Audio and radio play reviews

Doctor Who: A potted eighth Doctor guide

Paul McGann as the Eighth DoctorWell, Poly asked for it so here’s the definite but brief guide to the televised/audioised adventures of the Eighth Doctor. Basically, the TV movie and the Big Finish stories. I’m steering clear of novels, web animations, et al.

I’ll try to keep the reviews very brief, and hopefully you’ll all benefit from knowing the peaks and troughs of the first and only Scouse Doctor Who’s adventures.

I’ll start off with the TV movie as an example: don’t bother unless you watch it with the sound down, you’re drunk, you just want to see Sylvestor McCoy shot or you want to watch fanboys froth as they try to explain how the Doctor is/isn’t half-human.

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Happy Second Birthday, Blog

Happy Birthday, The Medium is Not Enough. Yes, two years ago (sort of, subject to blog migration, blog splitting, blog reunions, etc), this blog emerged into the light of the Internet with its first two posts: a preview of the still-popular Prison Break, the not-unpopular Supernatural and the still-unseen Global Frequency; and tedious cruft about The Omega Factor (which I’m still just about to write a review of, amazingly enough).

Oddly enough, that paragraph, more or less, was how I greeted the blog’s first birthday and it’s still true. Plus ça change…

In our second year, what have I discovered?

  1. Y’all are still kind of interested in David Tennant and Doctor Who, but less by Torchwood
  2. Time may march on but before, during and after every episode of The F-Word, everyone will be dying to know who wrote the theme tune
  3. The “What I learned/learnt from last week’s television” strand was a bad idea, since I didn’t learn enough, it turned out
  4. People really like having a bullet-pointed list of media news items each morning
  5. I can never get people’s names right. Actually, that’s not new

We’ve also launched The Carusometer, wide-eyed and blinking behind its dark-as-night sunglasses, onto an unsuspecting world. Will it ever be the same? Not by the time the “full season” Carusometer arrives, it won’t.

I’d like to say a great big thank you again to Anna, Holyhoses Rob, Jason, Lisa, Marie, Matt, Rosby, Scott, Stu and all those who lurkers who have stayed with me since year one. I’d also like to thank the new arrivals – Iko, Poly, Mark, espedair, Linda, cindylover1969, Fraser, Kev, Craig, Lesley, Jonathan, Phoenix – for making the blog even more fun this year, and for all the lurkers out there (you know who you are) for elevating my visitor stats to the point where I don’t feel humiliated every day. All I can do is try my best to keep you all entertained and hope you stick around.

Thanks for sticking with me!

Bloggy birthday news

Happy birthday, blog!

Doctor Who

  • David Tennant has been bombarding RTD with texts because The Master has (spoiler: highlight to reveal) a bigger, flashier sonic screwdriver, which Tennant complains is an “outrageous” snub to the time lord, according to the Daily Star which is too pikey to have a proper web site I can link to
  • Guess which pop stars will make cameo appearances soon
  • Russell confesses to having lied when he said he wasn’t going to bring back the Master

Books

  • Do hackers know how Harry Potter ends?

Film

British TV

US TV

Technology reviews

Review: Apple TV 1.2

Most people won’t care, but Apple today updated its Apple TV device to include YouTube support

YouTube

It also updated it with a couple of other useful extras at the same time. You can now select the appropriate iTunes Store for your country to make sure the “iTunes Top TV episodes” and “iTunes movies” options don’t appear unless you’re in the US because you can’t buy bloody anything from the iTunes Store unless you’re in the US.

Apple TV store

You can also sort things by date, which is helpful if you don’t name your files properly or the cocking useless Apple TV sorts things out of order.

Date sorted Apple TV

How about a “play stuff that’s recorded in some format I might actually have” option, Apple?

US TV

Review: Meadowlands 1×1

Meadowlands

In the US: Sundays, Showtime, 10pm ET/PT

In the UK: Coming soon to Channel 4

Now here’s curious. We have a co-production between UK network Channel 4 and US cable network Showtime. It’s made by British production company Ecosse Films. It’s filmed in Britain. It’s set in Britain. It’s cast is almost entirely British.

But it’s airing in the US first.

How’s that work then?

More to the point, it’s also very British – very Channel 4, in fact –  which makes me wonder what Showtime sees in it. We have a family, headed by David Morrissey, who have to enter the witness protection programme. They wind up in Kent in a strange little town called Meadowlands populated by strange little people. And it’s all very, very bleak – and very very strange.

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