Dr Dune

think im reluctant to finish dune. i could finish it in half hr if i sat down with it...am surprised at how fast i got through it really. but it's one o those must this end feelings. anyhoo this post is about Dune and Dr Who and may contain SPOILERS...

'Find a place to rest and stay out of the way, child-man,' Chani said. 'Here's food.' She pressed two leaf-wrapped morsels into his hand. They reeked of spice. [pg 334]

^this is pretty much the only solid lotr connection. lembas like food packages. but not. because the morsels consist of bird meat and grain in spice honey. the on planet diet of spice which gives the fremen their blue on blue eyes with no whites.

Phosphortubes in the faraway upper reaches of the cavern cast a dim light onto the thronged interior, hinting at the great size of this rock-enclosed space...larger, Jessica saw, than even the Gathering Hall of her Bene Gesserit school. She estimated there were more than five thousand people gathered out there beneath the ledge where she stood with Stilgar.

^matrix connection! i feel like they just used this description as their basis for xion/zion. the cavern...the ledge where people talk to the masses from...the clothing of the women...the decoration of the living spaces...

and now to my main point. dune is a book which is mainly about people. and relationships. it deals with the preconceptions and misunderstandings which influence our understanding of each other and the mess that gets us into, eg: Gurney and Hawat suspecting the lady Jessica of being the traitor and suspicion becoming fact in their minds leading them to plot revenge and her death. and the confrontation between Gurney and Jessica where he's about to kill her but thankfully feels the need to explain to Paul that she betrayed his father...and of course Paul knows that the real traitor was Yueh. and the reason they dont consider him a possibility is cause they dont think his imperial conditioning can be subverted or whatever [another preconception which the harkonnens prove false and then hide from everyone else by saying that he was a false doctor and not a suk doctor at all...so the myth continues] the most interesting of relationships however is the one that Jessica and Paul have, she is his mother and trained him in the bene gesserit way but he surpasses her as he has the prescient ability. and she plans for him. but those plans contradict what he wants. what he explicitly wants to avoid. jihad in his name. while he thinks of avoiding it. she thinks that the fremen can be manipulated and their religious fervour worked on. and she wants him to marry someone for the connections a duke must have. and only changes her mind when she realises that he understands the relationship she had with the duke, his father...it is most complex.

one thing which made me shudder was feyd-rautha killing the gladiator servants. killing a drugged, half shielded servant. an easy kill. so easy. he's got two knives and a whole shield. one knife with poison on it. it was meant to be poison on the white short knife in his white gloved hand but then he decides to change it...making things even more unfair.. then the staged kill...where the slave isnt drugged and its made to look like an assassination attempt...it's still unfair because he has a hypnosis password 'scum' which he can say to the slave to subdue him whenever he wants...and also the poison on the wrong knife...it was his seventeenth birthday, his hundredth kill. and this contrasted with paul's fight with jamis. his first kill. after years of training. not wanting to kill. asking the man to yield. which however is not an option as per fremen tradition, it is a fight to the death. no wonder everyone hates the harkonnens.

and lastly the finale of Dr Who. i was so not expecting it to go that way. i dont watch a lot of dr who. just one epi here n there. but catherine tate as donna noble was amazing. and this just sucked. but it was a finale about relationships...the doctor and everyone else...it was the saddest ever.

ps. completely unconnected thought: james mcavoy's american accent in wanted sounds exactly like shia labeouf...