Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Make of that post title what you will, but it’ll make sense once you watch this promo for the Christmas programming on BBC:

Cool. Looks like they’ve made a Christmas special I’ll be happy to see! I was not thrilled with the last one (the Space Titanic? Srsly?) but I do like the Cybermen. More Doctor Who soon! More running! Yay!

Tip o’ the sonic screwdriver to io9.

If you’ve perused my Flickr photos, you’ve probably seen my set from Dragon*Con, including all the incredible costumes people made. My favorite was probably the woman who dressed as the Quantum Angel from the Doctor Who episode Blink:

Who knew angels had such excellent taste in reading materials?

Well, BABloggee Jacco van Schaik tipped me off that the woman who made the costume blogged about it, and the story is great! Go ahead and read it, but let me say, if you’re a scifi fan, you absolutely must read her post up to the very end… Yes sir, Cap’n Tight-pants, you really do.

Well, I’m not sure what to make of this. A man donated his body to science, with the proviso that his skull be used in the Royal Shakespeare Company in a performance.

For years, no actor could stomach using the guy’s cranium… until one man stepped forward.

Who?

Yeah, Who. David Tennant, that Who. When he was alassing poor Yorick in his recent performance as Hamlet, the man of infinite jest was actually Polish pianist André Tchaíkowsky.

So props to Tennant for going through with it. Wait, it wasn’t a prop, it was real. Sorry about that, jokes like that are an occipitational hazard. It’s only temporal, since if I do it too much I’ll be a parietal on my own blog! I’m a fontanelle of such things, but such a frontal assault on my readers would only stem their reading habits.

So if you don’t like it, suture self.

I can’t do a hat tip, since, as Ophelia said, Hamlet had "no hat upon his head." So instead I’ll just say thanks to Rebecca, and note that when she sent me the link, she said that she’s considering donating her body to Tennant as well.

I just found out via Fark that today is the 45th anniversary of Doctor Who! Very cool.

45 years of ten Doctors, dozens of companions, hundreds of aliens, thousands of cardboard sets… and one awesome TARDIS.

… and a very happy astronomer, who loves the show, and loves to spread the word. Here’s the to the next 45 years!

This week’s Carnival of Space is at Starts With a Bang. So get started with your bang and read up on spacey stuff.

For you Whovians, if you haven’t heard yet, the BBC website has up a fantastic history of Doctor Who. I’ve only had a few moments to read it over, but it looks very cool.

Copernicus’ grave may have been found. This has been a long-standing mystery, so it’s an interesting bit of history.

This is seriously weird on a lot of levels.

The guy I morph into is Tom Baker, the actor who played The Doctor back when I started watching it as a kid. I loved his Doctor, so it’s a little odd to see me turn into him… especially without any background music or regeneration effects. But especially especially because of his hair.

The trailer for the new Trek movie just came out in the US (it’s shown before "Quantum of Solace"). Bootleg versions are popping up on You Tube; search for Star Trek 11 to find some (I won’t point to them, seeing as how they’re illegal and all that).

My opinion, as a big Trek fan (I am far more into Trek than, say, Star Wars): the young Kirk part looks like I’d rather nap under a Horta than watch it, but the rest of it looks pretty good. I’m not terribly concerned with "canon" — the official history established by the show and earlier movies — because the episodes were so mutually contradictory that the only way to be a Trek fan and not lose your mind is to be a bit lenient in the self-consistency department. For example, there was that one TNG episode with Wesley Crusher in a clown sweater, and it was never mentioned again. What were they thinking?

Anyway, I will most certainly watch the flick, and I will most certainly review it right here after I do. But that’s not until May, so for now I’ll just try to avoid all the spoilers and catch reruns when they’re on TV.