Friday’s unwanted news

Doctor Who

  • Fiver acquires K-9
  • Steven Moffat talks about filming the first scene of the new series and more [spoilers]

Film

Theatre

French TV

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – 131 – Survival of the Fittest

Survival of the Fittest coverWhen last we left the seventh Doctor in Big Finish land, he’d decided it was a cracking good idea to take a time-travelling Nazi scientist on a grand tour of the universe with him.

As you do. Can’t see anything going wrong there, can you?

Nevertheless, said scientist, Dr Elizabeth Klein – who is from an alternative universe in which the Nazis won World War 2 – is now the Seventh Doctor’s companion in his travels through time and space.

Of course, with the great big ‘Nazi’ thing hovering over her, do you think the Big Finish writers could resist writing a story about the struggles of a ‘master race’ trying to obtain lebensraum? Of course not, which is what we have with Survival of the Fittest.

Nevertheless, despite its occasional ladelling on of the sub-text, Survival of the Fittest is actually a very decent, intelligent hard SF story. It’s also preceded by an equally interesting episode-long flashforward to Klein’s future which sees a guest visit by the eighth Doctor.

Unfortunately, there’s also the concluding part of The Three Companions tacked on the end. Couldn’t go five for five, could we?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 131 – Survival of the Fittest”

Random Acts

Random Acts of Ali Larter: Envying Mad Men

Ali Larter in Resident Evil Afterlife

Those set interviews from Resident Evil: Afterlife just keep rolling in. Now our Ali’s talking about what movies she’ll be doing next, as well as what TV.

I was just hearing that some scripts were being sent up. For me, it’s like I’ve gotten my dose of this, I’ve gotten to do some great dramatic stuff, especially working on Obsessed, which was an incredible experience for me. Now, maybe a little comedy or, I don’t know. Maybe a love story. Who knows? We’ll see what’s next.

It turns out that as well as having a few doubts about whether/how long she’ll be in Heroes for, she envies Mad Men.

You also see when you go onto cable and they allow the creators to have their vision. You look at Mad Men and he’s like, in every, they don’t come shouting down. There’s not ten studio heads screaming at them, they have to rewrite this or rewrite that or overwrite it to over explain it. For me, we’ll see how long I’m on the show and if I do go into television again, it will be in a situation where, whoever the creator is, has the power to keep their vision clean. And that’s to me what I think the greatest problem is right now on network.

Q: You’re a fan of Mad Men?

Oh, who isn’t? It’s so spectacular and, you know, I’ll laugh with my husband when we watch it after because you just thinking, “Three minutes have gone by and no one’s said anything.” Isn’t that amazing. You get to live and breathe with these characters and as an actor, that’s one of, at least for me, one of the most thrilling things is being able to discover things in the moment and there’s not a lot of room for that in a lot of movies. So, that’s one side of it. Maybe I’ll get to do a little breathing after this.

Look, here’s a trailer for the movie, you lucky people, and you can listen to the interview here.

Have you seen Ali Larter acting randomly? If so, let us know and we’ll tell everyone about it in “Random Acts of Ali Larter

Thursday’s doubly lush news

Doctor Who

Film

Theatre

  • NT Live to show Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein and Hamlet

British TV

US TV

Question of the week: what shows have you given up on or given a second chance to this season?

A year or so ago, back when this was meme of the week, I asked the question:

Which TV shows have you stopped watching recently and why?

It feels like the time to ask the question again. I’ve ditched CSI, CSI:Miami and 10 Things I Hate About You on the general grounds they were wasting my time and not entertaining me. But how about you? Ditched FlashForward yet? Abandoned Heroes this season?

Alternatively, if you prefer, answer the flipside question:

Which TV shows have you given a second chance to, and were you glad or annoyed that you did?

I gave Spartacus: Blood and Sand a second chance and was surprisingly pleased. I nearly gave up on 24 but held on until it started to get good again. I tried Ashes to Ashes again and wasn’t impressed at all, so I’ve given it up again. If you gave up on Stargate Universe you should probably give that a second chance, by the way, and Heroes this season was really a whole lot better than Volume 3 (if not brilliant).

But how about you?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.