Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings

So, The Time of the Doctor. Peter Capaldi is here, and thank fuck for that. I never got into Matt Smith's Doctor, and I can get into everything Peter Capaldi does. Perhaps he'll help me enjoy Doctor Who again.

But all I want right now is a fic where Ten regenerates and ( Spoiler ) because of vanity issues. He could do it when Martha was there, and there'd be much rejoicing on her part (because to Martha his looks did matter), or when Donna was there and she can't believe it ("You like this scrawny thing?") or when Jack was there, and he would mock the Doctor mercilessly, but then the Doctor would still get a shag out of it.

I'm currently reading The Three Musketeers. It's a re-read - I read it at some point as a child in my adventure-novel phase, and then re-read it every five-six years or so. I initially had a massive crush on Aramis, but then Athos became my favourite. He's so delightfully cynical, level-headed and drunk.

But. I'm reading it now through a completely different filter. I can't stand the four leads, they are awful human beings. Well, Aramis seems kinda okay, I think he's actually the only one who treats other people with respect, even his mistresses. Especially his mistresses.

And there's the upcoming BBC adaptation, which I am tentatively looking forward to. Tom Burke plays Athos, and I like Tom Burke, and there's Peter Capaldi, who is always excellent value. But at the same time, I can't help worrying that it's just another, slightly darker (they wear leather!) spin on the fannish interpretation of the source - i.e. three cheeky chappies who spout one-liners whilst beating up mooks, the bumbling village idiot d'Artagnan, the uber-evil Cardinal Richelieu, the star-crossed lovers King & Queen of France, and of course the evilest of all evil demons, Milady de Winter.

Whereas, in the novel, the musketeers are very much reprehensible human beings:

Athos has trained his valet not to talk, and if he does talk, he thrashes him mercilessly, albeit dispassionately. And, at the age of 25, he'd hanged his 16-year old (!) wife after discovering the fleur-de-lys brand on her shoulder, because obviously she must have been EVIL.

Porthos expects his mistress to finance his musketeering equipment and he feels absolutely justified to steal the money from her bed-ridden husband. When she's reluctant to do so, he goes off in a sulk.

d'Artagnan tricks a woman into sleeping with him by pretending to be someone else, and is justified in doing so, because the woman in question is Milady, and she's evil. Really, she is. Oh, and he "seduces" her maid (who is very reluctant, but unable to fight him) to get into Milady's knickers.

Aramis is kinda okay, I've got to admit. He seems to treat the various women he's involved with like human beings, he doesn't beat his valet and he's only moderately violent.

All four of them think nothing of taking human life, of course, and cheerfully kill people in duels as well as in battle.

The author stresses all throughout the novel that we mustn't judge men of that period by modern standards, which would be absolutely fine with me if Milady got the same treatment. But she is treated by the protagonists and the authorial voice as the hellish demon from hell who must be destroyed at all cost. I am actually totally rooting for Milady. She has done nothing on the pages of the book that is in any way worse than what the heroes have done. She lies, tricks and is ambitious and avaricious, but so are they. Plus, the men feel entitled to lie; in several instances, they cheat lower-class people such as inn hosts by claiming self-righteously that they are "gentlemen" and nobody must ever doubt the word of a gentleman.

I would be much less annoyed if the various adaptations did the source justice and presented the musketeers as morally ambivalent, as the liars, cheats and killers that they are, and did not make the Cardinal the big bad. His relationship with the musketeers is much more complex than that.

I would absolutely love it if there were an adaptation that treats Milady fairly in a way that the source did not. But seeing as there doesn't even seem to be any Milady-centric fanfic that does that, I will hope in vain.

There actually is a Russian adaptation that I watched as a child and that left a huge impression: the scene where Milady strangles Constance (who is married in the book and commits adultery) was pretty nightmarish.

Any thoughts, anyone? It's one of the stories that everyone in the Western world is familiar with, but I think the way we perceive the characters is very much influenced by the (Hollywood) adaptations, not so much by the novel itself.

The two items in the subject line are unrelated. But: I've finally watched HBP and have remained quite unimpressed. So unimpressed, in fact, that all I've got to say doesn't even merit a spoiler cut: Tom Felton looked as though he came from a different - and much better - film, which would have been much more interesting to watch. The rest? A random sequence of scenes that didn't make much sense to anyone who hasn't read the books* and that the film makers apparently wanted to see on screen.

I have also watched "Torchwood - Children of Earth" and was rather more impressed. So this is what Torchwood could have been like from the very start, had they focused on thrill and drama rather than on fooling around with silly CGI monsters and innuendo in every other episode. Also, I crushed mightily on John Frobisher from start to finish, and since I already crushed on the actor in "In the Loop", I've got to seriously wonder where my weird Scots fetish comes from: David Tennant, James McAvoy, Ewan McGregor are all a given, and now there's also Peter Capaldi; and of course the ladies: Michelle Gomez, the ever-fabulous Kelly Macdonald, and, as I've recently watched "This Life", the just as fabulous Daniela Nardini. It's not primarily the accent, because I was indifferent to the Scottish accent until I started to realise that, whenever a Scot is part of the cast, he or she soon becomes my favourite character. Hmm...


*I saw the film with a friend who read the book when it was released, but she's so not a fan that she didn't even remember who the Half-Blood Prince was, so she served as my point of reference.