Year: 2010

Tuesday’s “lost about Lost?” news

25 May 2010 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

US TV

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – The Lost Stories – 06 – Point of Entry

24 May 2010 Rob Buckley Post a comment

PointofEntry.jpg“Hello, bottom of the barrel. Big Finish here. We’ve come to scrape you.”

There was an almost a point to the Lost Stories range. Adapt the Doctor Who TV scripts that for one reason never got made into shows and turn them into audio plays with as much of the original cast as possible.

That’s fair enough.

Yet here we are on just the sixth entry in the range and what do we have? A script written by Marc Platt based on a one-page A5 story outline created by Barbara Clegg (Enlightenment) for a season or other that Big Finish can’t quite determine, for a Doctor and companion equally undetermined.

At this point, surely we have to say, is this truly a lost story if it never even got beyond the pitching stage?

Quibbling aside, do you really want to hear Christopher Marlowe getting inspiration for Doctor Faustus from some Aztec gods?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – The Lost Stories – 06 – Point of Entry”

July 2010 at the BFI

24 May 2010 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Time for our regular look at what TV’s on at the South Bank in London in July. Things to look forward to include a massive look at Brian Clemens’ work (including two Q&As, one devoted entirely to The Avengers), one of Jonathan Ross’s good shows (The Incredibly Strange Film Show), two episodes of Out of the Unknown, and a reshowing of Chimera followed by a Q&A with Stephen Gallagher and director Lawrence Gordon Clark

Continue reading “July 2010 at the BFI”

TV reviews

Review: Doctor Who – 5×8 – The Hungry Earth

24 May 2010 Rob Buckley 27 Comments

The Hungry Earth

In the UK: Saturday 22nd May, 6.15pm, BBC1
In the US: Saturday 5th June, 9/8c, BBC America

Sorry to anyone who was desperate for a full review of Amy’s Choice (Why? Who are you?) last week, but I just ran out of time. All the same, I did do a mini-review of it on Friday in case you missed it.

But let’s move on to this week’s episode. With a song.

Who’s the writer who
puts terror in your heart?
He rips off everything
and he makes it three times worse.

Who’s the writer who can’t plot?
He made Torchwood what it was
and…

Oh screw it. I can’t be bothered doing any more. The chorus just goes Chris Chibnall, Chris Chibnall, Chris Chibnall, anyway.

Chris Chibnall is responsible for far and away some of the worst episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood: Cyberwoman, 42, Adrift. You can usually pretty much guarantee as soon as you see our Chibber’s name in the writing credits that the following story will go down as smoothly as milk with a sell-by date of March 1998.

Yet it seems that while he still can’t produce a classic, with Steven Moffat overseeing things, he can at least produce something with a few good moments and that doesn’t suck anywhere near as badly as Victory of the Daleks. Of course, if you were expecting him to turn in something original, you really do believe in Stevie miracles, don’t you?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 5×8 – The Hungry Earth”