pavonis

If one subscribes to the multiverse hypothesis, then it is mathematically guaranteed that there are a multitude of universes in which no life at all exists.

Of course alien life is possible - our mere existence demonstrates that. What are the probabilities, though? Possibilities are endless; probabilities are not.

What if the probability of life emerging on any given system is 1 / 3x10^23, or less than 1, and we just happen to be that lucky 1? Sure, it's a bit of a somber thought, but it's the only logical one until we make a new scientific discovery.

If we're the only ones here, then we have the Universe to ourselves, and we can do what anyone who has the house to themselves does!

Aliens - wish the poll had options for "no idea". The Drake equation is simply a tool to lay out what factors might play into the development of intelligent/civilized/technological life. We're only now getting any idea about the types and distribution of extrasolar planets out there. It's a rough start. Certainly there's no data to place other numbers into the equation. Do we even have all the parameters? Who knows?

As usual, I should point out if there were even just one other technological civilization in the Universe, the odds are not good that it would overlap with us in both time and space. It could be a billion lightyears away right now (too far to ever communicate with, much less visit), died out a billion years ago, or not to arise for a billion years yet - or all of those. Pick any random point in Earth's existence, and the odds are you'll pick one where the only living things were bacteria and algae. Not much to talk about with a bacterium, though there's no chance they'll ream your asshole or mutilate your cows.

There are definitely other planets out there - close to 1000 detected, several thousand more candidates to confirm yet, but if any of them are hospitable to any kind of life, it's most likely unicellular.

 

But Obi-Wan is the quintessential Jedi...He would never have left the Order...

 

He didn't have to leave the Order. It left him!

(OK, it was destroyed around him, but same difference.)

Is a priest still a priest if the religion he was a part of no longer exists?

Besides, from a purely practical standpoint, Kenobi would be irresponsible to keep his Force-sensitive genes to himself. If the Jedi Order was ever to be re-established, he'd be smart to start sowing some of those oats of his. Did he really have anything better to do while on Tatooine?

Don't forget the lone Dalek that fell through time and landed on Ascension island in 1962, subsequently captured by Henry Van Statten, imprisoned in Utah until 2012, and finally committed suicide.

Tennant's Doctor would have to be from before "The End of Time". The Tenth (Eleventh, I suppose now) Doctor was running around "hiding" from the four knocks that would signal his impending death, so there's lots of time to drop in a visit with Tennant's Doctor. He was hiding from his fate. I suppose it could be from the time where he was revisiting his old companions after he absorbed his lethal dose of radiation, but I would think he'd have a different demeanor when his death was impending.

John Hurt is great, but it would have been more fun and better for continuity if it was Eccelson or McGann.

I swear there was a split second of the regeneration where you could see Eccelson, but they cut right before it was clear. That made me mad, I really thought they were going to give us a cameo. In fact doing the regeneration out of nowhere and NOT doing the cameo was a dick move. I wonder if it was written in there and they were hoping Eccelson would come around. You know what-- screw him. He could have taken a day out of his life to shoot a single scene at least. He's being a tool about it.

 

Overall, I was kind of disappointed in the episode. I thought it was going to be more about the time war, but it was incidental. Really, the last fifteen minutes was what I wanted the whole episode to be. Given the doubles they used for an Adventure in Time and Space, and McGann's webisode, AND the fact that all the living past Doctor are willing to do VO work I really hoped for all of them to show up in the end. Well, they did, but I wanted a lot more. They shot with McGann so I really don't get why they resorted to using TV movie archive footage when they could have given him a single shot from closer to his webisode.

 

Not thrilled they renumbered-- though it's totally not a big deal. Also bummed Tennant didn't get to see Rose. The Zygon storyline was... there. It felt like an average episode. Super loved how Tennant and Smith interacted. Loved the Capaldi cameo, because it would make sense that he was there, more so than pre-Time War Doctors.

 

Looking ahead, interested to see how the continuity is effected. I'm guessing that even though Galifrey was taken out of reality, it is still in the timelock, which wouldn't negate what happened with the president and Tennant's death, since that was all about escaping the timelock.

 

Which means, when he DOES find Galifrey, The Master will likely be there. And of course, if they stick with the time lord council being the ones to grant regenerations, it will be easy for the Doctor to get another set of lives.

 

So was the Curator just a guy that resembled the 4th Doctor, or id he an alternate universe version of the 4th Doctor that never regenerated?

I don't think Eccleston was deliberately being a "tool". He just doesn't seem to look back at his work, and why should he? If he didn't have a particularly enjoyable experience while making DW, what's his incentive to revisit it?

I, for one, am disappointed that they showed more of the Time War at all. A war across time, between "two almighty civilizations", should not, in my view, look like some conventional war with ray guns and armored soldiers. I can't imagine what a "Nightmare Child" is, but it's something unique to a time war, and I'd hate to think it was just a big spaceship. Maintaining a mystery about the Last Great Time War makes it something impressive and unique, and something of such epic scale that it can't be depicted in any medium.

I don't think Gallifrey is in the time lock anymore, but is in a stasis cell (same thing, effectively) but now it can be retrieved and returned to its normal place.

And Gallifrey is back! ... And the Zygons presence in the show was for what exactly?

 

Continuity wise, loved the shot at the end with the first 12 Docs looking up at Gallifrey. Gallifrey president stated “All 13 of them.” Seems as if Hurt is officially 9, regenerating into Christopher Eccleston (Doc 10 now) and Peter Capalidi’s eyes confirm the new numbering. Not sure why the end credits listed Billie Piper as “Rose.” It was not Rose. She was The Bad Wolf.

Gallifrey isn't back yet, just out there, lost, waiting to be found again by the Doctor. So we still won't have the Time Lords in the show, not for a long time yet, I'd say.

The Zygons were there to raise a parallel situation to the Doctor's (or would that be the Doctors'?) choice about Gallifrey, and his desire to not sacrifice anyone to save someone.

BTW, that wasn't the president, it was a general. Rassilon is still Lord President, and presumably still wants to wipe out the Universe to destroy the Daleks, and leave the Time Lords as beings of pure consciousness. I think they'll have to deal with that someday, when Gallifrey is found again.

...It is clear that this was originally planned with Eccleston in the Hurt role. His dialogue even sounded like the 9th. The 'War Doctor' was wasted potential. Shame behind-the-scenes politics made this necessary, but story should have been changed to make us care more about Hurt's Doctor.

It is not "clear" at all. Moffat wrote this story with the specific idea of a big guest star playing a previously unknown, unheard of incarnation of the Doctor. This story was not written with Eccleston in mind, and definitely not with him in Hurt's place. They may have tried to recruit him, but he still wouldn't have been the War Doctor.

Of course it's not referencing the Warrior, it's just serendipitous. The fact that any DW stories have even a little continuity at all is accidental. When the head of the show says that DW can't have discontinuities by virtue of the fact the main character travels through time and changes it occasionally, you know he doesn't worry at all about things making sense. Of course, that's why I like his stories. I love DW, but let's face it, hard sci-fi it's not.

Internetz fights are cool! (Bowties and Doctor 11 are not = Fact)

What an incredibly profound and insightful statement! Is this is the typical level of discourse at nightly.net now?

You don't think so? Maybe you need to wind your theory a little tighter, so that the screwy is screwier. It's almost merely pedantic at this point! You can do better Tank (what the hell did you change your handle for? How the hell am I supposed to know who's who when y'all are changing names more often than you change underwear?)

He was introduced as the Doctor, and the War Doctor, because we have no other moniker for him. He does have a Gallifreyan name, but we don't know what it is. Maybe it's Throckmorton Throttlebottom. So John Hurt is still playing Throckmorton Throttlebottom, as much as William Hartnell through Matt Smith were playing Throckmorton Throttlebottom. If the end of "The Name of the Doctor" had introduced John Hurt as "The Warrior", what would that have meant to the audience? Nothing. They needed to nail down firmly that John Hurt was an incarnation of the Doctor. Does that screw up the "numbering"? Yes, but only because we've never considered the Doctor might not always be a Doctor. It is a choice he makes. He can decide to not be the Doctor. The Eleventh Doctor said he would have to find a new name when he decided to kill the Star Whale in "The Beast Below", because he couldn't do it and still be considered the Doctor. Moffat screwed with our minds already by introducing a man that was the Doctor, but not a Doctor to be numbered. Moffat's emphasizing that the Doctor is a choice the Time Lord makes, not a name per se.

As for the Eighth Doctor going back to "un-regenerate" into Eccleston's Ninth Doctor - that's screwy. Not Moffat screwy, not fun screwy, just fanon-nitpicking-the-Doctors-must-be-labeled-correctly-so-let's-introduce-a-reset-button screwy.

"Worked"? I thought you were the one that was worked up about this. Besides, who's being a dick? You threw a link to an ancient article up, without any explanation about how it fits into your "theory". Am I supposed to read your mind?

I'm holding on to my theory that John Hurt does NOT regenerate into Eccelson and that his existence is an echo from the timelock. In my head that's how the numbering stays consistant. That or the timelords gave him his next regeneration as a freebie.

It's cool that you've come back to post, but not if you're going to be rude about it.

Old news. That article is from July. What's your point? That he's referred to as the Doctor? What else are we going to call him? The character's name and the character's choice have always coincided before. Now we're seeing that the man and the name aren't the same thing. The Eighth Doctor despaired and chose to become a Warrior, allowing the ninth incarnation (not the ninth Doctor) to do what he did to end the Time War.

"The Doctor" is the name he chose, representing his goals in life. You can call the incarnation portrayed by John Hurt "Jimmy" if you would like, I suppose. The Doctor doesn't consider his ninth incarnation a "Doctor", nor did the ninth incarnation consider himself a Doctor. So what's your problem? He's the same man, just not a Doctor. It's quite simple. What's bending your brain about this?

The Valeyard, the Watcher, the Dream Lord are not incarnations of the Doctor, they're just different aspects of him. The Dream Lord, specifically, was simply a manifestation within a dream of what the Doctor doesn't like about himself. I'm not sure why you would think the Warrior (or the War Doctor, or "Jimmy", whatever) would be like the Watcher (which didn't seem to have a truly independent existence of its own) or the Valeyard (which was some kind of distillation of the Doctor's dark side from "somewhere between his twelfth and final" incarnations). John Hurt counts as a regenerated incarnation of the Time Lord, while the Watcher, the Valeyard, and the Dream Lord do not.

It's really quite simple - John Hurt is playing the ninth regeneration of our particular Time Lord protagonist. He's just not counted as a Doctor because he rejected the name and probably the morality and restraint psychologically connected to the title. Think of him as the first Warrior rather than the ninth Doctor.

The numbering used to be coincident with the incarnation of the Doctor, but not any more. The Ninth Doctor is just the tenth incarnation of that otherwise nameless Time Lord, the Tenth Doctor is the eleventh incarnation, the Eleventh Doctor is the twelfth incarnation, and the Capaldi Doctor will be the thirteenth incarnation. So he's gone through 12 lives as the Doctor and one life as the War Doctor or Warrior. Will Capaldi be the last Doctor, since he's the thirteenth incarnation? I doubt it, but I never expected to see the "end" of the Doctor's lives! Very exciting for me.

By the way, the Hurt "War Doctor" makes a single, otherwise unremarkable line in "School Reunion" make sense (or at least, alters the meaning). Sarah Jane, upon recognizing the Doctor, remarks "You've regenerated!" In reply, he says "Half a dozen times since we last met." Since she was last a companion of the Fourth Doctor, six regenerations would be the tenth. BUT, Sarah Jane met the Fifth Doctor in "The Five Doctors", so the Doctor could've meant half a dozen times since she last met the Fifth Doctor, which would be the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor, but the Tenth Doctor said it! Previously a minor discrepancy, it's now resolved! Hurray!

I'm holding on to my theory that John Hurt does NOT regenerate into Eccelson and that his existence is an echo from the timelock. In my head that's how the numbering stays consistant. That or the timelords gave him his next regeneration as a freebie.

The numbering stays consistent because the Warrior (the War Doctor, if you like) is not numbered as a Doctor. He doesn't use the title (first words being "Doctor no more"). Eccleston is the ninth Doctor, as that incarnation reclaimed the title and name.

I'm not surprised. This community is too close-knit.

Nightly has new users? Is traffic increasing because of the upcoming Episode VII, or are people just setting up aliases? I wonder if any of the newbies will stick around....

I hate it when people ask me questions in which the only way I can respond is to provide an answer to a slightly alternate question.

I do, too. I also hate questions that are posed in such a way that they're unintentionally a string of 2-3 questions which all require separate answers, but to which the questioner expects only a yes or no. My wife throws those types of questions at me a lot.

Favorite? Well, that's a tough one. I guess it would be The Art of Manliness. I read it in one afternoon. It has lots of good tips for being manly instead of macho. I bought it for the tips on fashion for men, but it has lots of other great information, including how to get a better shave and 19th century street fighting (no kidding)! Also parenting tips, recommended father-child activities, and how to break up with a girl (I skipped that section, since I don't need it).

Finished Count Zero yesterday evening. Finally!

 

Started The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford last night.

Geez, I've not updated since April? Well, I finished The Undercover Economist in June, and I've read Tom Clancy's Red Rabbit, Brett McKay's The Art of Manliness and George Gamow's Gravity in the meantime. I started Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff this week.

Oh I'm just messing with ya. I feared you'd forgotten me, I've been lurking so long. Besides, you like being riled up occasionally.

I'm an attorney.

You are? Have you mentioned that here before?

Now, here's what they do all day. Sometimes, admittedly, sit around and do nothing. Other times, the pharmacist is doing administrative bullsh-t. But what a pharmacist is paid for, are those times when a pharmaceutical judgment has to be made, and advice given in one's own professional opinion, that people will rely on. Such as making a decision over whether to prescribe a pharmaceutical that could react with another pharmaceutical the patient is taking. Or giving advice to patients as to whether a certain course of drugs are safe or not. That is what they are getting paid for- perhaps overpaid (in some people's minds, no doubt), but that is why they need the license, so some jackass just doesn't start giving out medical advice.

Yeah, WTF are you talking about pavonis? Hygienists do not perform any actual dental work, they are not members of the American Dental Association, and in fact, are unlicensed to practice dentistry. They perform routine cleanings and checkups, and take x-rays.

 

Excuse the imprecision in my post. The bulk of my time in the dentist's office is spent with hygienists; I see the actual dentist for only a few minutes of the actual visit. Perhaps my experience is not typical. I only have two fillings, and they were done a few years ago. The rest of the time I see hygienists for cleanings only.

My question stands (although some posts in this thread have been helpful). What is it that pharmacists actually do? I mean, I get they fill up pill bottles. Got it. Why does that require a 4 year doctorate degree and a license?

Hey, I thought the pharmacy techs filled the pill bottles. Anyway, what prompted the question, LG? Visited the pharmacy lately and wondered what the mouth-breather behind the counter actually did most of the time?

... They have to know medicine, stick jagged and potentially deadly instruments into people's mouths, look at X-rays and make a professional judgment/diagnosis, and perform actual surgeries. But pharmacists? Get the f-ck out.

Strikes me that pharmacists and dentists aren't that much different. The putative "doctor" is in charge of the operations, but they don't actually do the work. Hygienists do the actual dental work, and pharmacy technicians fill the pill bottles. The main difference is that instead of sticking "jagged and potentially deadly instruments into people's mouths" as dentists do, pharmacists enable people to stick potentially deadly chemicals into their bodies via their mouths.

So, what do they do? I imagine they do as little as possible, same as everyone else.