Starring: Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen Writers: Malcolm Hulke, Terry Nation Director: Paddy Russell, Barry Letts Price: £30.63 (Amazon price: £12.99; BBC Shop price: £22.25) Released: January 9th 2012
It’s competition time again, you lucky people, courtesy of the BBC Shop throwing me a load of DVDs that I don’t really want. This time round, it’s your chance to win an entire box set: Doctor Who – The UNIT Files. Now this contains one Jon Pertwee six-parter featuring UNIT and that has the word ‘Invasion’ in the title, as well as one four-part Tom Baker story featuring UNIT and that has the word ‘Invasion’ in the title. Can you guess what the stories are?
Yes, it’s Invasion (of the Dinosaurs) and The Android Invasion, written by two of Doctor Who‘s old reliables: Malcolm Hulke and Terry Nation. And for once, I’ve actually sat down and watched them. Well, not the DVD extras, of course – don’t be silly.
Find out what I thought of them and how you could win them on DVD after this shiny trailer:
There’s a lot to be said for a good name. Take GCB. What’s that then? A recreational drug? Some kind of excavator? A vaccination?
Now GCB started with a good name, seeing as it was based on a book entitled Good Christian Bitches. That at least gave you a good hint as to what it was about – a bunch of Christian mean girls (well, women). But before that title could ever hit the airwaves, protest groups moved in and before you knew it, Good Christian Bitches became first the dull and unhelpful Good Christian Belles before finally becoming the useless and meaningless GCB.
Who’d want to watch GCB, huh? Watch as people skip nimbly over it in TV Guide and on their EPG*.
Now, Good Christian Bitches for all its apparent faults was at least an accurate and descriptive title. It sees Leslie Bibb (best known nowadays as the Vanity Fair reporter in the two Iron Man movies but who was the star of the previous generation’s GCB, Popular) as a former Dallas mean girl who marries a rich guy and moves to California. Nearly two decades later, her husband is running a Ponzi scheme and dies in a horrific car cash while eloping with his mistress. That leaves Bibb penniless, the mother of two teenage children and nowhere to go but home – to her mother and all the girls she used to be mean to at school who are all grown up now.
Except everyone’s changed. Now Bibb is sober and nice and all the grown-up mean girls – in particular Kristin Chenoweth – are wanting to pre-empt Bibb’s expected meanness and husband-stealing with some meanness of their own, largely during church.
Cue a desperate attempt to do Desperate Housewives but in Texas and without much actual excitement or fun. Just like the show’s title, in fact.
Starring: Kevin Conroy (Batman), Tim Daly (Superman), Susan Eisenberg (Wonder Woman), Nathan Fillion (Green Lantern), Carl Lumbly (Martian Manhunter/Ma’alefa’ak), Michael Rosenbaum (The Flash), Bumper Robinson (Cyborg), Carlos Alazraqui (Bane), Claudia Black (Cheetah), Paul Blackthorne (Metallo), Olivia d’Abo (Star Sapphire), Alexis Denisof (Mirror Master), Phil Morris (Vandal Savage) Writers: Dwayne McDuffie, Mark Waid. Director: Lauren Montgomery Price: $24.98 (Amazon price: $14.99) Released: February 28, 2012
When it comes to movies, Marvel and DC both have their specialities these days. Marvel has it sewn up at the movies, with things like Captain America, Iron Man, The Avengers, The X-Men, Daredevil, Thor et al. Sure, DC has Batman, but Superman isn’t working that well, Green Lantern wasn’t exactly brilliant and if you can’t work out how to make a movie of Wonder Woman after a decade of trying, clearly you’ve got problems.
By contrast, in the realm of animated movies and TV shows, it’s the other way round. You’d only have to have a teeny weeny, atom-sized piece of paper to write down all the decent animated shows that Marvel has put out (X-Men Evolution and that’s about it) in the last couple of decades, while DC has had Batman, Superman, Green Lantern and, of course, Justice League shows filling up the airways for years. They even did a halfway decent animated Wonder Woman movie.
Possibly their best effort was Justice League, which expanded to become Justice League Unlimited later on. That, of course, ended nearly six years ago, but now the brainiacs at DC have decided to take an old Justice League comic and create a brand new Justice League animated movie, Justice League: Doom, in which the Justice League’s arch-enemies club together to kill the League. Cleverly, DC has got together virtually all the cast from the original series, as well as Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Castle) from its Green Lantern animated TV series, Tim Daly from its Superman animated series and a great guest cast to do it.
And while it’s not outstanding, it does at least make you wonder why the hell they can’t make a proper live-action movie. Here’s a trailer.
Starring: Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen
