women who he sort-of knew, and one Shifty Guy who was an acquaintance (of course I'm the only person who knew that Shifty Guy was shifty, because that's the way things go).
So. Fast-forward through training to this group's first assignment. The one awkward thing about the Transmat Police is communication. They seemed to have handy transmitters for working withing groups, but not any sort of overall communication system, or bug-reporting system. So the groups just have to go out into the Transmat net and ask commuters if they've experienced any problems or heard of trouble spots on their travels (which, while inefficient, does make for generally good customer service ratings, since the Police need to talk to the commuters in order to do their job). So, back to our group. On their first assignment, they split into groups to go mingle. And by groups, I mean two pairs and one lone person. Of course, Shifty Guy was the one lone person. It should also be noted that aside from Our Protagonist, Shifty Guy was the only person who had ever used the Transmat net before, and that time he had been in a hurry and hadn't had a chance to wreak havok for personal profit the way he wanted to. As soon as the others had dispersed, Shifty Guy headed for the nearest Gate, which was a large stone gothic arch with a panel of buttons down one side. He programmed it for a sort of pirate world that had a reputation for large amounts of gold sitting around, and headed through. He arrived in a sort of cloister place, where he ran into Random B-Movie Chick W/ Good Scream. Of course, being Random B-Movie Chick (with Good Scream), it didn't take her long to be attacked by some sort of monster, in this case one of the Weeping Angels* from "Blink." She did have enough time to be quite thoroughly terrified and let out a nice hearty scream before it got her. Shifty Guy, of course, had no thoughts about trying to save her, and only cared for his own hide. He hightailed it back to the gate, but before he got there, he glanced behind him and saw a stone angel. Immediately forgetting the really freaky disappearance scene with B-Movie Chick, he decided that it was stone, and couldn't possibly do him any harm. So he turned around and sauntered - sauntered, mind you! - back to the gate. He reached it just barely ahead of the creature. When he came back through the gate, Our Protagonist had re-appeared - one of the women had found a trouble spot, and they were going to sort it out. As they left, the view focused on the Gate, which I now noticed had a little stone angel on it, only about 5 inches tall. The view panned away for a moment, perhaps to watch the group disappear behind the trees, and then back to the gate. The angel had moved.
I woke up. It was 5:30, so I went back to sleep, and had an uneventful rest of the night.
My other dream was even more overtly Dr. Who. (Ya think I'd been watching a lot of it?)
The Dr. (that is, the new one; David Tennet) and Martha landed on a planet. Emily HS was the first local they met - she was actually fleeing at the time. She was running away from a creepy evil lady who was busy infecting the entire population of the planet with a sort of Zombie-disease (not that the infected inhabitants went around yelling for brains; it was more that they seemed to lose mental function and a lot of their mobility so that they shuffled around doing her bidding and trying to infect healthy people).
The Doctor started herding healthy people onto a space ship (It wasn't the TARDIS; I suppose they just had a spare space ship with an auditorium like the Kimmel Center crossed with the Academy of Music (the one in Philly, not the one in NoHo) - it was all sort of art-deco wood like the Kimmel center, with a similar big feeling, but it had the tiered seating and sense of grandeur of the academy. I don't know why I'm describing all this. Viola is the only person who will have any idea what I'm talking about, and she doesn't watch Dr. Who.) At any rate, while the evacuation was going on, The Doctor, Martha, and Emily had a showdown with the creepy evil lady. It involved monologuing and nothing was resolved, but the whole point of it was to buy time for the evacuation, so I suppose it succeeded. After the showdown, the creepy evil lady disappeared (no one seemed unduly concerned about this, so I assume that it was the sort of hide in a dark corner and not be noticed disappearing, rather than the turning invisible disappearing). In the meantime, the TARDIS had been moved onto the space ship, so the Doctor, Martha, and Emily hurried onto the ship. As they passed the last person in line to get onto the ship, we focused on her for a moment. At the time, I figured that she must be working for the evil lady (although not infected, because she was lucid and not shuffling around).
The Doctor, Martha, and Emily went into the big assembly-place, leaving the last people in to turn the wheel-thing to close the door of the ship. We spent a bit watching the Doctor try to create order, then came back to the door, where the last person was working the wheel-thing. She had nearly finished when the evil lady appeared just outside the door. The last person tried to turn the wheel quicker, but the evil lady just shoved the door open. At this point we went back to the auditorium, presumably to avoid scenes of death and/or torture or just possibly knocking people out. At this point I realized that I had misjudged the last person, and the view had focused on her so that I felt bad when the evil lady took her out, so I mentally appologised for misjudging her character.
There was even more commotion when the evil lady showed up on the top balcony of the auditorium space, spreading bits of virus as she went. The Doctor, however, stayed cool as a cucumber and pulled out his sonic screwdriver (enhanced by some other bits of technobabble), and with a sigh of regret that she had forced him to this point, used the sonic screwdriver to change her genetic makeup to make her something relatively harmless, like a cow (it may well have been a cow. I don't recall.) While he was god-moding with the sonic screwdriver, he also genetically altered the bits of virus that were convenient so that they fought the other bits of virus and repaired as much damage as possible.
These two dreams were unusual in that a) most of the characters didn't have actual names and b) they tended to be more cinematic than usual - I was just an observer, not a character, and seemed to function like a camera, with closeups and particular shots. There was also a higher level of lucid dreaming than usual; while I didn't actually know I was dreaming at the time it was happening, there was some sense of observing a created drama - hence the discussions with myself as to the nature of specific characters.
*They have another name besides Weeping Angels. The link to the BBC page about the show is here, but it doesn't have it. Well, at any rate, the angels are creatures who "kill" you by sending you back in time and stealing the potential energy of your possible future (I'm not sure that this works, since I would think that giving you a new "future" in the past would use just as much energy, but maybe this falls into the "it works because it's already happened" category of paradoxes). Essentially, they don't really exist (or only-sort-of exist) if they are perceived, in which case they appear as stone statues. But when they don't exist, they're very fast, and can send you back in time. That's a bad explanation, but "Blink is a good show. Kadharonon thinks that it's the scariest/best Dr. Who episode ever. I'm not sure. I liked "Girl in the Fireplace" better, I think, and I found "The Empty Child" to be scarier. Anyway. Enough footnote.
So here goes:
batik - Batik is a system of resist-dyeing. Now that most of you are still confused, I'll explain. To do batik, one puts wax on cloth, lets the wax harden, crinkles it a bit so that there are cracks in the wax, and then pops the whole thing into a vat of dye. You can also repeat the process with more colors. It creates a really cool effect, because the dye doesn't stick where the wax is, but it does stick in the cracks between the wax, but generally not as well. So the batik tablecloth that I have hanging on my wall at home has a light blue dye, a dark blue dye, and then many variations in a marblization running all through the white background. I had a batiking party for my birthday several years ago. It was a lot of fun, even though we had difficulty getting the wax out of the fabric properly.
duct tape - Who doesn't like duct tape? I have a large supply of it stuck to my water bottle, not because my water bottle is broken (except for that little bit on the piece of plastic that holds the lid on), but so that I will always have a supply of duct tape with me, wherever I go. It's like rope - you'll want it if you haven't got it. Besides, duct tape is like the Force.
gift ninjas - Ziskind House has a tradition of Big Z/Little z, where every first year/transfer/AMS student has a Big Z whose identity is secret and who leaves gifts outside her door for a week. Last year I really enjoyed having a Big Z (who doesn't like getting presents outside their door? and mine was really good), and then this year I got a chance to be a Big Z. It was very ninja, and I enjoyed the challenge of not getting caught, particuarly if there was something that made it more difficult (like my little z's door being open at the time!).
kitemaking - I have a great fondness for kites. I like flying them, I like looking at them, I like reading about unusual ones - and I like making them. Some of the ones I've made have actually flown; others have been purely decorational (or so ornate that I didn't want to risk plowing them into the ground).
my carpet if clean - My room was clean two weeks ago. It is very much not clean right now. This interest was originally, "my carpet when I can see it," but that was too long, and I had to shorten it. It's a very nice carpet. It looks a lot like the carpet in the Ziskind hallways, actually, but it has a zigzag pattern instead of diagonals, nicer colors, and thicker pile. It was given to me by a friend from home.
Edit from the more recent version: I cleaned it a week and a half ago, and, admittedly, it isn't really clean at this particular moment, but it will only take about 2 minutes to make clean again.
nice paintbrushes - I'm very picky about my paintbrushes, and unfortunately, the ones I like are generally the most expensive ones in the store (not really. I don't look at the ones they keep locked in glass cases, though). However, I needed something "bigger than an 8" for my Costume I class, and I had a 6 and a 14, so I decided that a really nice 10 could be considered a class expense. It's cherry wood, with gold-colored metal and something nice for the tip. I haven't used it yet, and it sits in my cup of paintbrushes and calligraphy supplies, which is currently next to my computer because I still haven't gotten around to finding a better home for it.
not being dr. so-and-so - Last year I would occasionally get calls in the middle of the night. "Would Dr. So-and-so please call line three. Dr. So-and-so, line three. There is a patient that needs him." Now you have to understand that I'm not really my best at 2:00 in the morning, and I generally wasted about 2 rings wishing that people would stop calling Renee in the middle of the night (which was somewhat reasonable, since hardly anyone called me, and those few didn't do so in the middle of the night, whereas Renee's dad had been known to call her at 6:45 on a Friday morning when she didn't have any morning classes on Fridays that semester, and her boyfriend thought nothing of calling after 11, although we did manage to persuade him not to do that after the first few times) before realizing that it was actually my phone ringing. The first time I was too sleepy and confused to do more than pick up the phone and blink a few times before the woman hung up. There was a certain camp who believed that these were prank calls, but I really think not; there was a certain professionalism that I've never found in prank calls (maybe, if you have the ability to be that professional, you don't waste your time calling random college students in the middle of the night).
The second time I determined that I was going to get the phone number of the person who was calling. Of course, this time it was 4:30 in the morning, and I didn't manage to get the number beyond realizing that it was a local number - but not a Smith number - and I didn't react quickly enough to actually pick the phone up before it went to the answering machine. The answering machine did get the phone number, but it was an 11 digit number. I presumed that this meant an extension, but I didn't want to call the wrong person in the middle of the night if it wasn't, and right after that I lost my cell phone for a month and couldn't call out.
talking mathematically - I do not consider myself a math person. Yes, I'm good at math, yes, I enjoy it at times, yes, I'm voluntarily taking a math class this semester, but I'm not passionate about it the way, for example, my mother is. I don't consider balancing my checkbook to be a nice leisure-time activity, and I haven't done math problems just for the fun of it since elementary school (after all, if the teachers aren't going to teach, you have to do something to keep yourself from going mad of boredom). But I do like to hang out with math people. Aside from the fact that many of them are just cool people, on average, they tend to think in a slightly more sensible manner than most people (at least from my point of view), which makes them easier to understand. (Let A equal the set of all people. Let M equal the set of math people such that M is a proper subset of A. The average level of mathy precision in M > the average level mathy precision in A > the average level of mathy precision in the set A-M.) Yes, sometimes they are a bit esoteric, but I consider myself to be fluent in math. Sarah-Marie says that one of the things she likes about me is that I'm good at talking mathematically. One of the things that I like about Sarah-Marie is that she appreciates this talent.
Dreams
I haven't been dreaming very much this year. I attribute this to the fact that I seem to dream towards the end of the 9th hour of sleep through the 10th hour. Since I've only been getting about 8 hours a night this semester, 8.5 if I'm lucky, it's no surprise that the dreams have been few and far between, but I miss having them, and therefore savor the few I have had all the more. And these few have been particularly excellent specimens, with higher than average levels of plot (although generally less character development) and more fandom references.
Are you a techie? Or do you crave adventure? Come work for the Transmat Police! Explore the galaxies! Meet cool people! Fight monsters! Do every day what most people only get for vacation!
In this dream, Our Protagonist went on an internship with the Transmat Police (rather like the Transit Police in most urban centers, but way cooler). Unsurprisingly, he decided that he should join the Transmat Police full-time, since the Transmat Police are actually as cool as their slogans, and have an awesome benefits package. The Transmat Police take recruits in groups of five, which become the working teams for the Transmat Police (a bit like the teams of cats that work the worldgates in Diane Duane's books, but more hands-on).
So as soon as Our Protagonist got home, he sent word out to all of his friends and acquaintances that he was looking for people to be his group in applying to join the Transmat Police. He got one of his good friends - a guy - two nice kick-ass women who he sort-of knew, and one Shifty Guy who was an acquaintance (of course I'm the only person who knew that Shifty Guy was shifty, because that's the way things go).
So. Fast-forward through training to this group's first assignment. The one awkward thing about the Transmat Police is communication. They seemed to have handy transmitters for working withing groups, but not any sort of overall communication system, or bug-reporting system. So the groups just have to go out into the Transmat net and ask commuters if they've experienced any problems or heard of trouble spots on their travels (which, while inefficient, does make for generally good customer service ratings, since the Police need to talk to the commuters in order to do their job). So, back to our group. On their first assignment, they split into groups to go mingle. And by groups, I mean two pairs and one lone person. Of course, Shifty Guy was the one lone person. It should also be noted that aside from Our Protagonist, Shifty Guy was the only person who had ever used the Transmat net before, and that time he had been in a hurry and hadn't had a chance to wreak havok for personal profit the way he wanted to. As soon as the others had dispersed, Shifty Guy headed for the nearest Gate, which was a large stone gothic arch with a panel of buttons down one side. He programmed it for a sort of pirate world that had a reputation for large amounts of gold sitting around, and headed through. He arrived in a sort of cloister place, where he ran into Random B-Movie Chick W/ Good Scream. Of course, being Random B-Movie Chick (with Good Scream), it didn't take her long to be attacked by some sort of monster, in this case one of the Weeping Angels* from "Blink." She did have enough time to be quite thoroughly terrified and let out a nice hearty scream before it got her. Shifty Guy, of course, had no thoughts about trying to save her, and only cared for his own hide. He hightailed it back to the gate, but before he got there, he glanced behind him and saw a stone angel. Immediately forgetting the really freaky disappearance scene with B-Movie Chick, he decided that it was stone, and couldn't possibly do him any harm. So he turned around and sauntered - sauntered, mind you! - back to the gate. He reached it just barely ahead of the creature. When he came back through the gate, Our Protagonist had re-appeared - one of the women had found a trouble spot, and they were going to sort it out. As they left, the view focused on the Gate, which I now noticed had a little stone angel on it, only about 5 inches tall. The view panned away for a moment, perhaps to watch the group disappear behind the trees, and then back to the gate. The angel had moved.
I woke up. It was 5:30, so I went back to sleep, and had an uneventful rest of the night.
My other dream was even more overtly Dr. Who. (Ya think I'd been watching a lot of it?)
The Dr. (that is, the new one; David Tennet) and Martha landed on a planet. Emily HS was the first local they met - she was actually fleeing at the time. She was running away from a creepy evil lady who was busy infecting the entire population of the planet with a sort of Zombie-disease (not that the infected inhabitants went around yelling for brains; it was more that they seemed to lose mental function and a lot of their mobility so that they shuffled around doing her bidding and trying to infect healthy people).
The Doctor started herding healthy people onto a space ship (It wasn't the TARDIS; I suppose they just had a spare space ship with an auditorium like the Kimmel Center crossed with the Academy of Music (the one in Philly, not the one in NoHo) - it was all sort of art-deco wood like the Kimmel center, with a similar big feeling, but it had the tiered seating and sense of grandeur of the academy. I don't know why I'm describing all this. Viola is the only person who will have any idea what I'm talking about, and she doesn't watch Dr. Who.) At any rate, while the evacuation was going on, The Doctor, Martha, and Emily had a showdown with the creepy evil lady. It involved monologuing and nothing was resolved, but the whole point of it was to buy time for the evacuation, so I suppose it succeeded. After the showdown, the creepy evil lady disappeared (no one seemed unduly concerned about this, so I assume that it was the sort of hide in a dark corner and not be noticed disappearing, rather than the turning invisible disappearing). In the meantime, the TARDIS had been moved onto the space ship, so the Doctor, Martha, and Emily hurried onto the ship. As they passed the last person in line to get onto the ship, we focused on her for a moment. At the time, I figured that she must be working for the evil lady (although not infected, because she was lucid and not shuffling around).
The Doctor, Martha, and Emily went into the big assembly-place, leaving the last people in to turn the wheel-thing to close the door of the ship. We spent a bit watching the Doctor try to create order, then came back to the door, where the last person was working the wheel-thing. She had nearly finished when the evil lady appeared just outside the door. The last person tried to turn the wheel quicker, but the evil lady just shoved the door open. At this point we went back to the auditorium, presumably to avoid scenes of death and/or torture or just possibly knocking people out. At this point I realized that I had misjudged the last person, and the view had focused on her so that I felt bad when the evil lady took her out, so I mentally appologised for misjudging her character.
There was even more commotion when the evil lady showed up on the top balcony of the auditorium space, spreading bits of virus as she went. The Doctor, however, stayed cool as a cucumber and pulled out his sonic screwdriver (enhanced by some other bits of technobabble), and with a sigh of regret that she had forced him to this point, used the sonic screwdriver to change her genetic makeup to make her something relatively harmless, like a cow (it may well have been a cow. I don't recall.) While he was god-moding with the sonic screwdriver, he also genetically altered the bits of virus that were convenient so that they fought the other bits of virus and repaired as much damage as possible.
These two dreams were unusual in that a) most of the characters didn't have actual names and b) they tended to be more cinematic than usual - I was just an observer, not a character, and seemed to function like a camera, with closeups and particular shots. There was also a higher level of lucid dreaming than usual; while I didn't actually know I was dreaming at the time it was happening, there was some sense of observing a created drama - hence the discussions with myself as to the nature of specific characters.
*They have another name besides Weeping Angels. The link to the BBC page about the show is here, but it doesn't have it. Well, at any rate, the angels are creatures who "kill" you by sending you back in time and stealing the potential energy of your possible future (I'm not sure that this works, since I would think that giving you a new "future" in the past would use just as much energy, but maybe this falls into the "it works because it's already happened" category of paradoxes). Essentially, they don't really exist (or only-sort-of exist) if they are perceived, in which case they appear as stone statues. But when they don't exist, they're very fast, and can send you back in time. That's a bad explanation, but "Blink is a good show. Kadharonon thinks that it's the scariest/best Dr. Who episode ever. I'm not sure. I liked "Girl in the Fireplace" better, I think, and I found "The Empty Child" to be scarier. Anyway. Enough footnote.
