Time is Relative - Season Two

Doctor Who is the greatest TV show in the world.


I'm watching it all, in order. It's taking ages.


My thoughts on Season One are here.


Now, perhaps inevitably, Season Two.




1. Planet of the Giants



Doctor Who and friends meet giant ants and giant worms.  And giant matchboxes and giant sinks and giant people's faces.

After a while they come to the sensible conclusion that maybe, actually, it's them who have gone all small, rather than everything else going all big.


If only we could all shed our egocentric views with such clarity, and recognise that it is us, not the world, that may be the problem.

That's not what the story is about, though. It's about running away from big things, going "Aarg! A cat!"

Here, Doctor Who and Susan stand close to a giant plug. Too close, in my opinion. If you fell, you'd sort of fall, then bang yourself on the spoke bits, then properly fall. And you'd get wet. And Doctor Who would probably laugh at you and tut and click his tongue. He's a jerk, sometimes.

This is an exciting shot which suggests that it wasn't just Daleks that made Doctor Who successful. Imagine someone saying, "You should watch this programme - they all go playing in a giant sink and there's a massive worm and a bit where they try to use a phone but they're too tiny." You'd watch that, wouldn't you?


2. The Dalek Invasion of Earth

This story is the reason I love Doctor Who. Or, rather, the Peter Cushing film - based on this story - is the reason.


It's very good. Kind of like 28 Days Later, but with Daleks swooshing around deserted London instead of rage zombies.

These guys are kind of like zombies. The Daleks put helmets on them, and now they have to do Dalek stuff. These two are clearly skiving, though.


Ian saves the day, but once again, Doctor Who takes the credit. "We must pit our wits against them!" he claims, before falling asleep and letting everyone else do all the work.

The Daleks have taken over earth, but still feel the need to fly around everywhere, showing off. "Look at us, we've got a flying saucer."

"We know," say the surviving Earthlings. "You invaded us with it. Stop going on about it. Honestly. The Cybermen were never like this."

This Dalek is taking a selfie. "I am in London!" he's thinking. "Everyone will be amazed at how great I am."

I can only assume he's using his sucker arm as a kind of selfie-stick. That's quite clever. I know it's just a dome with an eyestalk, but I think he looks really happy.




3. The Rescue

This is a weird little story. Doctor Who lands on a planet and 'rescues' a young girl, Vicky, from a spiky faced guy. That's Spiky face, in the background. He's called Koquillion. He's been keeping Vicky captive. That's not his face. It's a mask he wears, for no discernible reason.


It's a bit like the film 'Room', only less disturbing. Unless you think about it too much. Then it's disturbing again.

Here Koquillion considers stealing the TARDIS. If he had succeeded, and the show had become about him, then the rest of the series would have been very different. I can't imagine he'd have bothered saving all the planets and defeating all the monsters. He doesn't seem the type.

That said, neither was Doctor Who at first. He was quite mean. Although, even in his most addled moments, he never wore anything like that on his head.




4. The Romans

The Romans is one of my favourites. Here we see the TARDIS crew hanging out in Italy, drinking loads of wine and - in the case of Ian and Barbara - definitely having sex between scenes.


It's nice to see them just enjoying history, rather than just staring in horror as everyone dies. It's almost a shame when the story starts. And then, of course, loads of people die.

Later on, Vicky falls asleep. I clearly decided that this was an excellent moment of the story and worth capturing. I do like Vicky's nose, though, and spent much of this story looking at her and thinking "lovely face."

Ian and Barbara are great, aren't they? In this scene, they make a really good joke about a fridge. That's the kind of quality Doctor Who companion banter that the series was later to lose sight of.




5. The Web Planet

Space ants pursue Doctor Who across a planet made of cardboard and Vaseline. It's incredibly tedious, despite having some really wacky imagery.

Here we see a Zarbi shouting at the TARDIS. Later, the TARDIS will run away, as if traumatised.

The Doctor and Ian choose to enjoy this adventure whilst wearing space anoraks. It does not catch on.



6. The Crusade

This is a nicely composed shot - one of many in this enjoyable story. Look, there's General Veers from The Empire Strikes Back, pretending to be Richard the Lionheart. 


The story seems to be largely about people trying to have sex with each other. Though, this being Doctor Who, no-one actually comes out and says anything. They all pretend it's about honour, or something. But it's definitely about sex.

Barbara's having none of it, though. I've seen that look. He's no chance.



7. The Space Museum

In this scene,  Ian tries to eat Barbara's cardigan.


He probably remembers this adventure as "The time when I ate a cardigan. And maybe some other stuff happened. But mainly the cardigan thing."

It isn't very good.





8. The Chase

Look, it's the Beatles! They're not actually in the story - Doctor Who is watching them on his space television. But it's still quite fun, and makes a change from last week, when everything was tedious.

It's not just the Beatles, though. The Daleks are in it, too. Here they are excited because they've made an exact copy of Doctor Who. It doesn't look much like him, but they are so happy it would seem churlish to point it out. Not often happy, Daleks.

This is the real Doctor Who. It's a lovely shot, isn't it? He's probably thinking "Did I set my space television to record Taskmaster? I hope so. I bloody love it."

The Daleks are getting pretty cocky by this point. They know that they are the stars of the show, and they are not dealing with it gracefully. This one is just sticking his nose in the camera, shouting, "Hello, it's me, an awesome Dalek. Thank you for watching my show!"

The other Daleks are embarrassed. They have been trying to play it cool. They will shun this Dalek later.

This story says goodbye to Ian and Barbara. This shot is already a photograph in the context of the show - part of a montage of them dicking about in London and rejoicing that they'll never have to put up with The Sensorites again.


It's a lovely picture which sums up how great they were. Doctor Who's first companions, full of joy and life. Very much the end of an era, and a photo which makes me realise how much fun I'd been having watching these stories.


Except the Web Planet, obviously.




9. The Time Meddler

In this story, the writers suddenly realised how much better the past would be if it had aliens in it. And so this guy turned up - The Meddling Monk, a mischievous alien from the Doctor's home planet. He isn't much of a threat - he spends most of his time laughing and pratting about.


He does, however, look like the figure of death from those 1970s public information films about not drowning. Thus he is scary.

Doctor Who disguised himself as Death too. This is lots of fun for all concerned, and everyone here is having a great time. Except Steven. He is thinking, "This feels like enforced fun. I've no time for this." Steven is the kind of person who leaves parties early.

I like the composition of this shot.

Some images are so great that it's almost a shame they belong to a broader narrative. This is one such image. The Doctor has done a thing to the Monk's TARDIS, making it small. Is it a cunning reversal of the 'Giants' motif in the season opener? Probably not.






That's it for season 2. See you later, for more adventures in space. And time!


Click here for season 3.

Back to season 1

Time is Relative - Season One

It's Doctor Who's birthday! Rejoice.

I love Doctor Who, because it is great. It has been my favourite thing for years. It outlives Quatro and Quantum Leap. It reaches beyond childhood and adolescence. It bounces around my head constantly and brings me sustenance and joy.

Over the last couple of years I've been attempting to watch all of Doctor Who, in order, from the start. A daunting task. There are 851 episodes. That's a lot of television.

And 97 of them don't exist, because the BBC threw them away, like jerks. If you want to see these missing episodes, you have to watch a slideshow of photographs, running along a slightly warbly off-air recording of the audio. It is often not thrilling

And of those that remain, a great number of them are less than amazing. That's kind of the joy, though. Doctor Who is remarkably inconsistent. It veers from awesome wonder to tedious claptrap on a frequent basis. It makes no sense. And that's why it's great.

One thing I've been doing, as I've watched my way through the first bunch of episodes, is to take a photo of the screen, every now and then, when a particularly pleasing image came up.

To celebrate this, Doctor Who's 53rd birthday, I present you with a selection of these photos. Just season 1, for now. If you know the show, you can enjoy the familiarity. If you do not know the show, you can scratch your head in amazement that such a thing is loved by anyone, ever.




Season 1

1. An Unearthly Child

I took this picture because it reminded me of my friend Matt. It is, in fact, a caveman. Doctor Who's first adventure pits him against this guy, who might be called Kal.


Kal is not very smart. He tries to kill people with rocks and shouts about fire a lot. Doctor Who responds by trying to run away - a plan which eventually succeeds. The narrative is largely tedious, but it's hard for Who fans to recognise this, because it's the first story and thus dead important.

Here's Doctor Who himself. He looks a bit mad, doesn't he? Well, that's because he is. He doesn't really want to go on adventures and responds to the idea by cackling and being mad. I think the idea is that no-one will want to spend time with someone so irritating, so they'll leave him alone. It's also quite possible that he drinks a lot of gin at this point in his career.

And this is Susan. She lives with Doctor Who, in his spaceship. Her face suggests that this is a terrible experience and she is desperate for literally anything else to happen. She's thinking "Please can we go somewhere without gin."




2. The Daleks

Some Daleks. Seen here being space Nazis. Doctor Who defeats them by... well, he doesn't really do a lot. Other people do, and he takes the credit, confident in the fact that he will live longer than them and can say what he wants.


It's a pretty good story, full of cool designs and exciting deaths. Goes on a bit, though.




3. The Edge of Destruction

This story is not very good. Everyone in the TARDIS goes mad for a bit. You can see this in the picture, where Susan is trying to kill Ian with some scissors. Ian is just staring at her, evidently unbothered by her homicidal frenzy. Ian is very calm, and wears a cardigan with unusual dignity.

Later in the story Doctor Who gives a big speech about space. Ian is now wearing an exciting space dressing gown.




4. Marco Polo

Doctor Who meets proper historical guy, Marco Polo, seen here doing the MC Hammer dance.


It was meant to educate people about history. All it means, though, is that my primary understanding of Marco Polo is that he is a man who tried to steal the TARDIS. You suck. Marco.


Polo.

I'm not sure this is a real picture from the story. This is one of the ones that the BBC 'lost', so it's been put back together by fans, from photos and sellotape and, by the looks of it, publicity shots from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I do like the monkey, though. So as far as I'm concerned, this happened in the story. I like the way the monkey makes the eye-patch guy so happy. He loves the monkey, I think.




5. The Keys of Marinus

Many things happen on Marinus, including an attack by some ice soldiers,  and a town controlled by hypnotic brains in jars.


For some reason I have chosen to represent the story with these three guys. I really liked their hats, I guess. They seem to be enjoying them too, especially the guy on the right.




6. The Aztecs

The Aztecs is just great. Easily one of the best stories. The best thing about it is chief villain Tloxtl. I've probably spelled that wrong. But if he can't be bothered having a proper name, I don't see why I should waste time looking it up. Tloxtl. Live with it.


Tloxtl is mental, and spends a lot of time shouting into the camera, which is bad etiquette, especially in Aztec times. I say he's the villain. Actually, he's the only one of the Aztecs who correctly works out that the TARDIS crew are a bunch of liars and not, as they have claimed, reincarnated gods.




7. The Sensorites

Meanwhile, in space, Doctor Who protects Susan from some old men in pyjamas. The story is every bit as exciting as this picture suggests.

See Ian and Barbara, in the background, looking glum. That's because they can't skip bits of this story, and have to watch it all.

I took this picture because I thought it looked a bit like Barbara and Susan met Peter Capaldi in a corridor. Which would be exciting, because he is Doctor Who as well. But I think it's just some guy. He appears to be drunk.

Susan looks horrified by him, which seems rude. Maybe the other side of his face has sick on it or something.




8. The Reign of Terror

More history, this time featuring lots of death. It's pretty good, this one.


This is the second time we encounter missing episodes, thrown away by the BBC in the 70s because they failed to predict the advent of the DVD market, and also because they hate me personally. To compensate, they commissioned some guys to reanimate the missing bits.

Looks nice, doesn't it? Not a patch on Danger Mouse, but then what is?




That's season one. Tune in again, for more of this, a rather random ramble through Doctor Who.




Click here for season 2.

Give it to me, Lucille

Warning. This post is about the first episode of season seven of The Walking Dead and thus may be considered spoilery. I'm not going to reveal any character deaths or major moments. But I will discuss the themes and tone of the episode.

One of the new, fun things about watching TV these days is that you don't have to watch it at all. You can just go on Twitter and observe the reactions of other people who are watching it. This is excellent for things like Question Time, where the actual act of viewing the thing is a tedious and frustrating experience. How much better to read the swift and angry responses of the online community, than to look at some UKIP berk spouting off again about how he's definitely not racist but he does, co-incidentally, hate a lot of brown people.

It's an interesting shift in viewing patterns which has changed the nature of television itself. Live entertainment shows, of course, rejoice in the knowledge that they are part of a live, online conversation. But it's changing drama, too.

Last night was the premiere of season seven of The Walking Dead - a show I much enjoy. Now, season six ended in quite the cliff-hanger. If you are woefully behind on the show, you should probably look away now. If you don't watch it at all, the programme can be summarised thus - a guy called Rick leads a bunch of survivors through the remains of civilisation, after zombies happen.

At the end of season six, Rick's group are captured by the show's new Big Bad - a baseball bat wielding warlord called Negan. Our heroes have encountered Negan's followers a number of times throughout the season and, indeed, killed a lot of them. And now they are face to face with the man himself. And he intends to pay them back for the wounds they have inflicted.



"Eenie, meenie, miny, mo..."

Fans of the comics, like myself, know what is coming next, and sure enough it does. Negan and his small army of post apocalyptic warriors surround our heroes and make them kneel before him. Negan strides up and down in front of his captives, deciding who he is going to kill, swinging his bat suggestively. His bat is called Lucille. It is made of barbed wire and spikes. Negan is clearly not kidding.

The season ends with a POV shot, putting us in the position of Negan's victim, watching as the bat comes down on our head. Blood flows down the screen as the camera lurches to the side.  We do not know which of our beloved cast members is on the receiving end. All we know is, someone is definitely for the chop.

And it was all over Twitter. Just as the blood had filled the screen, so Twitter was covered in a thousand, 140 character responses. Who was dead? Why hadn't they shown us? What if it was Darryl? Oh, there would be trouble if it was Darryl!

The makers of this show know exactly what they are doing.

Clever stuff. Not, perhaps, a narrative driven by the true principles of drama. Rather, a story shaped and formed by the state of the medium. A programme that is not just a programme anymore, but part of a larger world - an online, interactive world where everyone gets to shout and cry and speculate.

So. Last night was the long awaited continuation of this cliff-hanger. Who was on the receiving end of Lucille's spiky wrath?

I won't spoil it here. But I will say, there is no reprieve and no cheat. No-one charges out of the woods to save them. No-one has a cunning plan. Negan most certainly does not change his mind. The episode is a bleak, brutal affair, full of pain and horror. I'd say it's pretty good drama and it certainly had me engaged. I say 'engaged' to dignify myself. I was clutching a cushion with one hand, while the other hand was waving frantically about in the air in panic.

Anyway. After the programme I spent a happy hour or so reading the online responses. People were all over the place. Shock, from those Tweeting in real time. Sadness for the characters. Anger at Negan. Anger at the makers of the show. It was brilliant - like being in a crowd at a gig, or a stand up show. Only rather than thousands of people singing a chorus , or laughing together, here they were shrieking in horror as a large man hit someone in the head with a baseball bat.

There were a few comments that surprised me, though. A number of people were vowing that they were done with the show, because it was too bleak. I mean, they were genuinely going to abandon a TV programme because of some fictional thing that happened. Popular science writer Doctor Ben Goldacre called it "Empty unpleasantness".


Empty Unpleasantness?


I find this attitude really weird. OK, I admit, this was not a 'fun' hour of television. I did laugh once - at an enjoyable bit of zombie grossness - but on the whole I felt a variety of unpleasant emotions. There was at least one moment where I had genuine, sick-feeling dread at what might happen next.

But for me that's part of the point of this kind of show. It takes us, safely, into places we don't normally go. And as for 'empty'... well, that's just silly. Ben Goldacre is about a million times more intelligent than me, but on this one thing I think I'm justified in saying, Doctor Goldacre - it's a little more complicated than that.

Off the top of my head, these are some of the things that stop last night's Walking Dead being 'empty'...

It's a story about hubris. A supremely cocky group who think they can control all situations and are always in the right are suddenly faced with something far more powerful, much nastier and - crucially - morally just about the same. Sound relevant for 21st Century America?

It's about leadership. What kind of a man does it take to really keep control, and do we really want that kind of man in charge?

It's about empathy. These are characters we've known for years. Here they are, terrified and helpless and in pain. In a world where we are increasingly insular and comfortable, maybe it's a good idea to see a little bit of bleakness.

It's about death. One of the characters has their head reduced, by Lucille, to a bloody pulp. I mean, like totally formless. Just a mess of meat, with eyeballs still wandering about in there. It's a moment of existential horror. Is that all we are? Some meat? That face, which I look at in a mirror, and call 'me', is just some stuff. My brain, in which all my thoughts and emotions and experiences seem to happen, is just some stuff. It could be destroyed, and there'd by no 'me' in there. I'd be gone. Brrrrr.

It's about what to do next. The episode doesn't end with the horror. It ends after the horror has stopped, and the survivors are wondering what to do next. What are you left with? Who are you, now? Who might you have been, without this?

And it's about the performances, and writing and technical skill and direction that makes this look and feel real. The craft that stops this looking like people standing about wearing makeup and pretending to be sad, and makes it compelling and powerful and horrible.

It's not empty, though.

Bad Loser

I don't know about you, but I'm going to miss Donald Trump.


I don't know whether I'm going to miss him because he'll lose, and stop being a constant source of surreal entertainment, or because he'll win, and we'll all be dead soon. But one thing is for sure - we're in a golden period of time, soon to end, where every day is filled with bonkers proclamations from the world's most powerful idiot.


It's kind of fun, isn't it? Going on Twitter to see what panicked garbage he's hurling at the world today. Who will he hate next? What supremely illogical sentences will escape from his sparking, fizzing brain? What lie will he confidently chisel into the side of a mountain and declare the word of God almighty?


Although, of course, there's the strong possibility that he won't go away even if he does lose. He is very committed to the idea of not losing, and this commitment may well be undiminished by the fact of not winning.


Because the election is rigged, you see. That's why he'll lose. Unless he wins. In which case, presumably, it suddenly isn't rigged, and the election process is very trustworthy. His faith in the system seems to comprehensively rely upon the system working the way he wants it to.


It's hard to frame this kind of person, isn't it? Intelligent people are struggling to categorise this orange buffoon, whose behaviour defines all rational explanation. What kind of person devotes massive energy to winning a game, only to denounce the validity of winning that game in the first place?


He reminds us of something, that's for sure. A child, maybe. Trump is very keen on that petulant, backwards logic that children employ to reverse engineer justifications for their behaviour. Start with the conclusion you want, then work backwards to find a reason why that conclusion must be right.


But he's not a child. Is he? He looks too big. They let him run companies, and own houses, and touch women. Well, maybe not all the time, that last one. But for the most part he seems like an adult.


Maybe he's two or three children in a big, weird, oddly fitting grown-up suit. That would explain a lot. In fact, it's less implausible that the probable truth: here is a grown, intelligent man who has invested himself, publicly, in a massive global tantrum that makes literally no fucking sense whatsoever.

I'll tell you what he reminds me of, and it's very specific. He reminds me of the mother of my first ever proper girlfriend, an equally unreasonable woman called... well, let's call her April Fenchurch.


The parents of your first girlfriend are a worrying prospect. You've never done this romance thing before, and it's hard enough to make it work with the object of your affection. Especially if you are 16 year old me, and composed entirely of stupidity and hormones.


And then you're confronted with her parents. And they are, rightly, suspicious that you are a horrible pillock, hell bent on ruining the life of their lovely daughter. And then one of them is April Bloody Fenchurch.


April was my first encounter with backwards logic. She refused to be wrong. She refused to lose. And it wasn't cool, like when I do it. It was irritating and frustrating.


One New Year's Eve, we played a game of Bible Trivial Pursuits. That's right. New Years Eve. Two years previously, I'd been standing alone in a back street, staring at the spinning stars above, out of my mind on gin. Now I was already wondering if my life was over and all the happiness was behind me. This was their idea of fun. Bible Trivial Pursuit.


Because April was a Christian. And so was I, but only very recently. I'd gone to church in pursuit of her lovely daughter and got kind of roped into everything else along the way. And, of course, I was trying hard to seem presentable and mature, and not a stupid twitchy deviant who would have much preferred to be out drinking snakebite and black.

Yum.

Trouble kicked in before the game had started. April made some reference to the Three Kings, who pop up in the nativity, bringing Jesus gifts and such. I can't remember what she said about them. But I know that I'd just learned a Christian thing at church, and I wanted to share my new understanding.


"They weren't Kings," I said, unwisely. The room went quiet. April's friends and relatives looked in horror, at me, and then in excited anticipation, at her.


"They were," she replied. Straight in, no messing.


"No, I just found out. They were wise men. People often call them kings, but that's not what the Bible says."


April did not like this. She'd said a Fact, and now I was challenging the Fact. So she employed the kind of nonsense technique that I now recognise as false syllogism, but which, at the time, just confused me.


"Solomon was a king, wasn't he?" she said.


"Um, yes."


"And he was wise?"


"He was..."


"So in the Bible a king is a wise man and so when they said they were wise men it's the same as them being Kings."


Ta daa! April went back to shuffling the question cards. The friends and family relaxed, glad to have a way out of this - which I'm assuming was not the first terrible situation of its kind. I sat there, trying to work out how I had been given an answer that was somehow both very logical but also definitely bullshit.

"Aaaaaaaaagggggghhh!"

We played the game. April was really bad at the game. It wasn't just Kings she knew nothing about. It was almost everything the game asked. To be honest, none of us were very good at it. I think you'd have to be a very special kind of person to be good at Bible Trivial Pursuits. Very special indeed.


But the way most of us reacted to our failure to guess the 8th wife of Nehrat the Ethiopian, was to accept our ignorance and be quite relieved. Not April. As has been noted, she was not a fan of being wrong.


So it transpired that she wasn't wrong. No. The game was wrong. The whole thing. This poor collection of cardboard and coloured dice went from being an excellent, spiritual way of spending New Years Eve, to being a stupid, lying whore of a thing that was made by idiots, for idiots and knew nothing about anything.


April's husband, Paul - a fragile mouse of a man - was forced, by April, to read through much of the New Testament in an effort to prove the stupid game wrong. We had to pause the game every time April's answers didn't tally with reality, while Paul flicked sadly through a massive Bible. Every now and then he'd find the relevant bit. He'd read, silently, patiently, for a few moments. Then I'd see panic in his eyes. Oh dear. It was clear that whatever he'd found wasn't going to be the answer April was looking for.


"Well, there's lots of ways to look at it..." he'd say, hesitantly.


So passed the most depressing New Year of all time. No, second most depressing. But still. Bloody awful.

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in such massive fear of being wrong? To exert such tremendous effort against reality itself, to avoid the fact of failure? Terrifying, I imagine. You have to dismantle the very language upon which all meaning relies. You have to construct a new version of logic, a bizarre distorting mirror of cause and effect, action and consequence.


As I get older I feel less annoyance with April, and more pity. And then I see Trump, and all the old feelings come flooding back. A man who will not lose. Who reverse engineers reality to suit his tiny minded, timid, feeble grasp on the world.

He's an idiot, but it's no wonder he's popular. There's a world of Aprils out there, not wanting to have to think, unequipped to deal with being told they're wrong. People who'd prefer the message that listening isn't important - you are the all conquering kings of existence. Carry on with your prejudice and your greed. Ignore your weaknesses - they don't exist. Do whatever is easiest. Don't let anyone tell you what to do.

It sounds awesome.

Thanks, April, for showing me - a long time ago - that it's not.

Electronic Performers

Afternoon. My, that's a fine hat. What? That's your hair? Oops. Sorry. Erm, let's change the subject. I know - friendship.


Every now and then I'm playing about on Facebook, trying to avoid work,  and I notice that I'm not 'friends' with someone. And by that I mean, someone who I thought I was friends with, not just one of the millions of people who are lucky enough never to have met me in the first place.


And it's a weird moment. Not least because I generally have to try to remember: have they deleted me? Or did I delete them? Should I be very angry with them, or terrified in case they are very angry with me?


It's all become very complicated, this friendship thing. And I've been thinking about it a lot, for one reason or another - you may have noticed the theme recurring if you've been following this blog. And today being National Poetry Day, I thought I'd try to express my ideas here, poetically. I hope you enjoy it and doesn't lead you to instantly cast me into the wilderness.






We were friends, you and me, for nine good years
A quantifiable measurement of Summers and Winters, verified by Facebook
Celebrated with notifications and a photo montage on an arbitrary date
Harder to see, in real life


More and more difficult, as the years slipped by
To remember the last time I saw your real face
Memories bleached out by a thousand digital lips and eyes and teeth


Posing for your self-held camera
Trying to look ironic, but definitely really meaning it


Or side by side with this year's lover
Romantic memories, swiftly deleted as one by one they fell out of favour


Or laughing too loud, even through the silence of the frame
At parties I stopped attending years ago


Like all friendships, ours was subject to decay
But social media, like a virus in the zombie films we loved,
Kept it moving
Animated it beyond the point of death
Made it harder to let die


Until one day you removed the head and you destroyed the brain
And without warning, our friendship was gone
A mercy killing of sorts.
What passes, these days, for goodbye.
Your final words spoken, not by you, but by your electronic ghost


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