A Female Doctor? How Utterly SHOCKING!

Yes, No Thanks –

-      To you, Tom Hanks.  Really, this is one of the premier examples of those interfering

-      busybodies, Television Executives With Delusions Of Creativity, and how they tried to iron out any kind of distinction in Star Trek.

     What’s that?  Oh – you thought I was talking about “Doctor Who”?  Bafoons!  Do keep up, that was last week.  Already we have moved on to talk about oh, simply loads of things <checks hurriedly> like the weather, and weasels, and the walrus.

RABID weasels!

     NO, I am talking about the original Star Trek, which firmly and definitively established that the doctor on the Enterprise was MALE.  MALE!

  Do you doubt my words of wisdom?  Check out the first pilot, “The Cage”, wherein Hollywood stalwart John Hoyt (he was in “When Worlds Collide” you know) featured as The Doctor.  Hmmm.   Perhaps just “the doctor”.  Then there’s pilot the second, where Paul Fix plays the doctor.

The male man

     Of course, the man who really nailed the role, in television and film, was Deforest Kelly, he who didn’t invent Agent Orange.  Nailed, screwed, riveted, bolted and welded it.  He was – I need to labour this point – MALE.  Not only that, his nurse was a female, which is the way the world was ordered then.

Agent Orange - no.World's smallest pogo-stick - Yes!  

     What do those puling ninnies hovering in the background of ST:TNG do?  They import a female doctor.  If you can believe her name, which sounds like her parents were sadists:  Gates McFadden.

Close enough

     When they pension her off, temporarily, who do they bring in?  Another female.  Something Mulder, and no, I can’t be bothered enough to find out properly.  Due diligence only goes so far with your humble scribe.

     Those wretched scruffs in suits redeem themselves slightly – slightly – by creating the hilarious and awesome Holographic Doctor for that other Star Trek series, the one that wasn’t very good.

     But it’s too little too late.  CONRAD IS ANGRY*!

Deserved his own series, no question

Chow Down In Chorlton

As a matter of fact we ended up going to Coriander, not Asian Fusion, which is irony most delicious, since Darling Daughter is not keen on coriander the herb.  We were celebrating DD’s graduation on Wednesday, FYI.

     Wonder Wifey had heard good things about Coriander, notably that they don’t chuck fistfuls of preservatives or additives in their food, so it’s all fresh. 

     Here we have Poppadums and Dips – noticeably different from The Generic Usual.

     And here is the aftermath of the main courses, tho’ nobody had quite enough courage to order the Goat curry.  Maybe next time …

Plates cleaned courtesy Conrad

     And what’s this mysterious green paste?  Hmmm.  A paste made from pureed coriander.  Tasty and appropriate.

     Conrad, of course TA DIABETES TA VERY MUCH had to forego the post-prandial sweets.  Bah!

     I feel we shall be back at this venue in the future.

Shall We Do A Clerihew?

Rhetorical question, I was going to whether you lot said “Yes”, “No” or “Can we be excused?”  Unless the last was to attend Manchester Comic Con – but that’s another story.  So, let us proceed.

William Shakespeare

Was invented here.

For this I can but apologise,

And damn his writings to the skies.

     As you surely know by now, Conrad hates Bill S. with a seething passion, as great as his loathing of pineapple**.  However, I’m not about to offer a cringing excuse for his inclusion here, as I have a word count to hit and you can imagine, as compensation, him being beaten with a piece of pipe.  Rusty iron pipe, at that.

Jane Austen

Was always writin’.

Altogether she wrote a lot,

Frequently emptying her ink-pot

      Ah, yes, Jane.  Fertile ground for Big Skirt Films.  I know, I know, it ought to be an “Ink well” but, to be honest, the only people likely to either know or worry about that are people (like your modest artisan) who use fountain pens.  And there’s precious few of us left.

      Anyway, back to Jane.  She wrote during the Napoleonic Wars, a quite awesomely violent and action-packed bit of history, yet Ol’ Jane manages to avoid any mention of the war whatsoever.  How dull is that?

Rabbie Burns

Had worms.

I don’t mean they infested his body.

He collected them. An unusual hobby.

    

     Well, he might have done.  I mean, he was a lad on the land, wasn’t he?  He ploughed and killed mice with a pattle, so he may, in the interests of vermicology***, have had a jam jar full of mud and long slimy things.

Caution:  not vegan

*  Yes, again

**  The Devil’s delectation, I tell you!

***  The study of worms.  It’s a real thing.