But there's nothing wrong with it...

I often wish people who make pronouncements on language would take the trouble to learn something about it.

One of the regular panellists on The Wright Stuff is Dominic Holland and Matthew Wright, the host, often suggests that Dominic's spelling and grammar could use some work.

He did so today showing this tweet that Dominic had made

I am doing The Wright Stuff all this week – with the inimitable host, Matthew Wright. It's a show I do do regularly and very much enjoy.

His complaint was the "do do" but, with the greatest respect, it's the complaint itself that is do-do.

If it's an error at all, then it's a momentary error of concentration entirely unrelated to either grammar or spelling. We all do do it from time to time and in a fast environment like Twitter the chances of such errors are magnified.

But it might not even be that. The sentence is a perfectly valid English construction. If we replace the second "do" with a synonym, say "appear on", then it's much easier to see:

"It's a show I do appear on regularly and very much enjoy."

We can, in English, use "do" as an auxiliary verb. It intensifies the main verb and contradicts a negative assertion.

"You don't read enough books!"
"I do read enough books."

"You don't want another beer, do you?"
"I do want another beer!"

"You don't do The Wright Stuff, do you."
"I do do The Wright Stuff."

I've encountered similar misguided suggestions in the past that there is something wrong with "had had", which is equally nonsensical.

I'm not saying that Dominic's comment was intended this way, the hundred and forty character limit of Twitter makes it very difficult to establish a context but even if it was, as seems likely, a lapse of concentration, it DID NOT result in an ungrammatical sentence.

Impossible

There's a trailer currently running on Channel 5 for a new TV show called "Impossible" which, as far as I can tell, appears to be a Derren Brown style magic show. In the trailer the magician is heard to say "Can I predict what you will do before you have done it yourself?"

I'll tell you what would be impossible, predicting what they have done after they have done it.

Have I Got News For You #4

I am probably the only person who saw the show who had this as his favourite bit.

In the part where they try to fill in the missing words in headlines they showed this headline.

Congratulations, _________________, hospital tells man of 50.

The correct answer was "you're pregnant".

Ross Noble's answer which met with a bemused silence in the studio made me laugh, if no one else.

Congratulations, you are the first person able to communicate with large medical buildings, hospital tells man of 50.

Have I Got News For You #3

And sometimes I am really, really, really, unbelievably slow-witted.

It's only just occurred to me that the web site address that is at the bottom of the screen at the start of the program is www.hignfy.net and that it clearly stands for the name of the program. Why have I not noticed that before? I've always tried to read it as a word.

Have I Got News For You #2

This relates back to previous posts about inner-nerdhood.

When Ross Noble, one of the panelists, referred to the "Vulcan Death Grip" I found myself thinking, if not exactly shouting, at the TV - there's no such thing - it was something Spock made up in one episode , the Enterprise Incident, to pretend that he had killed Kirk.

Then I felt really silly and went for a lie down.

I was right though.

The Apprentice

The fired candidate in last night's Apprentice had her own unique approach to language - peppering her conversation with such words as "comfortability", "conversate", "manoeuvrement", "professionality" and "teamly".

My favourite, though, was after she was fired. She clearly felt that the others had been ganging up against her when she said, "Karmically they'll be retributed."

Why Joss Whedon is so good

I have a friend. Let's call him, because it isn't his name, Chris. Chris is a nice guy. It would be hard to find a nicer one, and he scares me. He scares me because he is the me from an alternate universe where my life went horribly wrong. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that Chris's life is horribly wrong, just that it would be if it were mine.

Though it pains me to admit it, we have much in common, Chris and I. We share, for example, an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of geeky TV programmes. I could go head to head with him in a quiz about Doctor Who or Star Trek and while I'd lose I wouldn't be disgraced.

I mention all of this by way of a preface to explaining why Joss Whedon has a true genius for dialogue. Yesterday I was watching an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer which had an exchange between Andrew and Xander. For those few of you who have never seen it the essential information is this. Andrew, who was evil but is now reformed, is a socially inept geek. Xander, by contrast has, by this point in the series, spent six and a half seasons battling evil at Buffy's side but is, nevertheless also a geek - though not quite such a socially inept one.

The scene plays out like this.

All the potential future vampire slayers are gathered together and Andrew and Xander are trying to give them a rallying pep talk. Buffy isn't present. One of these potential slayers remarks that she is fed up of training and doesn't care if they have to fight Godzilla as long as they get to fight something.

Andrew: Godzilla? Mostly Tokyo based so he's probably a no-show.

Potential #2: Besides, Matthew Broderick can kill Godzilla. How tough is he?

Andrew looks despairingly at Xander who looks at his shoes in embarrassment.

Andrew: Xander?

Xander looks up, apparently reluctant to be identified with Andrew but unable to contain his own inner geek.

Xander: Matthew Broderick did not kill Godzilla. He killed a big dumb lizard. That was not the real Godzilla.

The potential slayers all look at them both as if they have gone mad. Xander looks embarrassed again but Andrew looks satisfied. Xander realises that he's showing himself up, Andrew doesn't even register the reaction they have caused.

And that's how it is when I'm in the same room as Chris. My own inner geek can't resist joining in with his conversations. It's exactly the same as the Andrew and Xander dialogue. I understand these people completely. And that's why Joss Whedon is the best writer of fantasy TV today. He also understands these characters so well that we can see ourselves reflected in them.

(And my own inner geek feels compelled to tell you that the episode in question, Dirty Girls, was actually written by Drew Goddard but it doesn't matter. Joss was in charge and he created the characters and had the ultimate say on what did or didn't get into the scripts.)

...is bad for children.

There was one of those Sunday morning debates on TV today that I tend to watch with half an eye, listen to with half an ear and process with half a brain. That's pertinent because the debate was about whether or not watching TV is bad for children. It's such a common debate that it's hard not to have to suppress a yawn.

I thought that the claim that British infants watch an average of six hours a day was unlikely but for the purpose of the point I want to make I'll accept it at face value. What struck me though was that some of the comments made mirrored almost exactly things I have heard before in other circumstances.

For example:

Watching so much TV, and using computers,  is bad for children's eyes.

Watching TV, and using computers,  is a solitary activity that deprives children of the interaction necessary to learn social skills.

Watching TV, and using computers,  is a sedentary activity that prevents children getting the amount of exercise that they need.

Watching TV, and using computers, is bad for children's emotional development as they never make any real friends.

And the circumstances in which I have heard them before?

About me when I was a solitary child who much preferred sitting reading a book to being out in the street playing football. They are exactly the kind of comments that my parents used to use to try to badger me into leaving the happy nest of my library-like room and go out into the big bad world to play with a lot of kids who liked me about as much as I liked them. Substitute "reading all the time" at the start of each sentence and you have the comments pretty accurately quoted.

I'm betting that at every point in history there has been someone saying that something is stunting kids physical and emotional development and I'm also betting that it's as wrong now as it's ever been.

Ashes to Ashes

This commentary contains NO SPOILERS to the end of Ashes to Ashes but one enormous spoiler to the end of the US version of Life on Mars.

A month or so ago I watched the US version of Life on Mars and to say that the ending of it was a disappointment is the understatement of all time. The sixteen preceding episodes had ranged from very good to excellent and while I didn't like it as much as our own original version it was very entertaining. Then that final episode ruined it all with an "it's all a dream" ending that relocated the action to a spaceship for the final scenes. A show that had been a solid seven out of ten was in a moment plunged to no more than a two. Perhaps a one. It's that bad.

In the last few weeks of Ashes to Ashes various characters have been seeing stars where there ought to be buildings and doodling stars on their papers. I was starting to worry that the stinker of an ending from America might be transferred and adapted here. As the final episode approached, I can tell you, I was definitely concerned.

And then the writers threw me. The UK ending had nothing to do with spaceships or dreams. (And that's as close as I intend to get to a spoiler.)  It was far, far more satisfying. It managed to tie up pretty much everything from two seasons of Life on Mars and three seasons of Ashes to Ashes in a very satisfactory way- no, in a brilliant way - in an hour, with the obligatory crime of the week included. A couple of reviewers have said they didn't understand it but I don't understand why. Of course it was complex. It's been a complicated show from day one, but it wasn't just clear, it was elegant. The performances of the leads have always been great. Last night they moved up a notch. All of the main characters put in top of the line performances buoyed by a staggeringly good script that gave deep, intelligent scenes to all of them as individuals as well as excellent ensemble interactions. You needed to pay attention, it had a lot of work to do, but the attention was rewarded. Just about everything was explained.

It was the best hour of television I've seen for ages. It left only one mystery. Why on Earth didn't the Americans go with this ending instead of that one?

Glacial? Hardly seems an adequate word.

And after I'd had the treat of the "After Eight Eater", I did of course settle down to watch The Prisoner. If there is any slower and more ponderous show in the history of television I'm glad I don't know about it. I'm interested enough in the story but the pace is so slow that the usual adjective of "glacial" isn't nearly damning enough. It makes the progress of an average glacier look like Formula One Motor Racing. My DVD player has a neat little feature that lets you watch and hear a recording at one and a half times normal speed. I did and it still struggled along so slowly that it was very hard to tell the difference. After the forty minutes of watching it I felt as if it had been on for a week.

It's a curse that seems to afflict many of the modern dramas that we import from the US but none of them suffer quite so badly as The Prisoner.

Talent

I've just watched my recording of last night's episode of The Prisoner and, as I had set the DVD recorder to start a few minutes early was also "lucky" enough to see the last few minutes of Britain's Got Talent. The definition of "talent" appears to have broadened somewhat since I learned it. The act I saw was a man whose talent was supposed to be "eating nine After Eight Mints in a minute without using my hands". This seems to me to be a rather odd use of the word as well as a distinctly bizarre contender for the prize - an appearance on the Royal Variety Performance*. I'd query his sanity as much as his talent as he couldn't complete his so-called act because he had only brought five mints with him.

Apparently he was in a previous series of the show trying to eat Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

At least it reminded me of why I never watch this kind of show.

* For US readers, the Royal Variety Performance is an annual televised variety show attended by members of the royal family.

Geometry

I like the line I just heard in the trailer for next week's "Outnumbered".

Child: "Why are they called 'size zero'? Zero means nothing and they'd be invisible."
Grandmother: "It just means they are very skinny. A woman can be any size or shape she wants."
Child: "What about a hexagon?"

The kids in the series are quite remarkable young performers.

To Put Away Childish Things #6

Let's get one thing absolutely clear. I'm not going to include Terrahawks. It was rubbish. I may be all nostalgic over most Gerry and Sylvia Anderson programs - including the live action of UFO - but I draw the line at Terrahawks.
OK. No Terrahawks then.
Gerry Anderson started way back in 1957 with The Adventures of Twizzle of which I have no recollection at all. (Well I was only born in 1957!) I also know the second series, Torchy The Battery Boy (1958-59) only by reputation. I've seen it since on YouTube but I have no memory of it. It's the only one though. I do recall seeing the next series, Four Feather Falls (1959-1960, but repeated later) in which Two-Gun Tex had a talking horse and dog and magic guns. The characters in Toy Story 2 bear more than a slight resemblance to it.
Of course the first "proper" one, the first of their science fiction series and a precursor to all of their greatest triumphs, was Supercar. I have some Supercar episodes on DVD. They have clunky string puppets that walk without touching the floor, a flying car, a child who gets into trouble and a pet monkey. What more could you want?
Supercar was an innocent and rather primitive foray into puppet adventures but, for me, the best it ever got was the next production from the Andersons: Fireball XL5. Later series, particularly Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet were great but it was Fireball XL5 that started the whole style. It had the truly iconic spaceship of the title, piloted by Steve Zodiac and Venus ably assisted by my favourite Robert The Robot who would frequently intone an electronic "On our way 'ome". It had a theme that it's impossible to forget, the most perfectly ludicrous take off mechanism for XL5, a catchy closing theme, and the transparent humanoid Robbie who bears more than a passing resemblance to C3P0 as he is shown in the Star Wars prequels before he gets his gold-plating. It was wonderful.
Then there were the adventures of Stingray. Who could forget that opening with Marineville disappearing underground and the voiceover of "Anything can happen in the next half hour"?
Increasingly sophisticated series Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet followed. Now the puppets were getting more realistic and the stories were getting more complex, sometimes almost up to a live drama level.
Then it all started to fall apart. Neither Joe 90 nor the Secret Service were particularly good, though they were OK.
UFO, an attempt at live action, I remember with fondness but the acting was often as wooden as it had been in any of the puppet series and its successor Space 1999 suffered not only this problem but a ludicrous premise and a lot of technobabble scripting that often made it unwatchable.

There has more recently been a new version of CGI Captain Scarlet which was actually pretty good, being, in the main, true (apart from Lieutenant Green's inexplicable sex change) to the spirit and ideas of the original but suffering from a lack of network commitment and poor scheduling. I'd still rather have the puppet version but modern kids demand a more sophisticated approach to television.
I think most of the series would stand a modern update. The ideas and the stories would be update easily and I would love to see a remade Fireball XL5 - as long as it was done in the style of the new Captain Scarlet and not in the style of the truly dire Thunderbirds movie.

Of Universal Translators and other sundry impossibilities

Over at Bradshaw of the Future, goofy has a post about Doctor Who. Specifically it's about how, wherever and whenever, he goes the Doctor and his companions can not only speak the local language but read it too. The post talks about a scene in an episode I didn't see and almost makes me wish I'd seen it but I have a policy of never watching anything with Katherine Tate in it that no linguistics mystery is likely to tempt me to change.
Anyway, as all fans of the Doctor know the Tardis does the translating for them (and the viewer), unnoticed by everyone, though very occasionally, for the sake of the plot, or more often for the sake of a bit of humour, characters do notice and comment on it.
It is of course a problem in many different science fiction series - the need for the characters to understand each other and the need for the audience to understand all of it. Star Trek managed to visit a different planet every week without communications difficulty thanks to the never-adequately-explained Universal Translator. This device not only managed to translate alien speech from previously unheard of races into whatever passes for English in the future and vice-versa but also, flawlessly, into modern American speech for the audience. A pretty nifty device that only ever malfunctioned when it was necessary to the plot.
Stargate, by comparison, takes an odd and inexplicable approach of having all the races supposedly speaking variations on ancient Earth languages* and taking along an expert who is, (like Universal Translator failures) only ever used when the story needs it. There are token nods towards different races speaking different languages but by and large the team (SG-1) all seem to understand everything said by everyone, wherever they happen to live in the Galaxy.
Buffy and chums, on the other hand, never get to go to alien worlds but do get to beat up lots of demons from other dimensions. There are heaps of references to the demons' own languages. Reference books are always written in mysterious and arcane languages that Giles or Wesley have to study and translate. But, and here's the important bit, whenever it's necessary to the plot, the demons speak English.
I think I see a pattern developing. Translation as a plot device.
What about other series, then? Well one of the favourites of my youth Blake's Seven, avoided the problem by just never mentioning it. Everybody, everywhere did speak English. Going back further to my childhood, the Tomorrow People were all telepaths and, of course, that side steps the problem by having all telepaths able to understand each other.
Sliders, another personal favourite, deals with it by setting every episode not just on alternate Earths, not just in an Alternate America but actually (and very specifically) in alternate versions of Los Angeles and San Francisco. That gets round the accents problem as well.
Battlestar Galactica has fleeing humans from twelve colonies who all have their own languages which we almost never hear because they all also speak a common language which - give or take the odd bit of vocabulary - is unsurprisingly similar to modern American. I'm not sure whether the Cylons they are fleeing have a labguage at all, I don't recall ever hearing one.

So, various ways of getting round the problem have been tried in various programs. Personally I think you might as well take the Blake's Seven approach and just ignore it. The same applies to television and films set in other countries or other times. They are, after all, just for entertainment.

On the other hand I wouldn't mind one of those Universal Translators when I visit other countries. Real life is never quite as convenient as the movies.

(*because they all came originally from Earth)