ASH was born in 1954

Woo! It was a good year IMO.

I always remember his birthdate because he is exactly 10 years older than me!

ASH was born in 1954, so 43.

Yeah, this is what I was going to say. I know he's 13 years older than I am. Somehow. *cough*

Yesterday, we were leaving my b-i-l's house, and we drove by a Podiatrists office. The doctor's name was "A. H. Giles" and it threw me for a loop.

Anyone else have a fetish thought about that? Just me?

The New Who is incredibly Buffyish throughout - consciously so, the showrunner has said he's shooting for that vibe. Even the lame episodes are lame in the way lame Buffys were; badly done victoriana and humanising villains in a fan-ficcy way.

I didn't think humanising the Dalek was lame; in fact, I thought it was a really good episode, especially given that they didn't humanise him too far, and that they used it to point up the Doctor's alienness. Though the whole DNA-from-Rose thing was a huge plot weakness.

But then, I like fanfic, so you could still be right about it being ficcy. (Am I wrong in reading your comment as using 'fan-ficcy' in a negative sense?) I wouldn't be surprised if RTD doesn't think about writing the show in quite a ficcy way, actually, given that he's a long-time fan and writing based on an extensive canon.

Ahem. Yes, very Buffyish-- in the plot and in, for example the one-liners. And the doomed love affair between an older 'alien' man and a young strong woman, if you can bring yourself to read it as a love affair, which I'm trying desperately not to, and failing...

I've yet to read a review of Dr. Who that hasn't compared it to Buffy.

Yeah, I meant fanficcy as a bad thing - there's a tendency in a lot of the fic I've read to start "wouldn't it be cool if...", and episodes which pander to that tend, IM, to be the weakest ones. Also this was the first episode that relied on you knowing the canon to be remotely interesting, which for a teatime BBC1 show is fatal. The idea of doing Enemy Mine with Daleks was cool, but they needed to re-establish them as unstoppable relentless killing machines before they did it. If you'd never seen a Dalek before this episode - and the target audience wouldn't have - then you don't understand why they're so scary and why humaniing them is interesting. Plus the Dalek voice, when used for anything other than ' I WILL EXTERMINATE!" sounds bloody daft.

I'm just thankful that they didn't resurrect Davros yet again for this episode.

Give it time... he's the #2 recurring villain after the Master, isn't he ?