Yeah. I think that lately the new incarnation of Doctor Who takes too many liberties with the "We have a time machine" concept. The smartest time travel episodes I've seen came from season 9, and it was almost jarring compared to the previous seasons. Then again, I vastly prefer the personality of the Peter Capaldi Doctor to Matt Smith, sooooo.
Anyway, enough about Doctor Who.
Time travel stories are tricky because time travel acts like a deus ex machina. If the story involves time travel, it's hard to make the time travel both sensible and suspenseful. For example, suppose your story involves traveling back in time to fix something, and they end up breaking it. No problem! They can go back and fix it! Except that kind of ruins dramatic tension without some upping of the stakes. Upping the stakes is always a dangerous ploy, as it is very easy to come up with a cheap "upping the stakes" motive. This is actually my problem with the majority of Matt Smith's run as the Doctor: The stakes have to continually be increased to keep things interesting, and the show finally crossed the threshold from "thrilling" to "patently ridiculous." Even after Smith left, things didn't really get "better." Season 8 was garbage (despite Capaldi being the most interesting Doctor character since Eccleston, IMO), but season 9 started to make things slightly better by going back to individual episodes (or pairs of episodes) with a few recurring threads culminating (FINALLY) in the removal of my least-favorite companion ever: Clara. I have hopes that the guy who takes over the show after Moffat does a better job, because good grief this show has gone off the rails. And so has Sherlock, by the way. Season 4 was annoying and just flat out disappointing.
If you're reading this, selderane, I fully admit I was wrong about Moffat. He's a hack. Doctor Who has been going almost continually downhill since he took over. Sherlock started well enough, but has been tanking.
Also, I just realized I ended up ranting about Doctor Who more than time travel. Oops. XD
If a non-American hatchback is what you want, and you can find a good deal on one, the Honda Fit is a great car. Unfortunately/fortunately, it holds its value pretty well, and used can be hard to find at an affordable price. The aforementioned Kia Soul is also a great car, if you want a foreign hatchback.RedPlums wrote: I would prefer and SUV or Hatchback to hold more stuff as i move around a lot.
I know to generally try and stay away from american made because they don't have the best track record, unless i have 10k to spend on a newer model.
Manual transmission or automatic?
The question of manual versus automatic can best be summarized by asking a simple question: How much do you plan on driving in traffic?
Manual transmissions are an absolute nightmare to drive in heavy traffic, or anything where you are constantly starting and stopping. Your leg will grow really tired from engaging and releasing the clutch so often. If you drive long distances where the speed goes up and down (For example, country roads where the speed between towns is 65, but the speed in town is 35), a manual may also be a less convenient choice.
On the other hand, manual transmissions are a ton of fun to drive, and I think being able to drive one is a skill everyone should acquire even if they don't use it on a regular basis. They are also really useful if you want to shift into a lower gear (For hills/towing, for example) easier. Automatics have a lower gear mode, but manual transmissions give you a much more intuitive level of control.
So in short, if you expect to be hitting a lot of stop-n-go traffic or a lot of successive starts and stops, go automatic. If you like having a little more fun and control while driving, go manual. But above all, make sure you are comfortable with manual if you go that route, you don't want to drop money on one only to find out that it's too frustrating for your area.
