Monday, September 15, 2014

What will become of Minecraft?

According to BBC News (and I'm sure many other sources) Microsoft has bought Mojang, the makers of Minecraft.  I find this information somewhat unsettling, especially since the article says that the three founding members will be leaving the company.  I hope this doesn't mean that we will now have to pay for new updates.  That is probably my biggest fear.  What direction will they take the game in?  And, I don't use mods (I'm a vanilla Minecraft girl) but what will it mean for all the people who make mods?  Will Microsoft get all proprietary on them?  Change can be a scary thing.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Thought on Doctor Who

I'm not sure what to think about the newest season of Doctor Who and the newest incarnation of said TARDIS driving Time Lord.  I'm just not finding Peter Capaldi quite believable as the Doctor.  I feel like he is just too confused to be the Doctor.  With the way that he keeps getting confused about things, and apparently thinking things to be their opposite (Clara is old, not wearing make-up when she is, that sort of thing) it makes him seem more like Strax than the Doctor.  It is fine for Strax to be that way, not so fine for the Doctor to be the way, in my opinion anyway.  I guess that is more the writing than Capaldi himself, but somehow he just doesn't seem to be selling it to me very well, either.

And also, I know that the Doctor doesn't know everything, but when it comes to history (past, present, and future), as a Time Lord, he is supposed to be "in the know" on most thing.  I found it odd that he did not know that Robin Hood was a real person.  At first I thought that his disbelief at there being a "real" Robin Hood was because the legend was actually built about the Doctor himself.  But that did not turn out to be the case.  It was just that the Doctor doesn't believe in heroes.  I wasn't real taken with that explanation, but at least I did find that episode amusing. 

And what was with last night's episode anyway?  Moffat takes an interesting idea - that there is really something under the bed - and then seems to leave it hanging.  The episode seemed to become more about foreshadowing Clara and Danny being together than about these being that have evolved to be the perfect hiders.  Was that really something alien or supernatural under the bed covers in Rupert/Danny's bedroom?  What did the Doctor see when he opened the door?  Are we going to find out?  And I wasn't especially taken with the scene of Clara talking to a scared little Doctor hiding in his bed in the barn either.  What exactly was that all about?  I feel like Moffat is trying to explore the darker side of the Doctor and look at some of his fears and weaknesses, but I just don't think he is doing a very good job of.