NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Danger! Danger! Spoilers Will Robinson!
Doctor Who season four episode 12 (‘The Stolen Earth’) spoilers are contained in the following post!

So let’s start at the beginning. Best Episode Ever? Definitely as good as series three’s ‘Utopia’ (before it then went a bit weird with parts twelve and thirteen). Why did I love it so much? Why did I squeeeee so much? Why did I yank me feet off the floor in parts and squeeze cushions and nearly drop me tea and --

Oh, alright. I’ll calm down and start at the beginning beginning.

Donna Noble. When she realises that Rose is coming right now, she’s Donna enough to remind the Doctor that even though shit is about to his reeeeeeeeally big fan, the silver lining in all of it is that, hey, Rose is back. How amazingly loyal of Donna...

So I was wrong and the planets weren’t actually obscured, really actually moved. Score one for Russell T. Davies, he’s come up with a fab masterplan. I did have a horrible thought that the Earth had been potted in a game of intergalactic bar billiards - which is why they were all stuffed in together like they were sitting in a bag - or snooker/pool table pocket. Again, I were wrong. I love it when they prove me wrong. It means it’s not as predictable as people think.

The faces in this came thick and fast: Ianto Jones - how ace is he? Very. Really really very. We love Ianto. And the fact that he watches Paul O’Grady and laffs his arse off, even when being told off by Serious Captain Jack. And Wilf the granddad - Bernard Cribbins is so bloody ace - could he be any more ace? ‘You green swine!’ ‘They always want the women!’ And him carrying his cricket bat - oh Wilf, we love you. And Sarah Jane, back again! (That rhymes.) Ace! Again, ace I say! Rose Tyler with a BFG 9000? ‘D’you like my gun?’ Fan-bloody-tastic!

Martha Jones is back, giving us a hyowj clue by revealing that her phone can’t get through to Ten. And why is that? Hmm… But it’s ok, cos that dude from ‘Dempsey and Makepeace’ (no, not Glynis Barber, Michael Brandon) is in charge over in Noo York. Aceness!

But Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, Martha, Rose - everyone who’s ever heard or seen a dalek before - they all react with such fear, such hopelessness when they hear that fatal word coming over the message system. Did anyone else hold their tea so tight their knuckles went white? (That rhymes. Again.) I didn’t. No, not me, not at all… Bet Rose is pretty pissed off - she must have thought she sacrificed enough last time, losing Nine after she thought she’d wiped out the last of the daleks and their precious emperor. I suppose she never knew the last four turned up in 1920’s New York for Ten to sort out all over again. And that tricky Dalek Caan (‘Kaaaaahhn!’) having done the impossible (but no, Cap’n Mal, that does not make him mighty). And then a whacking great dalek ship over the top of Camden! Taking potshots at pedestrians and making as much damage as possible! How excellently sci-fi is that? Oh, takes me back to the heady days of ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ and the battle to re-take Terok Nor… And then we see Martha’s point of view as Noo York get a pasting too - only fair to share the destruction about a bit, right?

And then, ho ho, what’s this? A Supreme Dalek? A red one? Who’s spouting about ‘ultimate destiny’? Does he mean the ‘Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny’? Hmm… No, possibly not. Must be another kind of Destiny we’re talking about. Dalek fleets in battle formation? Supreme Daleks giving orders? How amazing is this? This is what TV were made for!

And then Ten whisks Donna off to the Shadow Proclamation, and we get the Judoon again! Why did the TARDIS not translate the Judoon words into English for Donna / the viewers? And is it me, or did Doctor Ten say ‘bob-a-job’ to make them put their weapons away? And then them running through the missing planets, and hey-ho, there we go: Klom’s gone! Who’d want Klom? Just a poor neighbour of Raxacorricofallapitorius, isn’t it? Where Peter Kay comes from? Or sorry, the Absorbaloff. Always get those two mixed up. And Donna putting her foot down and reminding Shadow Proclamation Boss that humans are just as important as Time Lords - nice little smile from Ten, I think, too. And then Donna does the voice of the audience at home thing and reminds everyone that those planets (and the moon) missing throughout series four must be connected, Time in between be damned. And bingo!, there we are, Sherlock Holmes Ten has half of it figured out. It leads him to the natural conclusion...

And then the Valiant, designed and built under the watchful eye of the Master back in series three, takes a beating and she’s down. Bugger! The UK, the US, South Africa, Japan, they’re all getting their arses kicked. U.N.I.T.’s being decimated and Martha gets the only way out - no, not an emergency temporal shift, but close to.

And then here he is - dunt matter you can’t see his face. Dunt matter he’s in the dark, and all we get is a hand. We know him when we hear him. It’s Davros - and suddenly a knee-jerk reaction kicks in from twenty years ago and I’m half thinking about dashing behind a piece of furniture. I’m older now, some would say wiser, but that dunt mean I’m not seriously thinking about the cushion sitting next to me ont sofa. It’s the creepy voice, the little whine of electric as his bionic type support unit moves, the knowledge that at any moment the camera could pan up and bring him out of the shadows.

But we’re saved, and he’s kept in the dark for now. Cos instead we get Dalek Caan, all melty and off his meds, rambling the raves of a prophetic madman: ‘He is coming - the threefold man! He dances in the lonely places...’

Donna. We are reminded that Donna’s lost her planet, Arthur Dent stylee, except her Earth has not been demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Instead she’s apparently pondering the sound of her heartbeat - the last human, bar Rose? Is that an echo I hear in the heartbeat? Just an echo. Not a second beat. Just an echo… The girl on the stairs - what did she mean? Donna had something on her back - we know that. ‘I’ll save you’, is that what she said? How? For what purpose? And what is her coming loss? Her family? The Doctor? Herself? Is that why River Song didn’t know her?

And then Ten thinking that perhaps Donna knows summat that would have been going on before he met her. Learning from the past (Martha saying she would have voted for Harold Saxon?) or just thinking perhaps she’s going to blurt something really useful - as she has a habit of doing? And then she does - oh Donna, didn’t you just? The bees! The bees were disappearing! And then Ten confirming what we already thought - the bees ‘pulled a dolphin’ and left Earth before it was nicked. ‘So long and thanks for all the nectar’, indeed, Mr *! The Tan Doka Scale for the win!

The Shadow Proclamation ordering Ten to hand over his TARDIS and lead them into battle? Are you off your head? Quick Doctor, exit stage right (right, I said right!) before she can stop you!

And then Wilf the granddad, with his paint gun trying to take out dalek eye-stalks. Good shot! And then Rose calling him her last hope - is he Luke Skywalker in disguise? (Last hope, not her only hope. Ahem.) And then here we are - at the Medusa Cascade. Finally, after all its hype and mentions throughout the series, here we are. Looking much like a Michelangelo painting half-done. Something iffy about this place, right? Something slightly off? Like… it stops TARDISes in their tracks. It blocks out all kindsa fields and Time Lord workings - and he should know, he were there when he were just a nipper, barely ninety years old...

And it’s all over. Just like that - everyone surrenders, and the daleks reign supreme. And then here she is - where did she go? Where was she hiding after she were deposed? Why, it’s Harriet Jones - and lovely continuation of the ‘yes, we know who you are’ gag, used every time she’s in a scene throughout her career. She’s a crafty one (using Mister Copper’s ideas and help to develop her carrier system? Mister Copper from the Titanic? Excellent!). And yes, she’s a brave one. She’s prepared to do whatever it takes, and she does just that. But in doing so she brings it all down on Torchwood.

And then we know Martha Jones is back at home and perfectly fine - and with her mum. And then we get introductions but purr wee Rose is missed out. But we’ve got Murray Gold in full force with his acest music, and then get everyone doing their damndest to connect every phone in the world to try and call the TARDIS. Imagine that phone bill.

Up next is the mother of all conference calls - and even Gwen Cooper’s liking the face of Ten, while Donna’s liking the face of Boe Captain Jack. But again, purr wee Rose is left out. Big ‘aaaaaaaah!’, everyone! But he knows she’s missing, and that’s why we know summat’s going to hit the fan. There he is - it’s Davros! And he looks the same! Git!

Purr wee Ten gets the wobblies in his head, but that’s understandable - but Donna’s there, being the loyal one, trying to help him. And so Davros has built a new race of daleks - not the pansy-assed, weak-kneed bunch of fannying-about girls that we have in series three, but true daleks grown using bits of himself. Ultimate spewage, or very clever? Time will be the judge. Or will that be Dalek Caan, babbling away about ‘ever-lasting death for the most faithful companion’? He’d better not be talking about Donna Noble, or there will be Trouble. Or is it Rose Tyler, who resurrected Nine from his suicidal post-war syndrome, only to lose him through him saving her life, only to lose her new Ten to a closed-off universe? Or Martha, who trod the Earth and spread the word, through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered. She fought her way to the castle beyond the goblin city, to take back the Time Lord that the Master had stolen. I do hope it’s not Martha.

But then it all kicks off and you just know summat’s not only rotten in Denmark, but pretty much completely decomposed: Jack picks up his BFG 9000 and makes a dash for the Doctor (using the hand, in the jar, on his grating?), leaving Gwen and Ianto to the mercy of the daleks. Cheers then! Sarah Jane makes a dash for the Doctor too, leaving her son to giant super-computer John Smith (imagine her electric bill), and then Rose decides it’s high time she took matters into her own hands and finds the wayward Ten herself. And you know it’s about to go very, very Pete Tong, don’t you...

So Sarah Jane is about to get blown to smithereens for using her car. Gwen and Ianto are about to be vaporised for firing first, and Jack is left to rip Rose and Donna from the gurgling Time Lord, slowly dying on his own grating from a lucky shot by a passing dalek.

Next to his hand in the jar.

And then there is it - the moment I’ve been fearing and wishing&hoping wishing&hoping would not appear for the past three series. Ten goes into full-blown regeneration.


I’m still holding out a lot of hope that he doesn’t complete his regeneration. I’m still racking my brain to find a way for him to stay Ten. Not that giving us Eleven would be a bad thing - Time marches on, no-one can carry on forever, and surely getting over change is the whole point of a central character that regenerates every so often. (It is, and don’t called me Shirley.) It’s not the change to a new Doctor I’m worried about - it’s the end of Ten. I like Ten. He’s so unbelievably cool. He’s everything a Doctor should be. And I’m upset that I’ll have to get over that and welcome this new Eleven, if need be.

So will Doctor Ten really exit stage left? The Ood did tell him, after all. But is he really about to have to regenerate and do all that re-inventing all over again, just when the worlds need him to straighten out several million daleks and somehow stop everyone from using this Oster-Haagen key (and what is that, exactly? Cos if it rather too handily rolls back Time to put everything back as it was before characters died and people regenerated, Russell T. Davies, you’re in for a smacked bottom) or whatever it’s called. Ooh, hold on, d’you think it makes ice-cream? Like Oster-Häagen-Dazs?


I’m worn out. Well and truly. Good job Tuesday is 1st July, and therefore Hong Kong S.A.R. Day (or handover day, whatever you call it) and therefore a holiday. I’m going to be sleeping in, I think...

Soopytwist, everyone. I don’t think a peach and lube is in order - not until the end of next week’s episode.

Tags:
Doctor Who ~ David Tennant ~ Donna Noble ~ Catherine Tate ~ Dalek ~ Davros ~ Sarah Jane Smith ~ Rose Tyler ~ Billie Piper ~ Captain Jack Harkness ~ John Barrowman ~ Ianto Jones ~ Gwen Cooper ~ Torchwood ~ HHG2TG ~ Labyrinth

WISHING&HOPING WISHING&HOPING

Finally seen last weekend’s ‘Doctor bloody Who’ episode eleven: ‘Turn Left’. Thoughts?

1) ‘Doctor bloody Who’ finally goes all ‘Firefly’! Woo-hoo! You saw the entire foreign planet made of Asia, right? Was that not Persephone? Badger around too, was he? Doing his dodgy Delboy deals, wheeling and a-dealing, ducking and a-diving? Where did they leave the TARDIS, Eavesdown Docks? Just kidding. Bloody ace to see it though, had me missing Cap’n Mal Sir and Kaylee and her Parasol Of Win.

2) Donna. She’s intertwined. Wee Chan-tho actress as was reading her palm, trying to get her to carry the Time Beetle (no Paul McCartney jokes, please), calling her ‘all-powerful’ and asking ‘What are you? What will you be?’ The Doctor saying she’s been all important and mashed in there since she was born… Please please please please say she’s a Time Lord! Please please please! She doesn’t know yet, she’s been born with one heart cos she’s not old enough to regenerate yet! Come on, PLEASE say she’s a Time Lord (Lady)! Please!

3) The stars are going out. I don’t think they are. I think they’re being obscured. Which would take millions upon millions of ships. Ships that swarm and are so very many, all packed in tight, they blot out the stars. Ships belonging to a race referred to as ‘The Darkness’ (not the one formerly with Justin Hawkins) because their ships swarm from across the stars to lay siege to entire star systems. Yes, we’re talking about Daleks.

4) Could Donna be connected to Davros, who’s so obviously back next week, if the laughing Dalek on the trailer is anything to go by? Please please please please please let her be a Time Lord/Lady, not a host or requisite body part for Davros!

5) And all the bees keep disappearing? It’s either Colony Collapse Disorder or they’re all buzzing round singing ‘so long and thanks for all the honey’ before they wing it sharpish to make sure they don’t get demolished along with the entire planet, dolphin-stylee.

I’m so worried. All I have to do is get by till Saturday night - or rather, Sunday morning for me. That’s all. Easy. Easy.

Naaaaah! Give me next week’s ‘Doctor bloody Who’ now, dammit!

Tags:
Doctor Who ~ David Tennant ~ Donna Noble ~ Catherine Tate ~ Dalek ~ Davros ~ Firefly ~ Serenity ~ bees ~ HHG2TG

Interesting tit-bits

Praps I should have named that a bit different. Someone’s going to make jokes.

Still not seen ‘Doctor bloody Who’ from last weekend, but I’m getting to it. More soon on how I’m now online too - the truth may just shock you. Let’s start with a quick recap of shite as I’ve neglected to mention recently (although I’m completely willing to blame this on the lack on Tinternet, caused by my ISP).

Rumours, gossip and generally totally unsubstantiated bollocks about Led Zeppelin doing a few tour dates - which you just know are never going to be anywhere near me. I could never be that lucky. Jason Bonham all ready to go, is he? Hmm... Think I mentioned this in of my ‘Supernatural’ fan-fics, genius that I am. Dunt change the facts that (1), they ain’t going to do it, and (2) even if they did, they wouldn’t be doing it anywhere near Hong Kong.

The really shocking news is that I have a hot date next week - and he knows exactly how to make me smile. He was quite up-front about it, no bashful bollocks like so many men have done. He was really quite matter-of-fact about it. I found it refreshing. He said we could go for a stroll round Tai Koo Shing and the various shops in City Plaza, before going back to his place to watch DVDs and eat junk food - and maybe play with his computer too. How fab is that? Sounds like a perfect evening for me. There’s just one problem. The gentleman in question is four years old. The shops he’d like to look at are model and toy shops (no problem there, then) and then back to his place to watch Thomas the Tank Engine and Scooby Doo. Again, no problem there. I just can’t really see it going anywhere between us, that’s all. I mean, I’ve got twenty-seven years on him, and that’s an age gap I just can’t see us getting over. Ah well. I’ll have to let him down lightly - I don’t want to upset him. I’ll have to be subtle. I can be subtle.

We saw ‘Sex And The City’ week before last, cos Monday were a public holiday. (It were the Dragon Boat Festival, or the Tuen Ng Festival Sunday, we got Monday in lieu.) So a group of about seven of us went on down to Admiralty and that new fancy cinema thing and we laffed our fucking arses off. Well, I did. I found it at times hilarious, at times serious and actually thought-provoking (what does that say about my life?), and really quite enjoyed it. I noticed most people in the cinema were foreigners too, which could have been why the laughter kinda reverberated more loudly than I thought it woulda done. It was good though. We liked.

And so to stuff as you can buy online:

T-shirts that are right up my street: Creationism type stuff. And they have references to ‘Ghostbusters’, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and so much more! Ok, so they don’t have stuff for The Flying Spaghetti Monster, but you can get that at His church anyway.

The best damned electronic book, sci-fi style, that is available at the moment: the Amazon Kindle. Is it available in the rest of the world yet? Who knows? Who cares? It’s cool and so very ‘Star Trek’, dahling.

And not for sale, but just as fun: Don’t know how to answer that pub quiz question? Stuck as to an answer to that ‘Do I? / Do I not?’ moment? Despair no more: if yer using an iPod Touch or similar iPhone type wi-fi accessing tool, then this is for you: the Magic i-8 Ball will answer you every time! Just remember, contrary to popular belief, you never actually shake an 8-Ball, you tilt it. And so it is with the online version too.

And news for all:


And I think that’s about it. A big peach and lube to everyone tonight, and I’ll post again very, very soon.

Tags:
Led Zeppelin ~ Supernatural ~ fan-fiction ~ fan-fic ~ Sex And The City ~ Dragon Boat Festival ~ Hong Kong ~ Creationism ~ Terry Pratchett ~ Apple ~ iPod ~ Magic 8-Ball ~ Amazon: Kindle ~ Flying Spaghetti Monster

Fucking useless bastard thing!

It’s Sunday, right? So I should be sat here wi a big hyowj mug of soldier tea while I settle in to watch last night’s ‘Doctor bloody Who’.

But no.

Cos I don’t even have a copy yet.

And I’m never going to get one, the way this is going.

Far be it for my net service provider to actually provide me wi a service. So again, just 36 hours after the man came and ‘fixed it’, I’m cut off. (I've called on my trusty sidekick geek-toy, iPod [Touch] Bob III, to get online and post this. Do not think for one moment that there's been a slip-up in their perpetual ineptitude and I actually got online at home).

Why do I bother? I’m checking on Jarvis II's built-in ethernet stats and then calling Netvigator and telling em where they can stick their fucking useless piece of black plastic shit that pretends to be a wireless modem.

Wireless modem? Wireless modem? Fucking horrendous waste of space and resources is what it is. In fact, I think it doesn’t exist. It Isn’t. Cos it dunt think, so therefore it ain’t. It just sits on the windowsill, with that stupid smug shine on its plastic surface, taunting me wi dreams of being connected, when in actuality it has no intention or in fact the capability to do so. Fucking smartarse. Let’s see how fucking funny it is wi my boot up its bloody shiny plastic arse.

So my experiment in joining the up-to-date people and getting wireless didn’t work. I blame myself. I knew it could never have been that easy - I mean, trusting a company to actually deliver one modem, connect it and keep it working? Sheer fantasy! Where was my brain that day? Why did I believe any of that could have been possible? So here I am, slapping myself for being so naiive.

It’s Jarvis I feel sorry for. He’s sat here, all raring to go forth and commit amazing acts of derring-do left, right and centre, Tinternet-wise, and he can’t do a bloody thing. It’s unfair. It’s appalling. It’s like keeping a lion in a small cage. It’s rude.

I really am kicking meself for thinking that I could ever have trusted someone with my net connection. What the fuck was I thinking? Why did I do that to meself - and Jarvis? Will he ever trust me again? Will he ever believe I will again be able to provide for him? How can he look at me the same way again? I’ve failed him, I know that. And I know that saying ‘it’s Netvigator’s fault’ really, really don’t cut it. I was the one who called them to trial the new wireless modem, I was the one who made them install it, I was the one who thought one little hiccup and being cut off for three days was a minor problem (see previous post), and I was the one who believed them when they said they would fix it. And now I’m the one sitting here trying to convince myself I can make it up to poor wee Gladiator Maximus Jarvis by arranging for the old cable box back as quickly as possible. I did this. But at least I can do summat about it now.

I’m going to make meself some soldier tea anyway, and then calm down long enough to make a few calls. Who knows, I might even get on the net later to post this!

Woah, easy Tiger! Get on the net? Pssssh. That’s fanciful talk.

Tags:
Apple ~ iMac ~ PCCW ~ Netvigator

Do the monster Mac!

As some of you may be aware, my beautiful three year old Mac Mini, Jarvis, has passed. Over the counter at the Apple store. He has been succeeded - but can never be replaced - by Jarvis II. Jarvis II is a 20” 2.66GHZ 4GB SDRAM wireless everything Adonis of the computer world. The only thing he dunt do is make tea. Since he weren’t exactly built for such a task, I’ll let him off.

Getting him were easy. Call the Ultimate PC and Mac Gallery in Central (Stanley Street), reserve one as the new stock comes in. Apparently these things fly out the door (not literally; he dunt come with a jet-pack, neither) and they were waiting twenty-four hours for new stock from Apple. It seems those crafty wizards at the bright centre of the universe, namely where they think up and produce these machines, keep the bulk of their available stock for their own online sales. Which would make sense. But it also means I have to wait a few extra days to get my sweaty mits on my model. But anyway, what’s a few days when you’ve wanted one for months?

So I get him home Friday night. On paper, this were possibly the worst night to have picked him up, seeing as it’s the shortest night I’ve got all week and the one time I can’t be up till 3am due to having to be at work for 9am Saturday morning. However, it took about ten minutes to actually get him out of the box, two minutes to connect him and get him on my window ledge, and then about thirty minutes to familiarise myself with Leopard OX and Pages - the iWorks equivalent of MS Word. I shudder to think how I ran Word for Mac on Jarvis I, even though it repeatedly gave me trouble and even did this really bizarre thing: it would stop working, quit my stuff even though it were unsaved, and then simply close the programme. Is this kind of militant behaviour common in MS stuff? Does it just do what it wants, as opposed to what the user wants? Is it that rude that it would close an application with neither warning nor saving anything you’ve accomplished? Is there a word for this anti-social action? Oh, hang on, let me try the dictionary... Ah yes, here we are: ‘crashing’. Oh. Never heard of it. Must be a Windoze thing.

Anyway, long and the short and the tall of it were that it took me substantially less time than I thought to get used to it all. And while I were in perpetual awe of the very, very clear 20” screen and totally worshipping the lightning fast reactions, I did need one more thing.

A wireless modem.

Being a long-suffering-standing customer of PCCW and Netvigator, I decided to throw all caution to the wind and take them up on their current offer of a jump from my kitsch old 1970s-ish ZX81-looking wired modem to a spanking new wireless modem - that looks and feels like the black plastic cover is the most expensive thing about it.

Having to wait three days for the installation man did nothing for my impatience, but hey, at least in all that time I could transfer any files I deemed necessary and get on with really playing and getting to know my lovely shiny shiny Jarvis II without the distraction of Tinternet.

So the man comes Tuesday morning (“Madam can receive her man at 9am, Tuesday?”) and it takes him about two minutes to plug it in and ten minutes to arse about shitting himself because he has no installation CD for a Mac. When I pointed out that the last Mac I had didn’t need any installation software, and if he waited long enough, Jarvis would get annoyed and bloody well do the necessary himself, he started to click some stuff and stumbled upon the right course of action, software-wise. When I say “stumbled upon”, I mean Jarvis opened a wee window and told him to follow the steps therein. It then took a further ten minutes to set up whatever it was he were setting up.

With him over his Beavis and Butthead penchant for smiling to himself over the fact that there were two single gwaimuis (foreign birds) occupying the same flat, both shuffling round in jim-jams, he got on with it and very soon he were out the door.

I played on Safari 3.0.4, the same version I had on Tiger and Jarvis I, and everything were hunky-dory. Authorised my new Jarvis II for my iTunes account (on the UK store, as Hong Kong dunt have one and probably never will, the way people squabble over rights and management over here), downloaded new Adium X and stuff like Transmission, and were loving it.

Skip to last night. A disastrous turn at the pub quiz saw me packing it in, in favour of checking some mail and going to bed. What actually happened, as so often does in our house, were me checking mail, being sent on a wild and woolly convoluted path of a million links, attachments and MSN conversations, until eventually I minimised Safari to organise some icons I’d made. An hour later I went back to Tinternet to upload them, along with some sounds that I know Bestest Flatmate would probably like to use as her ringtone or message tone, or similar, on her phone.


And that, dear readers, is why I’m lounging on my sofa, wireless keyboard under my fingers, bitching about the bloody useless gits that supply sub-standard equipment on behalf of PCCW.

As of last night, around 3am, the modem ceased to connect. I knew it were the modem and not my settings cos (1) my settings hadn’t even been touched or viewed, (2) I can still pick up (secured) wireless accounts from every other bugger int building, and (3) my iPod Touch would connect, but as soon as you tried to find a page, it would say the network was unstable and the page could not be found.

At 3am I decided to give it up as a bad job and went to bed. This morning I find that not only is my Tinternet fucked - and by “fucked” I mean unusable as I cannot connect - but that my nowTV channels are all off. Completely. Not a flicker of a picture, not a whisp of sound, nothing. Absolutely nothing. A phonecall to 1833 833 later, during which I’ve to be careful not to swear or get angry as the nice girl does her best to find out what’s wrong, and it turns out my modem is, and I quote, “not good”. Riiiiiiiight. But that’s ok, cos the nice lady will send another man, and he’ll make it work. Let’s skip my truck-load of scepticism and get to the real issue: he can’t come till Friday. Friday 8pm - 10pm, to be precise.

So, thanks to PCCW, I have no cable/satellite TV or Tinternet until Friday night. Thanks, PCCW, I love you! You are the greatest! You are fab! You’ve cut me off for TWO FUCKING DAYS because yer fucking modem is shite. Well thanks! Let’s add up all those times I’ve had to call you because the fucking nowTV channels don’t work, as well, shall we? Hmm... I called twice last week, and once a week for perhaps two weeks before that. Something tells me I’m backing the wrong horse.

And here I am, Wednesday night for me, wondering why nothing in Life is as reliable as a Mac. Please, someone tell me they’ve had no trouble with their wireless modems or shifting Tinternet. I wouldn’t mind so much, but I’m paying for services I can’t use. And that’s just robbery, the way I see it.

But then, if yer reading this then they’ll done summat to fix the situation. Not before bloody time - especially as it shouldn’t have fucked up int first place.

* UPDATE: It’s now Friday night and the man has been - and found the fault lies with the building. Apparently, we “weren’t getting a good signal strength” from our connection to the building, and that were affecting our net connection and consequently our nowTV channels. All fixed now. We’ll see how long it lasts, eh.

So all is right with the world again - I have my 'net back, and even the TV is working. Bloody marvellous.

Tags:
Apple ~ iMac ~ PCCW ~ Netvigator ~ nowTV ~ Microsoft ~ Windows ~ iPod

Forest and Vashtas and Screwdrivers, oh my!

So I missed my write-up of last week’s ‘Doctor bloody Who’, namely ‘Silence in the Library’. But I’m making room, space, Time and excuses to be able to post about last night’s conclusion of the two-parter, ‘Forest of the Dead’ – cos it were just that bloody ace.

I can hear her heart beat for a thousand miles
And the heavens open every time she smiles
I’m coming to her, that’s where I belong
I’m running to her like a river song…

Sorry, where was I? Got a bit distracted there. Oh, Doctor Who, right then…

Where do you start with such a bloody fab episode? So part one were all tingly Columbo more questions than answers, and Donna getting saved – just not in the way we think – and everyone else being picked off one by one. Which was pretty cool. I mean, shadows eating people? Excellent. Trust a genius like Steven Moffat to take the ordinary, the mundane, and make nightmare material out of it. Loved the fact that books are still around and being kept like that – and it’s a family business. But more of that later, I’m sure.

The extra characters were all fab and needed – loved that the dumbass dappy bint kinda saves the day a bit toward the very end. And Proper Dave and Other Dave? How fucking ace is that? Knowing two Daves myself, they’re given two names too – Our Dave and Her Dave. So finding other people strung across the far reaches of some fictional universe also do this is just hilarious. It’s a small universe after all. But Professor River Song – all professional and confident and clever and just really, really fab. How fab was she? Well she had to be, really, or she wouldn’t end up being told the Doctor’s name. And the one time he can actually tell someone his name would be what, exactly? Hmm… A few hundred guesses abound here, and some vague clues were scattered about like M&Ms marking the path of a wandering hero. And her not being awed by him, cos he’s not as grand, mighty, amazing or simply Doctor-ish as he will be one day – far in his personal Timeline, I’m assuming. (Loved the snapping of the fingers to open the TARDIS at the end. See? He doesn’t know everything. But then, that’s why he travels, right?)

And the little girl-cum-computer has my wee sister’s name! So my sister ends up in a library with all the books she could possibly hope to play with? I assume there’s an entire section devoted to photo-books and biographies of Johnny Depp, or she’s not going to like it much.

So The Doctor’s real name, then? I’m assuming that finding out what the name is, is astronomically less important than finding out that he’s actually told someone what it is. In a ‘Ronin’ kinda way – we don’t need to know what was in the case, just that it was a MacGuffin, or a case of self-sealing stem-bolts (and thanks again, Mr *, for teaching me this phrase!). Of course, most people who knew this series before New Who would already know his name – at least, the name he was supposed to have before ditching it like it burnt his fingers, way back in his Academy days – am I right? The days when even The Master had a real name, too. But that’s another story…

Talking of names: Donna Noble. Ain’t she just? I’m so very, very glad Catherine Tate came along for the ride – and that the writers team over there know how to write female characters – and especially one for her. She is ace, and my mate MSP is right – she could well have been Doctor Eleven had things been different. The after-math of the whole recalling all saved people shebang, and her being wise enough to know when poor Ten is so not alright, was lovely. The little looks between them and their chemistry is wonderful – and it’s all about being friends. That’s what I like – it’s all about the running, giggling, screw-drivering, mysterying, fun stuff. Not the angsty romance cack.

And spoilers – how excellent. How perfectly superb of Mr Moffat to bring in something that fans fight over, and with, all of the time. Whether it’s on fan forums or fan-to-fan, word of mouth or whatever, doesn’t everyone, at some point, agonise over whether to read that spoiler that came in or not? I know I did it at the end of series three, and I’ve been careful to only get sketchy details for the end of this current series four. And I’m adamant, absolutely adamant, that I will most definitely not be reading ANY spoilers for the coming season four of ‘Supernatural’, as I really, truly do not want to know what’s coming. I have faith in Sam, and in a perverse way, Dean, too. NO – not that meaning of perverse – the other one! Easy tigers! (Although.... No! Stop it!)

Anyway, spoilers being a recurring theme was clever and aimed right at fans and non-fans right across the Whoniverse. Another thing we’ll love Steven Moffat long time for. He knows what most people want, and he knows how to wrench everything he can from his audience. Not with a whimper of sentimental crap, but a bang that The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe’s other branch, the Big Bang Burger Bar, would be proud of, and rightly so. That’s how you make your audience cry with sorrow, relief, and happiness. That’s how you make people buy into the myth, the man, the legend that is The Doctor. And that’s why I watch New Who – cos sometimes, just sometimes, when Russell T. Davies int doing his best to pour saccharine all over it, it’s the best damn telly we’re ever going to get from the Beeb. No question.

‘When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it will never end. But however hard you try, you can’t run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call… everybody lives.’

Tags:
BBC ~ Doctor Who ~ David Tennant ~ Donna Noble ~ Catherine Tate ~ Steven Moffat ~ River Song ~ Alex Kingston ~ spoilers

Yeah – what? No!

Busy week. Insane. Crazy-ass fucking non-stop week. So as I’m standing under my umbrella in the torrential thunderstorm, sweating from my eyelids cos it’s bloody hot, trying to catch up with what I did this morning – and it’s not even eleven o-clock yet – I’m saved from my swirling gravitational pull of Busy and Rushed Off Me Feet by iPod Bob III.

Just when I’m thinking I’m too busy for anything, let alone waiting the two minutes I need fert bus, Bob sweeps in there and reminds me I’m just letting it get out of hand. I need perspective. I need someone to smack me upside the head and say, ‘You think you’re busy? Ppsshh, this ain’t busy. Get a grip,’, and then everything will be alright again.

So Bob, thanks. Thanks for organising shuffle mode to bring me ‘Strange Religion’ by Mark Lanegan, just when I needed it.

I’ll be back very very soon – the Mighty Mac is arriving this evening (Jarvis II) and I have wireless broadband to get in and sort. And stuff.

Singing…

Can you stay here next to me?
We’ll just keep drivin’
Because of you I see a light
The Buick’s a Century, a ‘73 like you
Some strange religion

Tags:
iPod Touch ~ Mark Lanegan