Nobody Snog Byron

            On Monday morning I was still limping a bit but it was more like an itchy pinch than a bitchy wince. I still had to shift my balance to the left foot during song practice but not as much. Later in the day I was barely limping at all.

I finished memorizing "Eva" by Serge Gainsbourg and then looked to see if anyone had posted the chords. I was surprised that there were no tabs for the song online at all. I started working out the chords.

            In the afternoon I spent three hours researching my Indigenous Studies reflection paper. I had already selected two Macleans articles to compare with two APTN articles. But then I thought that since the Macleans articles are actually opinion pieces rather than news reports like those of APTN that I would look at some from the CBC. I scanned twelve CBC articles and found only one interview with an Indigenous leader that supports the pipeline. That chief however also supports all of the pipeline protests. APTN was the only one that interviewed chiefs that are critical of the protests.

            All the while I was working my landlord and his man or men were underneath me ripping out the ceiling of the commercial space downstairs. The apartment was shaking all afternoon and sometimes they were directly below me and I could almost feel the bottoms of my feet being hammered. 

            I heated a few barbecued pork ribs, some oven fries and gravy and watched the latest episode of Doctor Who.

            Spoiler Alert!

            In this story the Doctor and her team go back to the night in June of 1816 on Lake Geneva when Lord Byron is supposed to have challenged his guests to a ghost story contest that ultimately resulted in Mary Shelley’s creation of Frankenstein. Byron begins to read a tale of horror when there is a knock on the door and it is the Doctor and her friends. The Doctor reminds Yasmin, Graham and Ryan of the rules. Ryan repeats that they shouldn’t mention Frankenstein and Yasmin says, “And nobody snog Byron”. Meaning, “Don’t make out with Byron”.

            Byron has an immediate attraction for the Doctor’s "northern" manner and it's the first time since the Doctor became a woman that anyone has expressed any sexual attraction for her. But she shuts him down right away as when he says, “May I say you are lovely in a crises?” and she responds "No you may not!"

            At one point when Byron is quoting his own poetry, the Doctor finishes the line and he is impressed that she’s familiar with his work. Her mentions “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” but she says it’s not her favourite of his work but likes the references to his daughter Ada. This surprises him especially when the Doctor refers to Ada’s “brilliant mind". Ada would have been six months old at the time and not yet the mathematician that first conceived of the theoretical idea and the potential of a computing machine.

            The only flaw in the portrayal of Byron was having him hide behind Claire Claremont when they were being menaced. There’s no indication from Byron’s life that he was a coward, so that was unfair. He’d been a boxer in college and died fighting a revolution.

            Shortly after arriving in the house the Doctor senses that there is something wrong. The ghost story contest has not been launched and Percy Shelley is missing. As everyone moves around the house they begin to notice that they are not getting anywhere. Someone goes up a flight of stairs but turns a corner only to find they are back where they started one floor below. After entering doorways people find themselves back in the hall. They try to leave the house to look for Shelley but the house will not allow them to leave. Graham receives food from servants that are not part of the household. It is only after Dr. Polidori walks in his sleep through a wall that the Doctor realizes that the house is playing on the conscious minds of its inhabitants. Shelley had written about a vision he’d had of a human figure floating above Lake Geneva. They all see it through the window floating towards the house. The Doctor recognizes it as the lone Cyberman that Jack Harkness had warned about. It enters the house and begins to look for “the guardian". The Doctor notes that this Cyberman seems incomplete compared to the many others she has encountered. It is struck by lightning and recharged. Percy Shelley is discovered cowering in the basement. It turns out that he is the Guardian sought by the Cyberman. He tells the story of having picked what he thought was Quicksilver out of the lake. It was an alien element called Cyberium and this is what the Cyberman seeks in order to rebuild the Cyberman army. Jack Harkness Had specifically warned not to give the Cyberman what he wants but the alternative is Shelley’s death before his time, which would irreparably alter history. She tells Shelley to release the Cyberium. It hovers between the Doctor and the Cyberman but chooses to enter the Doctor. But when the Cyberman threatens to destroy everyone she has to release it. The Cyberman absorbs it and leaves for his planet. The Doctor’s mission for the rest of the season is set, as she has to correct the problem of having given Cyberium to the lone Cyberman.

            The last scene shows Byron reading his poem “Darkness” and the final shot is of the Doctor in the Tardis as Byron says the last line, “She was the universe.”