Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

Bug Hunt

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Science, TV.

When I saw the trailers for yesterday’s episode of Primeval I wondered whether they were going to give any explanation of how the giant arthropods could survive in our atmosphere, and pleasantly they did – oxygen rich air leaking through the rift anomaly from the Carboniferous.

Then they go and spoil it by having the good looking bloke use a blowtorch right in front of the rift anomaly with no side effects what so ever. If the oxygen levels were high enough to affect the soldiers then wouldn’t any flames also be affected?

Oh, and they doubled the size of Arthropleura. There could be a larger species that simply hasn’t been found in the fossil record yet…

Science aside, it’s fun tea time nonsense, but the geek is very annoying and only Douglas Henshaw shows any signs of actually being able to act.

One last thing. We’ve all been conned. On the ITV web site for the series there’s a list of creatures. Have a look and see if you spot whats missing:

  • Coelurosauravus
  • Scutosaurus
  • Gorgonopsid
  • Giant Spiders
  • Arthropleura
  • Mosasaur
  • Hesperonis
  • Dodo
  • Parasite
  • Pteranodon
  • Agnurognathus
  • Predator

Not one of those is a dinosaur. No dinosaurs. Weren’t we promised dinosaurs? But all we get is arthropods, synapsids, and birds (I know birds are dinosaurs). Give us some proper dinos!

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Making history

Posted on in Computer Games, Magazines, Memes, My Life, TV, Work, WWW.

As we’re all blogging for history, here’s a bit about my day.

Alarm went off at 7:00. Lettice got up. I didn’t. Whoops. Staggered out of bed at 8:00 and between checking e-mail, showering, eating breakfast and faffing about managed to get into work around about 9:45. No meetings this morning so not a problem. Check work e-mail and calendar and tell the project manager that I love her because she’s worked out that in our incredibly tight schedule for the site (www.visitlondon.com) redesign I actually have no tasks allocated to me between the end of November and the sometim in February so I can take some holiday after all. But then I groan as I realise that Friday is booked up with meetings from 10-12 and then 12:30-16:00. Ouch.

Spent most of the day working on a project for our kids’ site (www.kidslovelondon.com). Nothing terribly exciting – a bit of CSS, bit of XSLT, bit of JavaScript (enforcing my own recently written coding standards to avoid document.write and use appendChild() etc.). Minor panic regarding the half term edition of the kids’ newsletter but it got sent out on time and everyone seems very happy with the new style.

Went to lunch with Lettice – she’s working at VL for a few weeks. And after that it was time for today’s round of meetings about the redesign project. Time and money versus ambition. Same as every project I’ve ever worked on. We actually have a very good team (and soon to be a much bigger team, an ad will be appear in this week’s New Media Age for six positions within the web team at VL) and doing most of the work in house will cut down on some of the headaches.

Ended up working until 18:30 which makes up for the late start, though a fair chunk of the last hour was spent playing Bang! Howdy (www.banghowdy.com) whilst waiting for other people to go through the designs of the Christmas pages with me. We need to have some pages up very soon in order to cover the switching on of the Christmas Lights.

London Bridge was busy and I just missed the 18:39. I bought this week’s New Scientist (suckered in by the ‘what would happen to Earth if humans vanished cover story) and this month’s .net (a couple of articles that I can quote mine for a brainstorm in one of Friday’s endless meetings). Ran into Séverine and we caught the 18:51 to Tulse Hill and then walked up to West Norwood together.

Home, sausages for dinner, then watched CSI: Miami with Lettice before sitting down to write this.

So there you are, not my usual sort of post and probably not of any great historical interest.

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Great sporting events

Posted on in Doctor Who, Sport.

I take it that all the shouting and honking of horns outside means that England did okay in the footie?

Doctor Who – Fear Her last night was an interesting companion piece to The Idiot’s Lantern earlier this season. Both set in London, both take place around a major televised event, both feature a single alien, both feature an abusive father, both have one of the TARDIS crew taken out of the action by the alien.

The differences – East London not North London, set in the near future not the recent past, a lonely alien child not a hungry alien monster, the haunting memory of a dead father not a n everyday living father, the Doctor captured not Rose.

Both stories also have low body counts (especially by DW standards), only the unfortunate Mr Peacock and the Wire itself died in The Idiot’s Lantern and no one dies in Fear Her.

The news reader, Huw Edwards, really hammed up those lines about the torch being a beacon of hope and love and so on. I would have preferred a couple of lines of technobabble over that.

Loved the Doctor lighting the Olympic flame. But I suspect that in reality there would be a back up runner around to take over. Anyone fancy tripping the runner up in seven years time to see?

The plot was predictable and the production seemed a little lifeless apart from the two leads – possibly David Tennant’s best performance yet and a good showing from Billie Piper. Nice to see positive Rose in full swing (literally with the pick-axe), but clingy Rose is really annoying. Oh well, nect two weeks should sort that out. 😉

Overall, another good solid 8/10.

I know I haven’t written much about Love and Monsters. I can’t think of much to write that doesn’t turn into a rant. I can’t believe that some people saw it as a negative portrayal of fans – it was incredibly positive for about fans in general, just negative about the sort of bossy, uber-fan represented by Victor Kennedy. I did enjoy it for the most part but Peter Kay’s performance kind of spoilt it for me. 8/10 for sheer novelty value and Marc Warren’s performance, maybe not something we want every week but let’s have another experiment of some sort next year.

Well, that was different.

Posted on in Doctor Who.

Love and Monsters – instant reaction, no spoilers

That was a very odd episode. I’m not quite sure it worked but I couldn’t help but love it none the less.

Oh, and I was right. Basically, it was the novel Who Killed Kennedy (notice the name? Hmmm.) being played for laughs.

More later.

Not the pits…

Posted on in Doctor Who.

…and certainly not The Pit 😉

I said at the end of my review of the last Doctor Who episode: “I do have a bad feeling about part two though.”

I was right and wrong. Or to put it another it, The Satan Pit was better than I feared but not as good as I hoped.


The one thing that new Doctor Who is bad at is resolving cliffhangers and this season is even worse than last year. After all the tension at the end of last week, what happens? Jefferson shoots the Ood, the power comes back on, and nothing comes out of the pit. Oh dear.

Maybe at some point the contrast between the action in the base and the more philosophical conflict in the caves looked good (and is a reversal of the normal pattern) but it really didn’t work. The two halves needed to be tied together a bit better.

It was good to see proactive, thinking on her feet, Rose, she’s been missing for a while. Shooting the windscreen (or whatever you call that part of a rocket) wasn’t the smartest thing in the world but if you know that you’re going to die would you rather (a) die in a little while with the devil in the chair next to you all the time, or (b) die sooner but after having the statisfaction of killing the devil? I’d go for (b) too.

The Doctor’s leap of faith when he dropped off the end of the cable into the darkeness was logical within the confines of the story (what else could he do?) and in character for the tenth Doctor (who does tend to look before he leaps, and is a hypocrite for pointing out the same flaw in the humans) but still seemed like poor writing. “We have cool descending through the darkness whilst talking philosophy with Ida scene, and we have cool confront the devil scene, but how do we get from one to the other?”

So what do we make of the Doctor’s belief in Rose that allowed him to smash the vase? What exactly does he believe? Looked at coldly, it could only be the belief that Rose would want him to sacrifice her to save the universe. But that doesn’t really fit with the emotional tone of the scene. It was a good line but sadly doesn’t make much sense.

Bad science – I can forgive almost everything except the way the rocket swung round towards the black hole when the gravity funnel collapsed. Why? Yes it would be pulled into the black hole but what caused it to rotate so that it goes nose first rather than tail first?

Design work, performances and directing were all excellent, and the number of old series references raised a smile. If only the script had been just a bit tighter and the resolution made a bit more sense then this would have been an all time classic.

I think this was a very good 9/10

Next week looks like another rummage through the Virgin scrapbook. This time taking Who Killed Kennedy and playing it for laughs.

Zesty orange death for the beeb

Posted on in Doctor Who, My Life, TV.

So last night and I went out for dinner with the weasel clan to hip and happening Sanderstead. we went to Modern Time which advertises itself as non-specific ‘Oriental Cuisine’. When I orderd the the ‘zesty orange beef’ from the menu the waitress felt obliged to warn me that it contained orange. Um, yes, I can read, I wasn’t just staring at the menu for fun for theleast five minutes and the word orange was quite clear and that’s why I ordered it. Whatever, as they say.

So once we got home we wanted to play Doctor Who back. Now this being the most important television program ever I had given it a nice generous fifteen minutes after the end, just in case. But, it goes and starts over twenty minutes late. Bastards. If you’re going to insist on showing all of the stupid football then cut some time off Graham Norton’s bloody dancing crap instead. Wankers, as I say.

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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