Women of Wakanda

            I spent a lot of Sunday writing my food bank adventure and my review of Deadpool 2.

            I had another turkey dinner with a beer and watched Black Panther. When I was a kid I had the Fantastic Four comic that featured the first appearance of T'Challa, The Black Panther. In those days he was cooler because his costume was not bullet proof and so he had to rely more on his wits, his speed, his strength and agility. Vibranium was used for various miraculous things but it wasn’t until years later that it was sewn into his costume making him impervious to even some explosives and therefore more boring.

            The portrayal of the kingdom of Wakanda as a technologically advanced society that poses as a developing nation was interesting and I like that the king is guarded by female warriors.

            Spoiler alert!

            Vibranium has been stolen by Klaw from Wakanda and he did the same thing in the original comic story. Klaw originally appeared in the Fantastic Four storyline that also first featured The Black Panther and so except for The Fantastic Four the movie follows the same back-story. Klaw killed T'Challa’s father T’Chaka in Captain America Civil War but in the comic book Klaw had already killed T’Chaka just before the Black Panther’s first appearance. Klaw is one of the few outsiders that know the Wakandans are secretly advanced.

            T’Challa is made king but the ceremony invites challengers from the five tribes of Wakanda and of course there is one challenger who of course comes close to winning but of course loses.

            The Black Panther, his girlfriend Nakia and his female general Okoye (very uncomfortable with her shaved head in a wig) go on a mission o intercept Klaw’s plan to sell the vibranium in Korea and to arrest Klaw. They capture Klaw with the help of the CIA headed by Agent Ross. Klaw is taken into CIA custody though T’Challa still plans on taking him to Wakanda. 

Klaw’s team spring Klaw from custody in Korea. Among the gang members is a US mercenary named Killmonger who was also in the comics and his girlfriend. During the gunfight Ross takes a bullet to save Nakia and so they bring him back to Wakanda to save him. T’Challa’s sister Shuri, the master scientist of Wakanda uses vibranium to heal Ross very quickly.

Killmonger kills Klaw and his own girlfriend and heads for Wakanda with Klaw’s body. It turns out that Killmonger is the son of T’Chaka’s brother N’Jobu. Twenty-five years earlier T’Chaka as the previous Black Panther came to the United States to stop his brother from selling vibranium to arms dealers. They fought and N’Jobu was killed but T’Chaka did not do the right thing and bring his son back to Wakanda. Killmonger grew up with a violent mission, to take over Wakanda and give the technology to people of African descent all over the world in the form of weapons.

Killmonger challenges T’Challa for the throne. The pre-fight ritual involves T’Challa drinking a potion that takes away his Black Panther powers. T’Challa is losing but he does not yield. Killmonger however throws him over a cliff and he is believed dead. Killmonger because of the stupid rules of ritual combat becomes the king of Wakanda. Okoye stays as Killmonger’s general because she serves the throne but T’Challa’s mother Ramonda, Nakia, Shuri and Ross go into exile. They go to the mountain gorilla tribe to ask for help and discover that T’Challa is with them but barely alive. Shuri uses the heart shaped flower to make a potion to restore T’Challa’s strength. The gorilla tribe’s king M’Baku refuses to help fight Killmonger. He tells Ross that if he speaks he will be eaten but then he laughs and says, “I’m kidding! We are vegetarians!”

Just as Killmonger is about to send ships all over the world to deliver vibranium, the Black Panther returns to try to stop him. Okoye and her spear guards fight for T’Challa but her lover W’Kabi and his tribe fight for Killmonger. Shuri sets Ross, an ex-fighter pilot, up in her lab to control a Wakandan fighter ship cybernetically and he takes out the ships heading to deliver the vibranium.

The gorilla tribe arrives to help after all. W’Kabi commands a cavalry of armoured CGI rhinoceroses and there is a scene where he is riding one and charging towards M’Baku but Okoye steps in front and the rhinoceros stops to affectionately lick her face.

The two Black Panthers have a long battle but T’Challa wins. Killmonger is mortally wounded and T’Challa says they can save him but does not want to be imprisoned and so he chooses to die. He says to bury him at sea like his slave ancestors who chose to drown rather than become slaves in America.

I can see how this story would tug on the heartstrings of Africans and people of African descent. The producers went to great lengths to make Wakanda a composite of all the cultures of Africa. Most of the good guys are strong African women, which speaks to the hopes of Africa rather than its reality of being extremely patriarchal.

It is certainly a well-made movie with good performances and well-choreographed action. I would say though that if this exact same story were to take place on another planet with made up animals being the symbols, the movie wouldn’t have much of a story.

In many ways the Black Panther is derivative of The Phantom, even though the Phantom was white. The Phantom’s costume and abilities are inherited just like those of The Black Panther and they are both protectors of Africa. In a sense then the Black Panther is the Black Phantom. They could probably never do a white Phantom movie now because it would seem too colonial.

So I would say that Black Panther is culturally important for the African Diaspora and also from a feminist perspective because no other superhero film has had so many strong women out front and important to the positive resolution of the story throughout. It’s just not that great a story.

My New Favourite Superhero

            After the food bank on Saturday I took my items home to put away and then grabbed the $50 PC gift card that my neighbour David had given me on Boxing Day down to No Frills. I think that I didn’t have to spend the whole $50 all at once but it seemed like a hassle to hold onto it with just a few dollars balance and so I made sure I spent more than $50.

            I didn’t get any fruit this time because the grapes were soft and the berries expensive.

            Now that I have a decent sized freezer I can buy extra meat and store it, so the pork roast and the two pork tenderloins ate almost half of the gift card.

            I remembered two things that I’d forgotten to buy earlier in the week: shaving gel and Earl Grey tea.

            The only other food item I got was a container of yogourt and the rest of my purchases were toilet paper, dish detergent, mouthwash and hair conditioner.

            I wasn’t sure if I’d made it to $50 or not so I was ready to grab some chocolate bars if I came up under, but it was $56.95, so I paid the rest in cash.

            When I got home I went back out to the liquor store and bought a case of eight Creemore. I didn’t plan on drinking that much beer on New Years Eve and though I might have an extra one or two, this case would probably last me through the first weekend in January.

            After lunch I took a late siesta and ended up sleeping an hour longer than usual. It was after dark when I got up.

            I did some writing.

            That night I ate some more turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce with a beer and watched Deadpool 2. This was one of the funniest movies that I’ve seen in a long time. The violence was pretty gruesome but they intermix it with so much slapstick and just plain ridiculous moves that soften the brutality.

            Spoiler alert!

            Deadpool must have killed over a hundred bad guys in about five different scenes in the opener, of course with a lot of funny patter and commentary while fighting. After killing a bunch of bikers in a strip club he goes sliding on his knees down the runway and he’s suddenly sliding between two pools in a Japanese bath. The samurais in the water suddenly lift their swords from the water on the pivot of their laps and it looks like Deadpool is giving them all an erection. And then they all die of course.

Deadpool does all this on the evening of his anniversary with his girlfriend Vanessa and so he is late. At first he offers a series of ridiculous excuses such as, “I was rounding up all the gluten in the world and launching it into space where it can’t not hurt us ever again” but finally she forgives him. He gift to him is her IUD. They are about to make a super baby when and assassin steps in. Deadpool is not able to stop the bullet from killing Vanessa. At this point the opening credits roll but instead of showing the names of the people behind the movie, it instead shows the probably thoughts of many viewers after having seen Vanessa killed: A film by Wait A Minute; produced by Did You Just Kill Her? presented by What The Fuck?; production designer She Was Like Everyone’s Favourite Character; film editors Good Luck Bringing Me Back Fuckheads; starring Obviously Reynolds Didn’t Want To Share The Spotlight; directed by One Of The Guys Who Killed The Dog In John Wick.

Deadpool is sitting at the bar where he’s been for three days and feeling sorry for himself when Weasel the bartender asks, “Are you pissing right now?” At that point I spit up my swig of beer into my hand and had to wipe myself off.

Deadpool visits Vanessa somehow in dreams or visions. He can see her but there’s a barrier he can’t get through. She tells him his heart is in the wrong place. He takes that as a signal that he should finally join the X-Men, even though he says, “I’m obviously not X-Men material because I’m not a virgin.”

All of the X-Men are shown briefly as the Beast closes the door of a meeting room in the mansion that Deadpool calls Chateau de Virgin. There are only three X-Men really involved in the movie: Colossus, who Deadpool calls Shiny Ghandi among other things; Negasonic Teenage Warhead and her pink haired very feminine lover Yukio, who Deadpool refers to as Pinky Pie from My Little Pony.

Deadpool goes on a mission with the X-Men to stop a 14-year-old mutant named Fire Fist from wreaking havoc at a school that teaches young mutants how to suppress their powers. The school is run by a sadistic priest. Deadpool takes out Fire Fist but when he hears about kids being tortured at this school he goes rogue and shoots several of the orderlies that Fire Fist said had hurt him. Deadpool is immediately taken out by Colossus and a mutant power-nullifying collar is placed around his neck. He and Fire Fist are taken to the maximum-security mutant prison known as Ice Box. With his powers nullified Deadpool is just a man dying of terminal cancer.

Cable arrives from the future. He’s part machine but the machinery might be organic technology. He seems to have an endless supply of guns and bullets and maybe his body generates them. He’s there to kill Fire Fist because when Fire Fist grows up he kills Cable’s wife and daughter. Deadpool fights him without his powers but a fall from a very great height breaks both his neck and the inhibiting collar, so his neck immediately heals. He and Cable continue to fight and end up getting teleported out into the surrounding frozen landscape. Deadpool ends up going over a cliff into a glacial lake. While he’s drowning Deadpool meets Vanessa again. She tells him children help us become better people. Deadpool realizes he needs to save Fire Fist.

Weasel tells him that the prisoners from Ice Box are being transferred to another prison via armoured convoy. Deadpool decides to start a team to help him. They take on various team members with normal mutant powers, like manipulating electromagnetic fields and spitting acid. Another guy named Shatterstar says he’s from the planet Mojoworld and his power is that he’s just better than everybody at everything. This is obviously a parody of Superman. Deadpool says, “Just once I’d like to find a planet where everybody’s worse than me at everything! I’ll go there and be their Superman!” Weasel asks, “Isn’t that Canada?” Deadpool says, “You shut your goddamn trash mouth!” They hire the Vanisher though they don’t know whether he showed up to try out or not. Then comes Domino who says her power is that she’s lucky. Deadpool has a long argument with her that that’s not a superpower but she gets in because she’s lucky. The final member is Peter, who has no powers at all but he has both type one and type two diabetes so they hire him.

The team parachutes down to intercept the prison convoy but almost all of them veer off course and die. When the Vanisher is electrocuted by power lines we see briefly that he’s played by Brad Pitt. The only one who makes it is Domino, who is great. Being lucky would be one of the best super powers.

The convoy is wrecked and Fire Fist escapes with his new friend The Juggernaut. The Juggernaut rips Deadpool in half. Ryan Reynolds also does the voice of the Juggernaut. Deadpool has to recover and for a while is walking on little boy’s legs as they grow back. Fire Fist and the Juggernaut go to the school to kill the headmaster. Deadpool has to stop him because that’s what sets Fire Fist off on getting a taste for killing and causes Cable’s family to die. Cable joins Deadpool and gives him a chance to save Fire Fist from killing.

At the school Colossus, Negasonic Warhead and Yukio come to help Deadpool. The three fight Juggernaut. Yukio has an electric whip. I won’t tell you how they defeat Juggernaut but it’s pretty funny.

Deadpool saves Fire Fist from a future as a villain by putting on a power nullifying collar and jumping in front of the bullet that Cable shoots to kill Fire Fist. Deadpool has a very long and very funny death scene. His last request is to hear Colossus say something dirty before he dies.

Cable’s time device was only good for a round trip but he sacrifices his trip back to the future to go slightly back in time and save Deadpool.

During the credits Deadpool gets Negasonic Warhead to fix Cable’s time device. He uses it to go back and save Vanessa, he goes the point where Ryan Reynolds is first reading the script for Green Lantern and declaring, “Goddamn that’s beautiful!” He saves Peter from dying. Deadpool shoots Ryan Reynolds in the head and calls out, “You’re welcome Canada!” He goes back to kill baby Hitler but can’t bring himself to do it so he just changes Hitler’s diaper and leaves.

The last two songs in the closing credits are very funny. There’s Deadpool Rap by Team Headkick: “Nuts for luck get the party started / Knock you out like Colossus farted”. But the best is the final song by a choir about Juggernaut called “You Can’t Stop This Motherfucker” with the refrain, “Holy shitballs!”

Public Washrooms are a Human Right

            On Saturday I started and almost finished memorizing in French Serge Gainsbourg’s 1970 song “Cannabis”, which doesn’t seem to be much about cannabis. It’s more about death being a female lover but he speculates in one line that maybe the reason he's thinking about death in this way is that he's high on pot.

            The food bank line-up was drastically shorter than it was during the two weekends leading up to Christmas. I arrived at my normal time but only counted twelve spots marked by carts and bags in the line ahead of me.

            The tall guy with the backwards-turned poor boy cap and the long slim woollen coat came in behind me. One good thing about him is that he tends to only smoke one cigarette at the beginning and doesn't light up again unless the wait is exceedingly long.

            I stepped away while he was smoking and started reading chapter six of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. A quarter of the way into the story and I find it mostly tedious. The prose is not particularly interesting and Mary Shelley is not even close to being as good a writer as Edgar Allen Poe. I was surprised at how quickly the monster was created without much of any explanation as to how he was fashioned. The movie adaptations tend to make it more obvious that the monster is made from collected dead body parts but in the book it’s possible that the cadavers that Frankenstein had access to merely served as models for parts that he constructed. Frankenstein was a chemist and so he would have used chemistry to build the monster.

            The monster comes into being so quickly and without the dramatic lightning displays that happened in the original film adaptation. In the book Frankenstein goes into shock upon seeing his creation and becomes ill for several months, during which time the monster has disappeared. I think Frankenstein reencounters his monster in two more chapters and will find that it has learned to talk and educated itself.

            I went downstairs to use the washroom only to find the door locked with a sign saying that the washrooms are for Tool Library and food bank customers only and that anyone needing to use them must ask for a key from the people in charge of those services. I didn’t have to go badly enough to deal with the hassle of asking for a key and so I went back upstairs.

I finished my chapter and though I still didn’t have to go very badly, my curiosity became as strong a motivation as having to pee and so I went downstairs to ask for the key. I stood in the doorway and made the request but Angie shook her head. I asked, "Why not?" and she answered that she only has one fob and she's not going to give it out. I reminded her that the sign on the washroom door says that the washrooms are for food bank customers, and asked, "Am I not a food bank customer?" Martina, who was helping to stock the shelves, turned and asked with surprise, “That’s what it says on the door?” This was obviously a new thing for them too.

Before leaving the basement I walked down the hall to the Tool Library to find out what would happen if I asked for a washroom key there. The young woman at the counter told me that their key is just for members. I assume then that if I were to pay the $50 a year membership fee to acquire whatever card they give out to prove membership, she would have given me the key. At least she seemed to know what was going on.

I went back upstairs and chatted about the issue with the guy behind me. I guessed that this has to do with people going down to the washroom to either do drugs or to sleep, but I’ve been using that loo almost every Saturday for two years and never once have I seen anyone doing either of those things down there. Those activities are probably more nighttime occurrences and so they should at least have the washroom unlocked during the periods when the food bank is open. Why should a food bank customer have less access to the washroom than a Tool Library customer?

It seems to me that there is a law that a public building that contains any service that draws people into the building is required to provide a washroom for the public it serves. Based on the wording of the notice on the washroom door, building services at 1499 Queen Street West are well aware of the legal requirements and are passing the responsibility to their tenants of providing access to their customers. The Tool Library is taking that responsibility but the food bank is not.

            The tall young man with the doll eyes and the catatonic expression was moving like a bee from person to person to seek nicotine nectar. He never speaks but merely gestures with two fingers to his lips to each one he approaches. He either doesn’t remember the people like me that tell him they don’t smoke or he just figures they might have started since the last time he asked. A woman who had earlier asked me for the time twice in ten minutes had crossed the street and, having just lit a cigarette was on her was back to our side when the silent smoke-beggar approached her with his fingers to his lips. She moved to the right to get around him but he moved to the left and blocked her from getting to the curb. She moved to the left and he intercepted her again. She moved to the right and when he stepped in her way again she finally just shrugged and handed him her cigarette.

            As oblivious as he seems to be to anything but asking for cigarettes and smoking them, he never throws his butts on the sidewalk but rather always takes them over to the sidewalk garbage bin to carefully slip it into little round hole. What are those holes called by the way? I would imagine not “butt holes”.

            I saw Steve, the assistant food bank manager walking up Queen for work and approached him before he went inside. I asked if he knew that the washrooms downstairs are looked. He shook his head without looking at me and said, “It’s probably because too many people have OD’d down there!” I’ve never seen him look at anyone when speaking to them. He always seems to keep a cerebral distance. As he went inside I said to the back of his head that the sign says the washrooms are for food bank customers.

            A middle-aged blonde woman who’s there every week was surprised that Angie didn’t let me use her fob. She said, “She sees you all the time!” A chunky man in a baseball cap with a white moustaches and goatee, who’s been one of the first five people in line for years, told me that Angie had lent him her fob earlier but that he’d had to give her a cigarette for it.

            Ahead of me downstairs, an older woman was turned away because they could see on the system that she’d already been there on Thursday. There was a bit of a wait because she put up an argument about it.

            Once I was in front of the desk I asked Steve while he was checking me in on the computer, what they were going to do about the washroom situation. He said they were going to see if they could arrange to have the door unlocked while the food bank is open, but that meanwhile they would have ferry people to the washroom and open the door for them. There was some confusion because Steve thought that I wanted to use the washroom and so the young guy at the computer next to him got up to escort me. I told them I wanted to use the food bank.

            I didn’t take much from the shelves. On the first set of shelves there was a bottle 15% maple syrup but I had no use for it. The oatmeal with chocolate, nuts and fruit looked interesting, but I’m not a big fan of hot cereal, even in the wintertime. They still have lots of Kuna Pops snacks but they don’t do much for me. I took a pouch of sliced pears and a box of six dark chocolate macaroon granola bars.

            There were lots of canned goods on the next set of shelves but I have enough of beans and soup and so I just took a can of tuna and a container of coconut water with peach and mango. As usual I didn’t select any rice or pasta.

            From Angie’s station I didn’t take any milk but I got the usual eggs, grabbed a one-litre can of apple juice and a half a kilo pack of frozen stewing beef.

            I still had lots of potatoes and carrots from the Christmas haul and so from Sylvia’s section I just took five tomatoes, a couple of onions, three mandarins and two navel oranges.

            Angie didn’t apologize for not letting me use the washroom. And here I thought she liked me. 

Who is the Timeless Child?

            On Friday morning when I got up the membranes of my eyes felt like they were made of aluminium foil and I could almost hear them crinkle.

The old guy with the silver-grey car whom I usually see on Saturday or Sunday mornings was out cruising past the donut shop, making his u-turn, heading west again and repeating the move over and over more than I’ve seen him do it before. He’s either looking for someone or practicing u-turns.

In the late morning I decided that it was about time to take at least half of the beer cans I’ve accumulated over the last year up to the Beer Store at Dundas and Dovercourt. I’d been avoiding it since the Beer Store closed that was only three blocks away. As I put my bike in the hall to get ready to go I ran into my next-door neighbour Benji. I’d wondered if he’d gone away fro the holidays because I haven’t seen him for about a week but he said he’d been home all along. I told him about our rent increase notice being invalid. He thanked me for letting him know but I’d bet that he’ll just pay the increase. I remember when raja first bought this building and tried to evict us all about 18 or 19 years ago. Cesar and I fought the eviction in court and saved us all but Benji didn’t seem to want to make waves.

            Outside the building, Cesar was waiting for the mail carrier. For the last month Canada Post hasn’t been able to get in to access our mailboxes because there’s something wrong with the lock for which mail deliverers have a universal key. We have to either meet the mailman outside or go to the post office to get our mail.
            I told Cesar about the rent increase notice being invalid but he already knew. I think he’s been in continuous litigation with the landlord for twenty years over one thing or another.

            I carried two garbage bags full of cans in my left hand while riding my bike. It was awkward with my winter gloves on and on Brock Avenue about halfway between the railroad bridge and Dundas I realized it was warm enough to not wear any gloves at all, so I stuffed them in my backpack and continued on.

            I would imagine that the Beer Store in Little Portugal has seen a considerable increase in business since the Parkdale Beer Store closed down. It took me at least fifteen minutes to put all my cans into cardboard trays. I had 117 cans, two beer bottles and a wine bottle. I got about $12. I asked the guy who paid me if there’s a return on those five litre kegs and he said it’s twenty cents. A spastic young guy with light brown hair was standing nearby and he asked me why someone would use one of those kegs when they could buy bottles. I said because it’s draft. He said, “It doesn’t make sense to me! But if that’s what you want …”

            I rode down to Freshco. Inside the building but just outside the entrance to the supermarket was tied a medium sized dog that I think was a Basenji. It barked at the guy that entered the store after me but I think the dog’s caregiver thought that it had barked at me and so she came up to apologize. She was a tall woman in her thirties with dark hair and perhaps a Hungarian accent. I said, “He’s waiting for you” and she responded with a laugh, “Yes, he’s always waiting for me!”

            I bought black grapes, blueberries, raspberries, a loaf of Bavarian sandwich bread, some yogourt and a jar of honey.

            When I got home Cesar was still standing outside and waiting for the mail carrier. It’s a good thing it was a fairly warm day for late December.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            My weight is 93.1 kg today, so I guess I’ve gained 200 grams since yesterday if the scale is right.

            I’m getting the hang of my new saucepan. I didn’t have to refill it while boiling a potato this time because I put more water inside in the first place and because I don’t have to cook the potato as long as with the old pot. I’m eating a bit of the turkey every day but I’ve hardly dented the dinde (turkey in French).

            I watched the last episode of this season of Doctor Who, but there will be a New Years Day special, which I’ll probably be able to watch on January 2.

            Spoiler alert!

            In this story the Doctor and her friends go to the planet Ranskoor in answer to nine distress signals. They have to wear neural balancers because the planet generates waves that disrupt the brain. They see the effect from the first person they encounter, who is pointing a gun at them and doesn’t remember who he is. Two minutes after asking who they are he forgets what they told him but the Doctor has an extra neural balancer for him and Paltraki recovers. The crew of his ship have been captured by the Ux. There are only two Ux, Andinio and Delph but they have the power to shape or shrink worlds. They live only by faith and serve their creator whom they think manifested himself to them over 3000 years ago. Their “creator” turns out to be the Stenza warrior Tim Shaw whom the Doctor teleported away from Earth 3000 years before. Tim Shaw deceived and manipulated the Ux, compelling them to make him as a god. For 3000 years he has worked towards the goal of revenge. He uses Stenza technology amplified by the Ux and he’s developed a weapon to destroy the Earth. The weapon is powered by five planets that have been miniaturized and held in stasis inside of crystals.

            When Graham finds out that their enemy is Tim Shaw, the creature that killed his wife, he is determined to kill him. When he confesses his intention to the Doctor she forbids it and warns him that if he purposely kills someone he would no longer be able to travel with her. He says that he understands that.

            The Doctor and her friends help Paltraki rescue his crew from the stasis crystals.

            Tim Shaw commands the Ux to power his weapon. They are sort of in a trance as they open up a dimensional portal and the beam begins to fire at the Earth. The Doctor places neural balancers on Andinio and Delph, breaking their connection to the weapon. She convinces them that they have been tricked by Tim Shaw and they agree to help to return the captured planets to their proper positions. The Doctor connects Delph to the telepathic circuits of the Tardis so that he will be able to know the exact positions in which to send the planets.

            Tim Shaw goes to try to stop the interruption of his plan and is confronted by Graham, who is holding a blaster rifle. He powers the rifle and aims it but he can’t bring himself to kill Tim Shaw in cold blood. Tim Shaw calls him weak and comes forward to attack but Ryan comes from behind with another rifle. Tim Shaw turns to attack Ryan but Graham shoots him in the foot. They imprison Tim Shaw in one of his own stasis crystals. The Ux seal the building so he can't be freed.

            Andinio was played by Scottish actor Phyllis Logan, who played the housekeeper on Downton Abbey.

            My assessment of this season of Doctor Who is that Jodie Whitaker may be the best Doctor of all and the best actor for the role. Her companions this season leave something to be desired. A Doctor’s companion has to have something quirky about them and charming at the same time. These companions are all very ordinary. Yasmin’s background is a little more interesting but her career is unconvincing as she is nothing like any cop I’ve ever met in my life. The character of Gwen Cooper on the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood would have been a more convincing female police officer turned Doctor’s companion.

            My friend Nick Cushing has complained that the new show is too “woke” but I think that’s just his generational prejudices talking. Doctor Who has always been a socially conscious show. Even the Daleks way back at the beginning were based on the Nazis desire to exterminate non-Aryans, except in this case the master race were machines. Look at the way the Daleks constantly have their arm extended like a Nazi salute.
            Any story that depicts the future will tend to be more socially conscious than those depicting our time or history. Star Trek is more socially conscious than Star Wars but keep in mind that Star Wars takes place in the past and it depicts really a very conservative reality in which there is dark and light and no grey areas.

            The problem with the stories in the latest season of Doctor Who is not political correctness but rather a lack of an overall story arc that haunts most of the stories and that comes to the surface at the end of the season. There was mention of “The Timeless Child” in the second episode but they didn't offer any more hints about it for the entire season. It was a mistake to not tease every story with something about this mysterious child and to bring it forward in a story in the season finale.

Mandip Gill

            On Thursday I got caught up on my journal. I figured out how to find the flattest surface in my kitchen so that I can weigh myself properly with my new scale. I’m still overweight and so I’ve got to cut back more on proportions.

            I used my new pot for the first time. It’s cool to be able to see the food cooking now through the glass lid. I found though while cooking a potato for dinner that I had to add water twice because liquid in it evaporates so quickly.

            I watched an interesting and suspenseful episode of Doctor Who.

            Spoiler alert!
            The Tardis has arrived in the countryside of present day Norway. In a barricaded cottage they find a blind girl named Hanne in her early teens all by herself. Her father Erik has been gone for four days. She says there is a thing that comes out of the woods at night that makes strange noises.

            Inside the Doctor discovers that the mirror in the bedroom is a portal to another world. She leaves Ryan to look after Hanne and takes Graham and Yasmin inside. They are in the Antizone between the universe and a world that threatens the universe. The Antizone is a cave with very little light. They find a humanoid creature named Ribbons who when he comments about how clever the Doctor is says, “Your brain must taste so delicious!” Ribbons will trade being a guide in exchange for the Doctor’s sonic device. He betrays them though by cutting the string they've been using to help them get back to the portal. Ribbons gets attacked by flesh eating moths.

            Meanwhile Hanne wants to go through the portal to seek out her father. Ryan locks the door to the bedroom to keep her from going. He hears the noises of the thing outside and investigates only to find that the sounds are recorded and that Erik has set speakers up to keep his daughter scared but safe. Ryan comes back into the house and Hanne knocks him out, taking the key to the bedroom and going through the portal.

            The Doctor and her friends go through the mirror but it turns out to be the world at the other side of the Antizone. It’s a mirror image of the real world. There they find Erik with Hanne’s dead mother, Trine, who is supposed to be dead. Graham finds his dead wife Grace there as well.

            When Ryan regains consciousness he goes through the portal after Hanne. He finds her and takes her toward the portal that the Doctor went through. Ryan sends Hanne through but he stays to distract the birds that have been chasing them. Hanne immediately knows that the version of Trine that Erik is with is not her mother and she rejects her. Trine sends both Yasmin and Hanne back out to the Antizone but Erik is still under her spell. The Doctor is having a hard time convincing Graham that this version of Grace is also fake. Graham asks Grace, “What about Ryan?” When she answers, “He’ll be fine!” Graham knows she’s fake because Grace would never abandon her grandson. Grace sends Graham into the Antizone and then she dissolves. Only the Doctor and Erik are left with Trine. The Doctor convinces Trine that she’s a better choice to keep with her than Erik and so Trine sends Erik through the portal. Trine takes on her favourite form, which is that of a talking frog but she is the consciousness of this entire alternate universe known as the Solitract. The Doctor tells the Solitract that her presence is destabilizing her universe and so she has to send her back. Now the Doctor and all of her friends are in the Antizone but it’s disintegrating. They make it through the portal to their world just in time.

            At the end Ryan calls Graham “Granddad” for the first time. Graham can’t believe it and asks, “Did you just call me granddad?” Ryan says, “Why? You goin deaf in your old age?”

            Grace is played by Sharon D. Clarke, who is a Member of the Order of the British Empire. She was the lead singer of Nomad and had a top ten hit in 1991 with “Just a Groove”. She originated the role of The Killer Queen in the musical We Will Rock You.

            Yasmin is played by Mandip Gill

            Hanne was played by Ellie Wallwork who is the first blind actor to appear in Doctor Who. She’s also a singer and songwriter.

            Trine was played by Lisa Stokke, who is from the Norwegian arctic and has been acting from a very early age. 

No Longer Weightless

            On Wednesday I had considered taking a couple of garbage bags full of some of my year’s accumulation of beer cans to the Beer Store at Dundas and Dovercourt on my way downtown to Staples to take back the memory card that I’d bought there on Monday for my Sony Cybershot camera. But it was already almost 13:00 by the time I got going and I figured it would be time consuming because of a line-up and the time it would take to load up those shallow cardboard boxes.

            Management seems to have gotten nicer at Staples. I had a big hassle with them several years ago when I bought the Brother printer that I still have. The salesperson had told me when I asked that I didn’t have to buy anything extra for it but when I got it home I saw that it didn’t have a power cord. When I went back they informed me that the power cords are sold separately. I insisted that they give me a power cord because I hadn’t been told that I needed to buy it at the time of purchase, but the manager refused. I wrote an angry letter threatening to take my business elsewhere and a few days later I got a call from them telling me that I could have the cord for free. The squeaky wheel gets the grease as they say.

            So on Boxing Day while one cashier was giving me my money back, another employee asked if she could look at my camera. She told me that the memory card I needed was something they no longer sell but I could get it at Henry’s Cameras or Aden Cameras. I thought about going there but Nick Cushing had already offered to order a memory card for my on Amazon, and I thought that might be cheaper so I decided to try that first.

            My next stop was Walmart, so I rode up to College and headed west. I locked my bike at the back where a lot of people were disobeying the sign telling people not to smoke within nine meters of the building. The first thing I did, as I think I always do when I arrive at the Dufferin Mall, was to go to the north end of the building and use the washroom. Actually have to pee pretty much whenever I arrive anywhere, including home. Am I instinctively marking my territory?

            After peeing I went to Winners because Winners was the place many years ago where I found what became my favourite drinking glass and which only broke in a fall a little less than a year ago. They often get odd items at Winners so though I’ve never seen it there since I bought it, it seems like a place where it might turn up again someday.

            I then went to Walmart and immediately went downstairs. The place was crowded and there were a lot of Spanish speaking people there. I walked around trying to find a bathroom scale but I also wanted a new saucepan to replace the one that I’d ruined, so when I stumbled onto the pots and pans I shopped there first. There were some empty hooks, so it was possible that the exact size of stainless steel saucepan that I was looking for had already been sold out. I wanted something that would hold my steamer attachment, which hadn’t come with my previous pot but which fit both it and the lid. Finally I saw one that looked like it was wide enough for my steamer, though it was not as tall as my old pot. It holds 2.8 liters and is 20 cm across on the inside. It has a glass lid though and a perforated area along the rim for straining things. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but the closest they had so I got it for $26. The next biggest thing was a two-handled soup pot but that was way too big for my steamer.

            While I was there I decided to replace my pizza pan, which I’ve had for decades but it’s about to split at the edge. The closest they had was a pack of two non-stick pizza pans about the same size as the one I had but with a higher rim and handles so that although the inside where the food goes is round, the outside is oval. I wondered about non-stick pans being safe but apparently Teflon is only dangerous at temperatures higher than my oven will go. I took it for $10.

            I finally found the bathroom section where I imagined they’d be selling scales and they were of course next to the toilet seats, even though there’s really no reason to keep a scale in the bathroom other than that being where one might be more often naked. They had quite a variety of digital scales but only one analog scale. The mechanical scale was less attractive. I went with the Hometrends Super Slim digital scale in silver for $20, though I could have sworn it was actually on sale for cheaper than that but I didn’t feel like arguing at the checkout.

            Upstairs I decided while I was there to buy some underwear and some tank shirts because I was feeling too lazy to do my laundry. I got a pack of six briefs for $19 and a pack of six shirts for $21.

            When I got home I was just entering the building when I saw my upstairs neighbour David walking up. I hadn’t seen him for several weeks. Benji told me David’s been training for a new job at odd hours. I told him that I found out that our rent increase notice is invalid and so we don’t have to pay. He handed me a little red envelope and told me to open it. Inside was a $50 President’s Choice gift certificate. That was nice. I can use it at No Frills.

            When I emptied my pockets I discovered that in my change from Walmart I finally scored a Viola Desmond $10.

            I unpacked my purchases and found that the pot that I bought fits my strainer with the lid on top as well. I like the glass lid.

            I tried the scale. It's very simple and there is no option for calibrating it. When I first got on I was 95.1 kilos, which is still overweight for me. It registers differently though on different surfaces. In just my sweatpants, a tank shirt and socks, in the centre of the living room facing south I weigh 94 kilos; facing north I weigh 93.6 kg; facing east I weigh 94.3; facing west 93.6; in the middle of the kitchen facing south: 92.9; north: 92.9; east: 94.6; west: 94; in the bathroom facing south: 94.6; north: 92.9; east: 94 and west: 95.4. I assume these differences have to do with how level the floor is. The only way I can find which spot would be best for weighing myself I’ll have to get something with a precise weight and find where it comes up with the same. The only thing I thought I had was a 2.7 kg bag of potatoes but it wasn’t heavy enough to activate the scale. I suddenly remembered though that I have a 4.5 kg dumbbell. It registers 4.5 very briefly in the middle of the kitchen facing south, so I guessed my weight is 92.9 kg, but I checked again and found that with even a slight movement in one direction or another the scale registers 4.6kg or 4.4 kg and so when I found the spot where it weighs 4.5 kgs my weight is 93.4 kg. So I’ve lost weight since I got weighed for my physical at the end of August but my BMI is 25.3 and so I’m still overweight.

For dessert during lunch instead of an eighth of a pie I had a sixteenth and I just had five spoons of yogourt instead of six.

I took a siesta and did some writing when I got up.

That night I had the other drumstick, some dressing, some cranberry sauce and half a ladle of gravy with a beer while watching Doctor Who.

Spoiler alert!

The Doctor’s friends wanted to see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I but the Tardis took them to a town in Lancashire near Pendle Hill during the 17^th Century Pendle Hill witch trials. 

They arrive just as a woman is being dunked to find out if she’s a witch. If she drowns she's not a witch but if she survives she’s a witch and she’s executed. This woman drowns. Willa’s the granddaughter of the woman that drowned. It appears they are more like modern Wiccans and natural physicians than followers of Satan. The woman in charge of the trials in this town is Becka Savage. She owns the land.  The Doctor had tried to save the old lady and so Becka says for her to be arrested. The Doctor shows her telepathic identification and it reads “Witchfinder General” and so Becka gives in to the Doctor’s authority.

But there is a mysterious man in a mask skulking about who reveals himself as King James. This is the King James of course whose Bible is still used by the Church of England for some stupid reason. James shows himself to be obsessed with witches and immediately declares that the Doctor can’t possibly be the Witchfinder General because she’s a woman and so he assesses that the Witchfinder must be Graham. The Doctor says, of being a woman, “If we’re not being killed we’re being patronized to death!” James also takes an amorous liking to Ryan and flirts with him throughout the episode. I didn’t know this but it’s fairly well known that James had male lovers though he declared sodomy an unforgiveable crime.

Willa buries her grandmother on Pendle Hill but is grabbed by a living root. Yasmin fights it off.

Willa’s grandmother seems to come to life but she’s all mud coloured and some other dead women come to life in the same way. The Doctor discovers the possessors are alien criminals that have been imprisoned neath Pendle Hill for thousands of years. They are the Morax and their plan is to possess everyone on Earth. Becka Savage is absorbed as their queen and is about to have her king from the hill absorb James when the Doctor finds a way to reactivate the security system and re-imprison the Morax beneath the hill.

Becka was played by Siobhan Finneran, who acted for three seasons on Downton Abbey.

Willa was played by Tilly Steele.

Love in Partition

            Maybe it’s a childhood habit that’s embedded itself in my psyche but I always feel an urge to get up early on Christmas day even though there are no presents waiting for me. I got up at 4:00 and since my left ear felt a bit plugged I flushed it out. I got started with yoga a half an hour earlier than usual. For song practice I just worked on songs that I particularly enjoy and on a couple for which I needed to practice whistling.

            I worked out most of the chords for Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me” but applied them to Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” and it worked except on the bridge because the Cooke song has none but “Bird on a Wire" can keep its own. I like my version better than the original for either song.

            I spent a long time on my journal before having a late breakfast of bacon and eggs. I cooked my own bacon but for the eggs I used some of the little omelettes that I got from the food bank. During breakfast I watched an episode of Doctor Who that had a great title: “Arachnids in the UK”. Get it?

            The Doctor finally gets her friends back to 2018 Sheffield although none of them seem all that happy to be back. Despite all of their adventures they have only been gone for half an hour. We meet Yasmin’s father, in an apron is quite excited that Yasmin has brought friends home because it’s out of the ordinary. Yasmin’s sister is a bit of a princess and they don’t seem to get along. Her mother Najia is out working at a new job. We meet her boss who is a US hotel tycoon who wants to run for president in 2020. He seems to be modelled after Trump and the actor seems to be doing a less over the top impression of Alec Baldwin’s impression of Trump but Trump is mentioned as a rival to this character. Anyway, he’s a major asshole. Najia's supposed to be the general manager of the luxury hotel that they are standing in and that is about to open but as soon as she walks up to Jack Robertson to introduce herself and he immediately fires her.

            Meanwhile giant spiders big enough to trap humans for food in their webs are appearing all over Sheffield. The Doctor finds that the epicentre of all the reported sightings is Robertson's hotel. Robertson's company also does toxic waste removal and they removed the waste from a lab that’s been studying spiders. Some of the waste that the lab had sent out turned out to be dormant rather than dead spiders. They mutated in the other toxic waste. Spiders do not stop growing as long as they are alive but most do not live very long. These mutants lived longer and grew. Spiders are attracted to sound vibrations and the Doctor gets Ryan to lure them with amplified dub reggae into Robertson’s panic room.

Najia asks Yasmin if she and Ryan are a couple. She also asks her if she and the Doctor are a couple. The Doctor asks Yasmin, “I don’t think we are, are we?”

Najia is played by Shabna Gulati, who was a regular on Coronation Street for a few years.

Robertson was played by Chris Noth who was Mr Big on Sex in the City.

Around midday I watched another episode. This one begins with the Doctor and her friends looking for something on a junk planet when they come across a mine that goes off, not with an explosion but some kind of sonic disruption. They wake up on a medical ship headed for Resis 7. The problem is that the Tardis is back on the junk planet. The medical ship can’t turn around because it’s fully automated with only two staff and besides it’s not fair to the passengers that are on their way for treatment. When they get to Resis they can teleport back to the junk planet. The passengers include a pregnant man who is almost ready to pop. In his species the women have girls and the men have boys.

The ship is infiltrated by a cute and cuddly looking little creature called a Pting, which is one of the most dangerous species in the universe because they can survive in space and can eat anything that isn’t organic. This Pting is eating the spaceship they are all on, thereby inadvertently killing people as it goes. The only member of the crew that survives is a medic called Mabli.

When the pregnant man’s water breaks the tradition is that he must be attended by men and so Graham and Ryan are there for him.

The ship is rigged with a bomb that can be triggered from Resis if it is discerned that it is carrying a plague or something equally devastating. The bomb is set to go off. The Doctor discovers that the Pting are attracted to energy and as the bomb approaches detonation it is building in energy. She places the bomb in a jettison pod and when the Pting goes to eat it she closes the door and jettisons the pod.

Mabli was played by Lois Chimimba.

I did some translations of parts of a song by Serge Gainsbourg, a story by Boris Vian and a screenplay by Jacques Prevert.

I started making the dressing for the turkey. I broke up some triangle buns, added a carton of chicken broth, sautéed onions and zucchini, salt, pepper and poultry spices. The bread was soggy so I had to add it to the onions and zucchini for a while to evaporate the water. Then I couldn’t stuff the turkey till the dressing cooled down. After stuffing the turkey I put it in the oven but didn’t turn it on until after I got up from my siesta.

I also made cranberry sauce.

I watched another episode of Doctor Who while the turkey was cooking. This story begins with a birthday party for Yasmin’s grandmother Umbreen, who gives everyone gifts. She tells Yasmin that she is her favourite granddaughter even though her other granddaughter is sitting right there. Umbreen’s daughter Najia chastises her and says, “We talked about this!” Umbreen gives Yasmin a broken men’s watch and tells her it is of great personal value to her but she won’t tell her why and says that it must never be fixed.

Yasmin asks the Doctor to help her find the origin of the watch and so after warning her that it’s dangerous to mess with family history, she has the Tardis scan the watch with its telepathic circuits. They arrive in India in 1947, one day before the partition that created Pakistan. Although Umbreen had said she was from Lahor, they are out in the country on what will soon become the border between India and Pakistan. A man named Prem gives the Doctor and her friends a ride in his oxcart when they say they are friends and family of Umbreen. It turns out that Umbreen is about to get married, but not to Yasmin’s grandfather. The groom turns out to be Prem and on top of that he’s a Hindu while Umbreen is a Muslim.

It is only at this point when the Doctor realizes that they are on the eve of partition which, after it occurs will bring about the slaughter of a million people, as Hindu and Muslims, who had lived in harmony as friends and neighbours for centuries, where suddenly killing each other over a border created by their colonists, the British. The Doctor wants to leave but suddenly a group of aliens called the Thijarians appear. The Doctor knows the Thijarians as the most feared assassins in the universe. They move very quickly and the Doctor at first tries to stop them until she learns that they are no longer assassins. They travel the universe now to be witnesses for those that die alone. They reveal that the one who is about to die is Prem.

The wedding takes place and in fact, the Doctor officiates over a ceremony that combines both Hindu and Muslim traditions. The next day Prem is a killed by a group of militant Hindus that resent Prem marrying a Muslim. It is Prem’s brother that plays the role of Judas in this story and arranges for Prem to be killed.

 I basted the turkey every half an hour. I deleted a bunch of bookmarked URLs that I’ve accumulated over the years. Most of them had just been bookmarked to come back to the next day or a few hours later but I forgot to delete them. I did some more translations.

I started writing a poem based on the first entry of the journal I’ve been keeping for the last five years and I got the first draft of a first verse:

I slogged out on my dumb bike ride

westbound along the boring road

pedaling tediously neath a sky

that showed a yield of diverse clouds

above the lake especially

but none that really impressed me.

            I watched one more episode of Doctor Who while having my Christmas dinner of a drumstick, dressing, gravy and cranberry sauce. In the beginning of the story the Tardis is being pursued by and trying to avoid an object but turns out to only be a teleporting delivery bot from a company called Kerblam. In the package is a red fez hat, which the Doctor happily dons. But on the packing slip are typed the word “Help”. They go to the planetary headquarters of Kerblam, which basically takes up the whole planet and employs thousands of people even though it is 90% automated. The Doctor decides that the best way to find who sent her the message of distress is for them all to become employees at Kerblam. They get various jobs but the most useful one is Graham’s because as janitor he gets access to everything. They make friends with some of the employees. Working with Graham is Charlie, who is in love with Kira, who works covering items in bubble wrap before packing them. Workers are disappearing and the Doctor suspects the two humans in charge but also the robots. When she analyzes the computer system though she discovers that it was what called for help and that Charlie is a robophobic revolutionary sabotaging the system. He manipulates the robots but things get out of control as Kira is led to a room and given a gift for being employee of the month. The door is locked and her package contains only bubble wrap. She does what no one can resist and pops one of the bubbles. Each bubble is a bomb and she is destroyed. Charlie’s plan is to send thousands of teleporting delivery boys with packages containing the explosive bubble wrap. Thousands will die but the result he hopes for is that people will hate robots and stop using them. The Doctor changes the program and makes the location of teleportation the place where the robots already are. She tries to save Charlie but he refuses help and ends up being destroyed in the blast.

            Kira was played by Claudia Jessie

Rosa Parks

            There were a few things I had to ride my bike to do on Monday but before leaving I checked and found that one of them was unnecessary. I always like to have a spare of every one of my guitar strings in case there’s a break and I’d thought that I needed an extra B and high E, but I discovered that I have extras after all. So all I had to do was ride downtown to Staples and then stop at the supermarket on my way back.

            The main thing I wanted to do at Staples was to pick up a 2019 weekly planner, some pens and a couple of notebooks. But I brought with me as well the little Sony Cybershot camera that my upstairs neighbour David had given me last spring. It had a battery but it was out of juice so it needed a charger and it was also missing a memory card and something for uploading a memory card’s contents to my computer.

            I was surprised that they’d done major renovations at the University and Armoury store. They’d moved the sections around and turned it into a much more open space. I liked it but I couldn’t figure out where anything was.

            Staples didn’t have a charger specifically for that size of battery but they had a Bower universal battery charger with a sliding part that is supposed to fit most batteries. That seemed like a good thing to have but I wasn’t sure if it would actually fit my battery. The staff told me that I could purchase it and have them test it right afterwards so if it didn’t work I could just get a refund. That seemed like a good idea. They sold me a memory card that they said would fit my camera and a Verbatim universal memory card reader. I bought my planner, a pack of five fine point pens and two purple 80-page notebooks. Altogether I paid $126 and change. After I’d bought the universal charger my salesperson, Zac, struggled with opening up the hard plastic charger casing. He adjusted the charger to fit my battery and plugged it in. There were four little green progress lights but only one of them was lit up. We figured that when the rest of the lights were lit the battery would be charged. After fifteen minutes or maybe more nothing had happened. Zac made an adjustment and then all the green lights started coming on one after the other along the row and repeating it. We realized that Zac hadn’t connected it properly before and so now it was charging and when the lights stopped flashing the battery would be charged. I didn’t want to wait that long. I just wanted it charged enough to make the camera work so I could be more confident that the battery wasn’t permanently dead. After a couple of minutes we put the battery into the camera and it came on long enough to tell me that the battery was low. That was good enough for me. I had 14 days to return it anyway.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought grapes, a handful of chestnuts, two packs of cranberries, coffee, spoon size shredded wheat, yogourt and brown sugar.

            Inside the supermarket was the tallest man I remember ever seeing. I’m quite a bit above average height but I’m not stretching the truth very much when I say that I would have had to extend my arm fully to pat this guy on the head. The top of his head was about level with the top of the aisle shelves where the boxes of extra stock are stored. He was with a woman who was about average height for a woman and he seemed like he might be of Eastern European origin. I had already checked my stuff out and I was at the bank machine getting some more money when he left. My eyes followed him because I was curious about something and sure enough, he had to duck as he exited the building. Imagine being too tall for every doorway!

            By coincidence, as I walked to my bike I saw a woman that was a bit taller than me. I don’t see that very often either.

            After lunch I took a late siesta and got up a little after 17:00.

            I put the battery into the universal charger and plugged it in. It seemed to be working because after half an hour only half the lights were moving, so I guessed that meant it was half charged. After another hour or so it stopped flashing and the battery fully powered the camera. Of course though I couldn’t take any pictures without a memory card.

            The memory card that I bought though turned out to be too big for the camera, so I’ll have to return it. The card reader doesn’t seem to have a slot for a memory card smaller than the one I bought so I might have to return that as well.

            So my only successful purchase that day for getting this camera functional is the universal charger, which seems like it might be useful in the future for other batteries as well.

            I wouldn’t normally have a beer with dinner on a Monday but since it was Christmas Eve I decided to indulge. The Doctor Who episode I watched was quite good. In trying to get her friends back to Earth the Tardis found the right planet but the wrong time. They ended up in Montgomery Alabama in 1955.

            The story begins in 1943 with Rosa Parks, the first time that she resists the unreasonable demands of a bus driver. Black people at this time and place are supposed to step onto the bus to pay their fare but then step off and walk around to enter the bus through the back door. In this story she tries to walk directly to the back after paying her fare but the driver commands her to get off and go around. She argues a bit and he gets up (we can see that he’s wearing a holster with a gun on his hip, as I guess he can because of the 2^nd amendment) and grabs her arm, causing her purse to fall. He stops pulling her when they are at the front and she sits down in the white section so she can reach her purse. The driver shouts for her to go out the door. She hesitates and finally gets up to leave. When she walks around to the back entrance though, the driver closes the door on her and drives away. This is very close to how it actually happened, except that in the real situation she was left to stand in the rain while she waited for the next bus.

            In real life, after that incident, Rosa swore that she would never take that driver James Blake’s bus again, and would always wait for the next one if he pulled up at the stop. But years later on the day she was arrested she had absent-mindedly gotten on the bus without noticing that Blake was the driver.

            The Doctor and her friends arrive twelve years later, the day before the famous incident. They are trying to get back to Sheffield in 2018 but when the Doctor tells them they are in the United States in 1955 Graham asks if they can see Elvis. The Doctor says she thinks he’s in New York this week but she could give him a call. “You haven’t got Elvis’s phone number!” “Don’t ever tell anyone I leant him a mobile phone!” They are about to leave but the Doctor notices that the Tardis’s sensors are picking up traces of altron energy in the area, which shouldn’t be there, so she investigates and they come along.

            On the street a white couple are walking ahead and the woman drops her glove without noticing. Ryan picks it up and runs after her but when he taps her on the shoulder her husband swings around and slaps him in the face for touching a white woman. The man is threatening Ryan with hanging when suddenly Rosa Parks steps in to calmly diffuse the situation. In her capacity as a seamstress she knows the white man and tells him that his suit is almost ready. He walks away and then Rosa turns to angrily ask Ryan if he’s crazy. She reminds him of what happened to Emmett Till just three months ago. He was lynched for allegedly flirting with a white woman.

            When Rosa introduces herself to the Doctor and her friends they all almost screw up the timeline by suddenly being in awe of meeting Rosa Parks. The Doctor says, “Big fan!” Rosa asks, “Excuse me?” The Doctor catches herself and says, “Big fan of Montgomery!” Rosa advises them to get the hell out of Alabama before they get themselves in more trouble. As Rosa is walking away the Doctor scans her and finds there is altron energy all around her.

            They go to a restaurant but the waitress tells them they don’t serve Negroes and then she looks at Yasmin and says, “or Mexicans”. They leave and the Doctor follows the readings on her sonic to the point where the altron energies converge, which is behind the locked doors of what looks like an empty warehouse near the bus works. The Doctor pints her sonic and a suitcase appears that has been concealed by a deception filter. Inside the suitcase is an information brick, a multi-intercepting surveillance device and the secondary charger for a … Suddenly they are being fired upon with a temporal displacement weapon by a guy dressed like a rockabilly but who obviously is from somewhere else. They run, leave the warehouse and hide behind a large gas tank. He has pursued them and stands on top of the tank. The Doctor climbs up and confronts him. She tells him she knows his weapon is pretty much out of juice and she’s got his spare battery. He asks her if she’s travelling in a Tardis because he could sell it for a lot of money. She says, “Not that one! Second hand, huge mileage! One careless owner! But it’s better than a vortex manipulator like the one on your wrist. Cheap and nasty time travel!” He says, “If I see you again I will kill you!” They leave but first the Doctor scans him with her sonic.

            The Doctor and her friends check into a motel but they have to sneak Yasmin and Ryan in through the window. The Doctor explains that their enemy’s temporal displacement weapon could send anyone it hits to another time.

            They need to form a plan and so the Doctor jumps on the bed and begins writing on the wall. Graham protests her vandalism and says, “You’re not Banksy!” She turns and says, “Or am I?” Suddenly there are several loud knocks on the door. Yasmin and Ryan hide in the bathroom. The Doctor makes the writing invisible with her sonic and they open the door and it’s a police officer. He asks about “a couple of mongrels, a Negro boy and a Mexican girl”. The Doctor answers that she doesn’t recognize anyone by that description. He says, “You recognize it’s an offence to harbour colourds in your hotel room?” She says, “We’re not harbouring anyone who doesn’t have a right to be here.” The cop asks their business in Montgomery and Graham says they are promoting a telephone that is also a camera, plays music and sends text messages. The cop asks him his name and he says, “Steve. Steve Jobs.” The cop goes into the washroom but Yasmin and Ryan are gone. They hide an alley until the cop leaves.

            The team begins researching Rosa. They find her address, where she works and her bus route. They all take a bus ride and Ryan has to enter through the back door. Yasmin is confused because she isn’t told to go to the back even though she has brown skin so she sits in the white section. They find Rosa’s stop and that evening get on with her when she finishes work. The Doctor sits with Rosa and begins chatting but Rosa says that if she keeps sitting there her and the other coloured people will have to move.

            When Rosa gets off Ryan follows her but after a while she turns and confronts him. He says he wants to help with the cause and she asks if he can serve coffee.

The Doctor goes back to the warehouse and she is scanning its owner’s equipment when she hears footsteps. She closes the suitcase and tosses behind her just as he fires his weapon and his suitcase disappears. The Doctor says, “Whoops! Shame! You just sent all your equipment to goodness knows where! 79^th Century judging by the weapon setting, which by the way overheat very easily!” His weapon is red hot in his hand and he is forced to drop it.

She recognizes from his tattoo that he’s been a Storm Cage prisoner. Storm Cage is the most secure prison this side of the universe. The Doctor’s wife River Song was in prison there for killing him. The Doctor asks what he was in for. He says, “I was young and nobody got hurt. Well a few people got killed. A few hundred, a thousand tops!” Then he smiles and says, “2000!” The Doctor says, “And it was nasty enough that Storm Cage decided to place a neural inhibitor in your brain before releasing you back into the universe.” She said she’s been wondering why he just doesn’t kill Rosa and she figured out that the answer is that he can’t. The neural restrictor prevents him from killing or injuring any living thing. She suddenly grabs the vortex manipulator from his wrist and says, “So even if I do this …” She throws it to the ground and crushes it with her foot. He grabs her by the throat but she says, “There it is kicking in!” He’s in pain and has to let her go.

She asks him why he came here. He says, “This is where things started to go wrong.” He seems to be a white supremacist from the future. He says, “Tiny actions change the world”. She asks his name and he says Krasko. He doesn’t seem worried about the loss of his equipment and suggests that he can change the timeline anyway. The Doctor says she’s here to stop him. He says, “We’ll see” and walks away.

Rosa takes Ryan to a meeting where her husband and some others, including Martin Luther King are in attendance.

Graham meets with Blake in a bar and they play pool. They talk bus driving because Graham is a retired Sheffield bus driver. He finds out though that Krasko has already altered the time line because Blake tells him he has the day off the next day, which is when he’s supposed to have Rosa arrested and that another bus driver named Griffin is scheduled to take his route.

Back at the motel the Doctor has Krasko’s weapon. Ryan asks how it works and she explains it to him briefly before tossing it aside and getting to their plan. They have to correct any changes that Krasko makes. They have to make sure that Rosa Parks rides that bus, that the driver is Blake and that the bus is full of white people.

The next morning we see the Doctor knock on Griffin’s door to tell him that he and his wife have just won a trip to meet Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas but he has to leave right away. He says his wife loves Sinatra and they’ll go. The Doctor tells Yasmin that it’s a good job Elvis leant Frank the mobile phone and did everything she told him. The Doctor then rips her own coat and says we have to stick tight to Rosa.

Meanwhile Graham and Ryan show up where Blake is fishing. Blake is upset that a Black man is hanging around. Graham tells Blake that he’s heard that a group of Black people are planning a sit-in on his route. He says, “Not on my bus!” and leaves.

The Doctor takes her coat to Rosa to fix the tear. They offer her extra money to make it a priority and Yasmin stays with Rosa while she works.

Blake finds that his bus has been sabotaged. Krasko, posing as a mechanic tells him he’ll have to cancel his route. The Doctor steals Blake another bus and Ryan is told to go ahead on the route and make sure everyone knows the bus is coming. On his way he finds Krasko standing in front of a car that he’s using to block the road. Krasko tells Ryan that he’s going to stop his kind from getting above themselves. Ryan tells Krasko he’s living in the past and if he likes it so much he can go there. Ryan shoots Krasko with the temporal disruptor and sends him as far back as possible. It’s probably not a good idea in the long run to send someone back in time that wants to alter history.

The Doctor and her friends are on the bus with Rosa but if Doctor, Graham and Yasmin get off there will be enough empty seats for white passengers and Rosa won’t be asked to move. Graham says, “I don’t want to be part of this!” The Doctor tells him, “We have to not help her!” More white people get on and Blake calls out that some coloureds have to give up their seats. Three Black people get up and move. Rosa stands up to let the person beside her out but then sits back down by the window. Blake goes back and orders her to stand but she refuses. He says, “If you don’t stand I’m gonna have you arrested!” Rosa says exactly what she really said, “You may do that”. The Doctor and her friends have to watch while the police come and escort Rosa away.

Rosa was very well cast and Vinette Robinson looked a lot like the photographs. She had the accent down too even though she’s British.

The bus was apparently an authentic replica of the Montgomery Alabama busses from 1955.