Posted
on January 2, 2008 | |
Ah Charley. How we'll miss you. Well, assuming we've not been listening to any of your stories since the Divergent Universe disaster.
When Big Finish was starting up and figured it could invent a few new companions of its own, Charley was the only one of the new companions who could be described as good or popular (sorry Evelyn and Erimem fans). Enthusiastic, actually wanting to travel with the Doctor for a change and with a good chemistry with the eighth Doctor, she made even the cruddier stories tolerable. We also were treated to a precursor to the Rose/Doctor romance that was tastefully done and with a near-adult depth that the onscreen equivalent would be sorely lacking.
Then C'rizz turned up, the writers forgot how to write for Charley, the romance wasn't so much nipped in the bud as snapped off at the root without any real explanation and the best companion of the Big Finish range quickly became a next generation Tegan or Adric.
As people have been surmising since Sheridan Smith landed the BBC7 companion gig, Charley's days have been numbered for quite some time. Following the departure of C'rubbish in Absolution, we now have Charley's swansong in The Girl Who Never Was. Written by her creator, Alan Barnes, it gives us more than a few reminders of why she was once so good as well as few bemusing moments that I will now coin a new adjective to describe: Bigfinishian.
Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - The Girl Who Never Was"
Read other posts about: Big Finish
Posted
on January 2, 2008 | |
Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to the future. My, isn't it shiny and – oh dear – relatively bereft of new US television thanks to the ongoing writers' strike. Oh well. What shall The Medium is Not Enough do?
Happily, there's always British TV (oh, Father. Why hast thou foresaken me?), Big Finish plays, movies and DVDs. Depending on my omnipresent blood-pressure monitor, social engagements, how many of my limbs are broken at any one time and that cruel, merciless arbiter of life and time that we call “work”, I'm hoping to launch a couple of new features over the coming month, including “It's in my DVD collection and it should be in yours, too”, “The Sepia-tinted Carusometer” and reviews of some of the older Big Finish plays. I'm also hoping to do episode-by-episode reviews of Primeval and Torchwood when they hit us in the faces with the subtlety of softcore gay porn that also happens to include dinosaurs. I also taped Sense and Sensibility. Maybe I'll review that. Certainly, a review of Return to the Web Planet will be coming your way soon.
There is also the ongoing readers' survey. So far, only a few replies - by which I mean four - which isn't all that promising, but it has given me a few ideas. The Carusometer, for instance, is going to do less talking - how appropriate.
But come on guys, let me know what you want – if you don't use it, you'll lose it! I'm still sorely tempted (despite my workaholism kicking in having been exposed to today's milligram of work) to drop it, but if another three to five people say they find it useful (they don't even have to use their real names), I'll keep it on. The survey will continue until the 11th and the news will continue on until then at least.
TTFN!
Read other posts about: Primeval
Posted
on January 2, 2008 | |
Anyone here from the UK watch the Christmas episode of Extras? I watched the US version and I can't help but notice that the reference to The Catherine Tate Show in the trailer wasn't in it. Was it in the UK version or has it been deleted everywhere?
Posted
on January 3, 2008 | |
Welcome to 2008, news readers, the year everything changes. Don't forget to vote for the daily news in the reader survey if you want it to continue!
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Posted
on January 3, 2008 | |
In the UK: Wednesday 2nd January, BBC4
BBC4 likes themes. It likes seasons. It like evenings. It likes repeats a lot. Sometimes, they're good, such as the now-traditional yearly Ghost Stories seasons.
Sometimes, though, you have to ask yourself, “What's the point?” Sure, somebody, somewhere liked Dance Britannia and is grateful that finally someone has seen the sense to put on a sort of social history thing about dancing. But even fans of Gerry Anderson – you know, the guy behind all those 60s puppets series like Joe 90 – must be wondering who exactly was supposed to have gained anything from BBC4's 'Thunderbirds night'.
Continue reading "Review: Thunderbirds night"
Read other posts about: ITC shows
Posted
on January 4, 2008 | |
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Posted
on January 4, 2008 | |
Just caught tonight's episode of Celebrity Mastermind with Danny Wallace, Nicholas Parsons, that bald veggie restauranteur and that Scottish one off Loose Women who looks like she's sucking a wasp (and acts like it). An interesting collection of specialist subjects: the history of Tranmere Rovers; the life and works of Edward Lear; the lives of the Pankhurst women; and, erm, Ghostbusters. See if you can match the subject to the celebrity. It'll be really easy.
Anyway, I got to pondering a couple of things. You see, there's a thin line you have to tread with your specialist subject. Obviously, you have to be good at it for one thing. But there's a kind of social snobbery with it. "What's that? Your specialist subject is 'Chantelle off Celebrity Big Brother'? Okay... Mine's the Aeneid and its relationship with medieval Latin poetry. Is that you fetching your coat?"
I'm not sure I'd have had the balls to go on with Ghostbusters as my specialist subject.
But I'm not sure what my specialist subject would have been. 'TV's a little too broad. 'US TV' would confine me to a dungeon of Dallas, Dynasty and Dawson's Creek, knowing my luck. 'Doctor Who' really wouldn't get me anywhere at all, since the questions would be set by someone who's memorised every second line from the annuals and wants to know what kind of toy Davros used to entertain baby Daleks with. Plus it would be a bit nerdy. But picking a non-nerdy TV subject (eg Play for the Day, the works of Carla Lane, The Sopranos) carries with it all the joy of learning the Highway Code and eating your greens, and I don't really have the time to brush up on four seasons of The Wire (fifth starting on Sunday).
So I'm still thinking.
How about you? What would your socially acceptable, TV-related specialist subject be?
Read other posts about: The Wire
Posted
on January 6, 2008 | |
Mention The Web Planet to almost any Who-er, and you'll likely as not get a great big smirk in response. It was a story written in the Hartnell days before anyone really 'knew' what Doctor Who stories were supposed to be like. A rather brave attempt at hard SF, it involved the planet Vortis, a world populated entirely by various giant-sized species of insect and absolutely no humans other than the Doctor and his companions.
Yes, giant butterflies, ants and larvae on a budget of £2 7s 6d, back before anyone had anything like the technology to do it properly. You can imagine what it was like, even if you've never seen it. Go on, imagine it.
Tee hee.
Fortunately, audio plays don't have this problem so Big Finish, throwing the fifth Doctor and Nyssa at the world of the Menoptera, Zarbi and Venom Grubs, can let their imaginations run wild, content in the knowledge that we'll do the rest of the work.
Yet somehow, it's almost impossible not to think one thought while listening to Return to the Web Planet: "Tee hee".
Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - Return to the Web Planet"
Read other posts about: Big Finish
Posted
on January 7, 2008 | |
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Posted
on January 7, 2008 | |
Douglas Adams once wrote about an Electric Monk. The idea of the Electric Monk was that it was a labour saving device. As Adams put it, just as a dishwasher is there to wash dishes so that you don't have to, and a video recorder is there to watch TV programmes so that you don't have to, so the Electric Monk believes things for you, so that you don't have to.
That was in the 80s, of course. Cross out video recorder and replace it with PVR and you have the 00s truism. Still no Electric Monks though. Curses. I really would like to believe ITV will get better one day - or at least have someone believe it for me.
Sitting on my PVR/Apple TV are the Christmas editions of Extras (I'm a third of the way through it and not enjoying it tremendously) and To the Manor Born (haven't watched it but I've heard terrible things about it) to name but a couple, as well as a multitude of movies that I thought worth watching. I didn't have to watch much of The Mothman Prophecies to realise it wasn't, but I've still to make that determination on a number of things.
Plus I'm still glad to have Firefox, Quatermass and the Pit and Hawk the Slayer there, even if I'll never watch them. That's nostalgia for you.
In part the reason everything's sitting there unwatched is because some mad fools bought me DVDs for Christmas/birthday, so I had too much to watch. It's also because I'm not spending all of Christmas watching TV, even if it is the complete box set of Airwolf or Ulysses 31 (or, and don't go too wild, Artemis 81. I do put some odd things on my Amazon wish list sometimes).
But I did watch a little. And even though it's a good fortnight on, I thought I'd leave a couple of thoughts for posterity on Christmas with Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal's Perfect Christmas Dinner and Doctor Who's Voyage of the Damned (other reviews are available and have been for a good long while now).
Continue reading "Christmas tele"
Read more on What have you been watching this week? (w/e 3 July)