Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Oh My God! They Didn't Kill Kenny!

Posted on in Doctor Who.

(With apologies to and everyone else who got the reference out on the web before I did.)

I say this every week – but Here Be Spoilers

Sometime it’s scary to think about how long Doctor Who has been running. Sarah Jane Smith joined the series when it was already eleven years old, and also in the year I was born. Which is a roundabout way of getting to the points that (a) Liz Sladen looks great and (b) I don’t have any original memories of her time as a companion (and very few of the K9 years) though I have seen some of her stories on video/DVD and I have childhood memories of the K9 and Company spin off. So I fell somewhere between those of Russel T Davies’s generation who have a strong attachment to Sarah Jane and those who started last year and who have never heard of her.

So what did I make the grand reunion? Good stuff. Liz Sladen was note perfect as someone who’s been waiting thirty years (or twenty depending on your attitudes to UNIT dating – and if that means nothing to you then for your own sake don’t ask) for her man to walk back into her life. And David Tennant did well with his side of the deal – his joy at seeing her becoming guarded as he saw how he had affected her and was affecting Rose.

In fact this was the best performance from Tennant so far, except for the classroom scene at the start. I like him much better when he’s playing angry or mysterious or surprised. His bouncy puppy motormouth act is rather tiring, but apart from the aforementioned scene it wasn’t much in evidence this week. With the impact of this week’s glimpse at the past and future for the Doctor and Rose, and with Mickey joining the crew, I hope that the shake up will mean fewer “we’re great we are” scenes with Rose and more of this good stuff.

Those of us how have read the novels are used to companions having to deal with life after the Doctor (in fact Sarah Jane has featured in a number of books) but for people who just watch the TV (whether new or old) this was new territory – and exactly the sort of more emotional but still sci-fi tone that the new series is rightly aiming for.

Oh look, they had K9 and giant bat monsters and they blew a school up. How couldn’t anyone love all that?

(Interesting touch – the skin colour of the bat monsters matched the skin colours of their human forms.)

Can Tony Head act or not? It seems that he can, but there’s always a vague (sometimes not so vague) whiff of ham about his performances. From the way the producers were salivating in Confidential you would think that the scene in the swimming pool was the greatest piece of acting ever seen. It was okay, and by the standards of Doctor Who was even very good. And most importantly it was a Doctor – villain set piece of the sort that’s been rather lacking in the new series. More please, but don’t get too up yourselves.

Plot? Not as weak as New Earth, for example, but still rather simplistic and rushed with a few loose ends (the rats?). But really, this was an episode about the Doctor and his companions (all four of them!) and the plot just gave them something to run away from and blow up.

Another 9/10 (in fact I’m almost considering revising last week’s down to an 8).

Bad Wolf, Werewolf, K-9, no wonder those cats last week were pised off.

Posted on in Doctor Who, Science.

Spoilers. Yes spoilers. Lots of them. You have been warned.

Right, let’s get the science bit out of the way. No not the moonlight and diamonds stuff, that’s just pure bollocks anyway. Queen Victoria did not, technically speaking, have haemophilia – it’s a recessive trait carried on the X chromosone and hence women only have it if both parents carried the defective gene. She was however a carrier and passed on the gene to her children. For her to have been “infected” in 1879, long after the birth of her children would pose a problem. Unless we want to believe that she went wolf and bit [1] all her children [2]. So it looks like the scratch was just a scratch after all.

The episode opens with probably the best fight sequence in the 43 year history of Doctor Who. Not actually a very hard task. But why were the monks wearing red? Didn’t it occur to the production team that everyone watching would think of those terrible BBC1 channel idents? And a good old fashioned scream at the end of the teaser – that would have been the episode one cliffhanger in old year following a whole load of wandering around on the moors and getting the various characters to bump into each other.

Good stuff – Ian Dury. Maggie Thatcher. Doctor James McCrimmon. Naked Rose (not naked enough for a large part of the audience). Nice Bad Wolf reference. Queen Victoria shooting the monk. Superb work from the supporting cast, especially Pauline Collins. The “books are the best weapons” line (borrowing heavily from the Buffy research scenes?).

So so stuff – The ‘not amused’ running gag. CGI Werewolf worked well in close up but moved a bit odd in long shot. The Torchwood links could have been, oh, about a hundred times, more subtle. Typically dodgy science.

Bad stuff – Not much.

So the Doctor has pissed off Queen Victoria now as well as Harriet Jones, Prime Minister. After destryoing his home planet is RTD now making him unwelcome anywhere and anytime in his adopted home?

The implication that the Doctor and Rose are getting too cocky and actively seeking out danger looks like it will be this year’s theme. Should be interesting to see where this goes. The things that niggle me about Tennant’s performance might be sorted out if he has to portray a Doctor who gets shaken up by a big mistake at some point.

I’m giving this one 9/10.

[Updates]
[1] – Ah, there was a line to this effect but I missed it first time around because I was talking about the haemophilia bit being rubbish.

[2] – Not all her children. Just those that had the haemophilia gene (a carrier like Queen Victoria has a 50% chance of passing it on to each child) – Princess Alice, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Leopold. And despite all the inbreeding amongst her descendents the gene has not reached the current royal family. Unless, as the Doctor implies, the werewolf DNA multiplies within the host body over the generations and stops manifesting itself as haemophilia and starts manifesting itself as lycanthropy, but in that case Victoria wouldn’t have been doing any biting and so we go round and round in circles…

New this, new that, new the other

Posted on in Doctor Who.

New series, new Doctor, new squee levels from the fan girls, but was New Earth any good? Same old reviews here…

Yes, there are spoilers here. What were you expecting?

Um, no mister director person speaking on Confidential – no amount of special effects can make a windy and overcast Welsh clifftop look like paradise on (New) Earth. The CGI and other effects in this episode were top notch though.

As was the acting. Oh yes, Billie Piper had a chance to ham it wonderfully up and milked it for every drop, and then David Tennant joined in and raised it to camp factor ten. Ignoring the possession storyline, I liked Tennant’s take on the Doctor – playfullness with a dark undercurrent. It was recognisably the same person as before (most noticeably the same person as Ecclestone – as one would expect from the same writer) but with aspects brought to the fore. Which, of course, is just how it’s meant to be.

I said when I reviewed Rose I mentioned that Ecclestone had most in common with Troughton and Davison – actors who treated it as a character part – rather than with Pertwee or Baker who were more personality based. Tennant seems to be trying to walk the line between the two approaches and it will be interesting to see if he steps one way or the other as time goes by.

Now, the plot. Or plots. For 45 minutes there was a lot going on. Too much perhaps. Having two returning characters in two separate sub-plots plus the main threat of the week was perhaps too much for the season opener. Last year’s opener was equally packed but stayed focussed on Rose and her entrance into the Doctor’s world. This year there was no central focus and the whole thing felt rushed and confused.

So all in all, a nice round 7/10 I think

I see already that there was a fair amount of misdirection in the trailer shown at the end of The Christmas Invasion. We were expecting the kiss to be a plot point and here it is dismissed in episode one (double bluff? looks like there are more smoochies to come), but the line “bullets can’t stop it” was in amongst the Cybermen clips in the trailer, but now we see that it’s from next week’s episode instead.

Werewolf. Queen Victoria. And I’ll be totally knackered from a day at Salute. Bring it on.

Borg vs. Cybermen

Posted on in Doctor Who.

Discussion last night about the new Doctor Who with someone who is a sci-fi geek but not a long term DW fan. Now we all know that the Cybermen came first but are they better?

Opinions please.

Update November 6th 2012: Thank you everyone for your comments over the last seven years. But it looks like an official answer is here in the form of the Assimilation2 comics. So I’m closing comments on this post.

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Happy Things

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Doctor Who, Memes, Miniatures, My Life, Sport, TV.

As tagged by Littlebun here are ten things that make me happy.

  1. Lettice
  2. Being right about stuff
  3. Wales winning the Six Nations
  4. Learning new stuff
  5. Miniatures, especially dinosaurs and spaceships
  6. The Dalek Song
  7. Cats
  8. Drinking beer and talking rubbish with my friends
  9. Good books
  10. The sort of television that makes me jump and down with joy because it’s so funny and exciting and clever – for example Doctor Who, Firefly, Farscape

Lovely dinosaury goodness

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Miniatures, TV.

New stuff from Dragonblood Miniatures. Very, very nice. I hope this (and the mount from their earlier Hunter sculpt) do become available au naturel.

Chasmosaurus green

Old stuff from Archive Miniatures available until the end of the month from Discount Hobby.

Bolosaur

TMP has set up a discussion board for Prehistoric gaming. One interesting titbit I picked up there is that the rights to DZ Miniatures mammals have been acquired by Stratagem who are/will be making them in resin. Which would be great if Stratagem weren’t one of the most disorganised and uncommunicative outfits around.

Did anyone else see the recent BBC programmes on dinosaurs? The Truth About Kill Dinosaurs from last month was so-so. I have serious doubts about the validity of some of their “scientific” tests. The materials used to create the artificial dinosaurs looked like they had very different properties to actual bone and muscle. The second programme was more interesting as it covered Velociraptors and Ankylosaurs rather than the tired out T. Rex vs Triceratops duel of the first programme. Much more entertaining was the very silly T-Rex: A Dinosaur in Hollywood show on Wednesday.

Three kisses and a regeneration

Posted on in Doctor Who.

“Do they think we have nothing better to do until Christmas?” – pink_weasel

So very true.

11/10

Just watch it, don’t read bollocks like this on the interweb, just watch it. Doesn’t matter if it’s on BBC3 at 10:50 tonight or 7:00 tomorrow, or if you taped it, or of you borrow a tape off someone else, or even if you need to download it off the web, just watch it.

You need help…

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Doctor Who, WWW.

… if you’re the person who ended up on the SFSFW web site after searching for “centaur bestiality”.

The word ‘bestiality’ appears exactly once on the site, on the same page as the word ‘centaur’ though not at all close together. I’m afraid that the searcher would most likely have been disappointed.

Other search terms that somehow ended up at the SFSFW in the first half of June include:

  • “disadvantages of being vertically challenged”
  • “lap dancers devizes”
  • “why gamers should go to anime conventions”
  • “why does pooh have mr sanders on his door”
  • “inca drawing of dinosaur killing a man”

The worrying thing is that the society has such wide interests that all of these, except possibly the lap dancers (especially as GZG are not based anywhere near Devizes), are topics that we could cover.

But the number six term overall was “emperor dalek”, only just behind “troublesome trucks” and “bob naismith”. Will it be higher by the end of the month?

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Woof!

Posted on in Doctor Who, Miniatures.

“We have your associate. You will obey or she will be exterminated.”
“No.”
“Explain yourself.”
“I said no.”
“What is the meaning of this negative?”
“It means no.”
“But she will be destroyed.”
“No. Cause this is what I’m gonna do. I’m going to rescue her. I’m going to
save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I’m going to
save the Earth, and then, just to finish off, I’m going to wipe every
stinking Dalek out of the sky.”
“But you have no weapons, no defenses, no plan.”
“Yeah, and doesn’t that scare you to death? Rose?”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“I’m coming to get you.”

Bad Wolf wan’t bad at all. Three months ago, did you think the phrase “they’ve killed Billy Piper” could ever be a bad thing? (And a nice Absolom Daak homage in there as well.)

First twenty minutes: 7/10, Middle twenty minutes: 8/10, Last five minutes: 11/10

Overall: 9/10

Next week looks like every fanboy’s wet dream. I’m looking at my miniatures shelves and thinking “I need more Daleks”. BTD must be laughing.

Shaggy Dog Stories

Now the mysterious voice at the end of the trailer, who or what is it? The theories are coming thick and fast:

  1. Davros – the obvious choice. He was creating Daleks from humans back in Revelation of the Daleks (which presumably is the fate of the gameshow losers), an act which made him an enemy of the racial purity fanatic main Dalek force.
  2. The Emperor Dalek – the voice is very much like that from Evil of the Daleks, but does it make sense to bring back a villain that appeared in one, deleted, 1960s story (and once as a disguise of Davros in the 1980s)?
  3. The Dalek from Dalek – The phrase “they survived through me” is very similar to a line from that episode and this Dalek, already contaminated with Rose’s DNA would have less problem in using humans to create a new Dalek army. Oh dear, that would really destroy the ending and impact of that story.
  4. Adam – he has 20,000 years of knowledge in his head (or does he, if he does then why would he need that answering phone message?), he’s seen a Dalek, he has a grudge against the Doctor. Stupid idea.
  5. The Master – not likely.

And to add to the fun these choices can be mixed and matched (Adam is Davros; Davros is the Emperor Dalek (again); The last Dalek is the new Emperor Dalek). A whole week of wild speculation :-).

No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow. … Boom, sooner or later. BOOM!

Posted on in Doctor Who.

Mmmmm, Susan Ivanova.

Anyway, Boom Town. I wasn’t expecting much from this based on the trailers but it turned out better than I expected. Not brilliant but certainly not terrible.

It was a collection of “greatest” hits from the series so far – Slitheen from AoL/WW3; the rift from tUD; incidental music from Rose; Mickey; reversing the teleport from tEoftW; some of which deserved a repeat performance more than others. It was also more than that.

It was a look at the Doctor’s morality and whilst Russell T Davies is clearly against the death penalty (see his interview on Doctor Who Confidential) the episode was no where so clear cut, Margaret’s arguments didn’t really hold water when held against the lengths she was prepared to go to save herself, and the Doctor’s attitude was a mixture of factors – part “leave local customs alone”, part “Everything has it’s time and everything dies” and part traumatised post-Gallifrey Doctor.

The moral debate would have been more interesting if a human had taken a larger part. Maybe we could have been spared some of the Rose/Mickey (non-)relationship and instead had them involved in the discussion between the Doctor and Margaret.

In the end the debate was rendered meaningless by a deus ex machina resolution. I liked the heart of the TARDIS and I wonder if it’s foreshadowing something, possibly connected to regeneration?

7/10

And the Doctor notices the Bad Wolf at last. Just in time for this week’s episode that looks like it could be very, very good and very, very bad at the same time.

IMDB is listing Norman Lovett (the original Holly from Red Dwarf) as Davros in the season finale. But anyone can update IMDB with any old information (it’s not quite a Wiki but it’s nearly as bad) so we’ll have to see. I doubt that such a genre favoutite actor could play such a genre favourite part without it leaking out before now, and I think he’d make a bloody awful Davros. But you never know.

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