Writing and stuff

For those of you just joining us, I write quite a bit. Right now, I’ve got five books of a space opera / sci-fi saga written, one of which is completely sorted and in the hands of a few agents, in the hopes that someone will want to sell it to publishers for me. I’ve also got another sci-fi book going on, but that’s nothing at all to do with spaceships and planets and new languages and cultures and dead people and bad guys and such. Well alright, it has one bad guy, obviously. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a book. But when that stalls and I just can’t get anything done on it, it’s fan fiction I play with. Right now I’m in the middle of a ‘Supernatural’ and ‘Sherlock’ crossover. It’s actually going pretty well, although I’m not too impressed with chapters five or six - they need overhauling. I’ve already done a ‘Supernatural’, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Torchwood’ threesome (oh no, people, no! I don’t do slash!), and a ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Doctor Who’ crossover, so this seemed like a proper giggle.

Aside from this, and taking into account that I can’t seem to make an agent want my stuff so far, I’ve just started a course with The Writers Bureau. Hopefully, this will eventually get me work as a freelance article writer. From there, apart from giving up my day job in time, it might help me get an agent. That’s the plan, anyway.

It’s kind of making me rethink everything I expected of my life. I always knew I’d never have a ‘normal’ job - routines and habits are really hard to keep. I can’t even be arsed to keep smoking. But a freelance writer? Finding jobs and submitting stuff and keeping myself in jobs that way? Risky, obviously. It’s not guaranteed work and it’s not guaranteed money. But hey, if I can sell a few books too, maybe it’d be ok. And to be a freelance person, you have to pretty much go out and see stuff - coffee shops don’t cut it. Trips across the harbour even (gasp!), concerts, films, restaurants - activity type stuff. Which means I’ll have to leave the house, but then again, it’s going out to do all the things I really want to do anyway. So it’s all good.

Apart from writing, I’ve also had a stonking good time with a ‘Supernatural’ rewatch - starting with the pilot. At time of writing, I’m up to 2x10 (Croatoan). Bloody good fun all round. It was season seven that reminded me how good the series could be, after season six was distinctly lacking. Anyway, the blow-by-blow account of the rewatch is here.


What else? Or yes. I’ve decided that Life never stops long enough for me to make the changes I want, so I’m giving Life two fingers and doing what I want anyway - i.e., joining a proper gym and getting back into some martial arts. Wing Chun, to be exact. I cannot wait - and I don’t say that about a lot of things that don’t include Christian Bale or Jeremy Renner. I have a kind of induction to get through and then it’s boot camp/pilates/Wing Chun time. In a word: HUUURRGH.

That’s pretty much it. It looks like I’m back to blogging after all. I’ve been having so much fun on tumblr it’s unreal, but sometimes you want a proper bit of text, rather than sixteen million snippets and half-sentences and amusing dancing gifs.

So there we have it. Soopytwist.

Tags:

fan-fic ~ Supernatural ~ Sherlock ~ writing

Space Oddity

Had the weirdest dream last night. Not just whoa-what-the-fuck-was-that but completely I-have-to-stop-eating-cheese-or-I-really-will-die-of-the-dream-side-effects.

It concerned myself and a party - a big party. Only when I arrive, my friends and my wee sister are there too. I’m on the doorstep, and then it opens without me ringing the bell (except I know I do). I go in the hallway and one of my mates waves me through to the front room. When I get there, everyone I like is there. Everyone is cool, everyone is happy, and everyone is pleased to see everyone else.


Anyway, I go in and reach the table at the far side - which, by the way, is laden with every kind of alcohol in the universe. Quite literally - there’s a huge punch bowl and it has reinforced legs, as if the contents are unbelievably heavy. There’s a ladle hanging by it with a sign that says ‘do not leave in the drink’, and then underneath that in big letters it says ‘PAN-GALACTIC GARGLE BLASTER. LIMIT ONE PER GUEST. WE’RE NOT INTO MURDER.’


I ignore this and go to the flavoured vodka instead, and they’ve got a Sodastream doing mango-ade (don’t ask). I add this to the mango vodka and I’m happy as Larry - who is standing across the other side of the room, talking to poor Will who keeps getting shot at. Anyway, next thing I know, someone’s trying to get past me to get to the mango vodka - the only bottle no-one else is touching. Whoever it is says ‘sorry, can I just get to the - bloody hell! I didn’t know you’d be here!’


I’m thinking ‘I know that voice from somewhere’, and then I turn around and there he is: Ianto Jones. Charcoal-black suit, nice waistcoat, dark blue shirt and matching tie. He looks genuinely pleased to see me. I ask if we’ve met and he says something like ‘actually, no, but I know you because--’. From there it gets fuzzy. I know we talk for ages and we laugh and ignore everyone watching us. It’s weird - almost like Jadzia Dax and Dr Lenara Kahn, pretending they don’t know everyone’s staring at them. Finally we go out into the garden because it’s late and some people are drifting home. We don’t care; we’re still chatting away and then he says something like ‘I hope you’re not thinking of going home’. I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about, so he explains that it’s his house and he doesn’t want me to go home so early.


One thing leads to another, and the next thing I know, we’re playing on the PS3. I think it’s Tekken - whatever version there is of that going around. Everyone else has gone home. Eventually the sun comes up and I realise we’ve been playing all night. Then he makes up a bed for me in the spare room and I go to sleep, really not caring about anything.


When I wake up it’s midday and he’s in the kitchen downstairs, making coffee (of course). I go down and we have a friendly argument about tea. I win, he agrees to get a Tassimo machine with English and Scottish Breakfast if it’ll make me come round more often, and then the rest of the dream descends into porn.


Like I said: weird.

I don’t even fancy Ianto. He’s like Sam Tyler. He’s... brother-ish. Kinda. Friend-ish. But there we go. Answers on a postcard, please.

Tags:
Torchwood ~ Ianto Jones ~ Gareth David-Lloyd

Torchwood 4

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be Torchwood 4x10 SPOILERS!


Where do I start? Hmm... First things first.

Hands up all those who were really really nervous about Starz Network paying for this series of Torchwood? I must admit, I was a bit sceptical. And then I saw the opening episode.

True, it was more of an introduction to the concept of Torchwood than an actual full-on episode, and it wasn’t anywhere near the standard of usual Torchwoodery... but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and go with it. Subsequent episodes got better and better - and then I got my miracle:

All the way through series one, two and especially three, I tolerated Gwen Cooper. She wasn’t always annoying; she had a few moments where I almost got to like her. And then the writers would make her do something that made me wish she’d died instead of Suzie - or Owen, or Tosh, or just about anyone. Her compassion came over wrong - I began to dislike her.

And then we had series four.

During the first couple of episodes I thought, hang on, she’s not so annoying right now. She hasn’t been the whole time. And just about the third episode I thought, blimey, she’s actually a character I actively like. And I mean LIKE. Not as much as Jack, but hey, that’s impossible. I actually didn’t want her to die in a fire, or get mowed down by a dalek, or eaten by a rabid bugblatter beast from Traal. And from there she just got better and better. Truly miraculous.

Now I have a few theories about this. The first goes, rather predictably, that now that RTD is no longer writing the episodes, the character has to act like every other in terms of pulling their weight within the dynamic of the team - they no longer have a free pass to hang about being The Speyshall One. Now they have to actually do something that makes a fandom / casual watcher / audience member want them to be there (or, in case of recurring villains, make everyone love to hate them). The second theory, and probably a much more plausible one, is that the character of Gwen was now being written by a woman. A woman who’s written for shitloads of other women in TV. Now I’m not exactly sure what difference that makes, but whatever it was, it was a big one. What do I take from this? That RTD doesn’t write women very well? Or it needed a female American scriptwriter to give Gwen a proper character? Who knows.

Funny I should put it like that. I did like the many little nods to the Doctor throughout the series. From Jack going a bit misty-eyed about telling Angelo about the Doctor and his companions to mentioning Silurians, there were a few tiny touches I liked - even the ubiquitous ‘What? What? What?’ got in there. Coincidence? Or a fun way to remind everyone that this was a finale that had another series coming? (Note - we can hope there’s another series coming. I haven’t looked but no news has been brought to my attention on that point. I really need to spend a day on Tinternet. You see how going abroad screws up your routine?)

An honourable mention must go to Kai Owen - he went with the lines, he did them well, and he will always be a favourite of mine. I’m so glad he wasn’t side-lined completely. We saw enough of him to make me happy.

Jack. We love Jack, that goes without saying. But put him in a room with a sci-fi legend like Bill Pullman and you have a very interesting chill to the room. Bill Pullman does excellent work, and this time he really made my flesh crawl. Bloody excellent. Even his end was enough to make me want to stab him in the eye. The new cast and crew were tolerable at first, and better as it went on. We lost people, yes, but it was part of the story, not just to shock - although they did that too. And talking of shocking - it was about time Jack got his end away. He did mention fallen comrades and previous relationships (was I the only one who liked that he talked about Ianto - twice?), and he did the Jack thing and helped himself wherever he wanted. And that’s why we like him.

And talking of guest stars - whoa! Nana Visitor and John de Lancie? Are you shitting me? I nearly died of happiness fangirl overload when Major Kira and Q appeared. Both characters shamefully underused but brilliantly cast. I’ll never agree with what happened to them both, but that’s just a fangirl throwing her toys out of the pram because what happened to her favourites was not what she wanted personally. They’re both still fab - who else could be the balls-out granddaughter, or running the bloody CIA? Suffice to say, I’m sighing rather happily right now.

In a nutshell - I liked it. It took time to get going, that’s for damn sure, but it got there in the end. It’s even eclipsed the current series of Doctor bloody Who in my priority stakes - but that’s a discussion for another day. Overall, it did the job. It was business as usual at the Torchwood Institute, and whether moaning anti-Americans liked it or not, it did exactly what Hot Rod Cow’s been doing for the past three series. The only gripe I had was that there were no aliens. Perhaps now that this series has paved the way for more coverage in the US, and hopefully, more of a budget and a need for a series five, we might get them. After all, no matter what Gwen says, it’s the alienness of the show that drew me, and that’s what I was waiting for. No, I didn’t get it - throwaway lines about alien technology and futures, other stars, other adventures with the Doctor only go so far. Now the US has had this primer, it’s time to bring in the aliens.

That’s it, I’m done. Time to catch up on Doctor bloody Who with tea and hope that we’re not about to be swamped in more Amy-appreciation.

Peach and lube, people. Especially you, John Barrowman.

Tags:
Torchwood ~ John Barrowman ~ Doctor Who ~ Starz

Assorted ramblings

Has it really been so long since the last time I made a blog post? Ok, maybe it has. I could try to make some excuse as to why I’ve not written owt on this blog for what seems like a hundred fucking years, but it would probably seem like some kind of cop-out. And I don’t mean that in a John Cusack kind of way.

You see, my life is very complex (and not in a Michael Keaton Batman kind of way). It generally revolves around doing it as much of all the things I want as possible, and ignoring, or just not taking into account, that I have to do all of the things that I don’t want to do (in a Maximus-in-Gladiator-right-hand-man kind of way). Contrary to popular belief, I do still write for this blog. Well, when I say ‘write’ I mean I use MacSpeech Dictate to write down the verbal diarrhoea that spews from my mouth. (Note to self: ‘spew’. That’s a dirty word right there. In a Monty Python kind of way. Like… ‘Wankel rotary engine’, which never fails to reduce me to tears of laughter when said by Graham Chapman.)

Where was I? Oh, I know. Uhm, summat about summat, yeah, that was it.

So, when I say I do as much of the things that I want to do, I mean that I’ve been re-watching The A Team •cue DA DA DAAAA! DA DA DAAAA! Music* (now up to series three! Woo-hoo!), Torchwood (nearly to end of series one with Coolest Mate), and working on two different bits of fiction at the same time. Well, when I say fiction, I mean one Supernatural fan fiction (that may or may not be a crossover piece, as ordered by my little sister), and one really really big project that I should not be undertaking because I said I shouldn’t do it yet. Namely, a sequel to the book I have written and not yet managed to sell. And there we go again: when I say ‘sell’, I mean I’ve not yet managed to find an agent.

Let’s see, what else has distracted me this week? Well, there was the Farscape re-watch this week, which did include the awe-inspiring and altogether fan-frelling-tastic season two finale. I must have had something in my eye, because I’ve seen that episode at least four times already and there is no way in hezmana that I could possibly have had moist eyes when watching it for the fifth time. Suffice to say, it’s one of Farscape’s Crowning Moments of Awesome for so many fucking reasons. I cannot wait until next Thursday breakfast, when we can share the first two episodes of season three back-to-back across three continents via AIM.

In other news, I have my flights booked to Dragon*Con in Atlanta (that’s in the USA, folks) and also, my flights to the UK for my Christmas flight of fantasy anti-snow. It’s just eighteen days until Dragon*Con begins, and I, for one, can’t fucking wait. It’ll give me a chance to try out my new passport, complete with secret hidden chip (which actually is quite fucking conspicuous on that rear page, there).

Well I think Mister Vodka has done his job. I’ve pretty much spewed everything I wanted to (and I’m still not liking the use of the word ‘spew’, unless it’s used by Graham Chapman) via MacSpeech Dictate and it’s time for bed. Said Zebedee.

The A Team serving as girlie porn? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. So here’s a picture of Face (Dirk Benedict) working the silk-shirt-sharp-suit-ness.



Soopytwist.


Tags:
Monty Python ~ The A Team ~ Farscape ~ fan-fic ~ Supernatural~ fan-fic ~ Dragon*Con

Major Catch Up

And Sergeant Where Did The Last Fortnight Go? Yes, I know I haven’t blogged in years, but I’ve been distracted. Nay, busy. It’s summer school this month and as such, things are busier, free time is shorter, and the will to do owt but lie ont sofa and watch DVDs when you get home from work much stronger.

First off - been laughing at the audacity but cheeky fun of that bloke as put a sign up on the M60. Yes, you know the one - the wee copy of the Hollywood sign, except it says ‘Hollinwood’. Ace. Pity it were taken it down - he should have kept it up. Except the folks over in Hollywood (that’s in Stockport, not the USA) could be a mite put out that they didn’t think of it first...

Then I heard a rumour that the amazingly successful laughfest that is ‘Evil Dead: The Musical’ may be made into a film (oh, the ouroboros-ity!), as even the mighty Sam Raimi himself has been approached and seems amenable. Please say this is one rumour that won’t turn out to be a pile of shite. I’ve never been lucky enough to get to anywhere running the musical, so I will be the first in line to see a motion picture version.

Then there was going to see ‘Public Enemies’ last Saturday night. Mate may have had unshed girl tears cos she didn’t know the ending ‘fore she went in. Aw, bless her cottons. And it was Johnny Depp, after all. Still, pretty good stuff, if a little typical Michael Mann-ish in that it was Wong Kar Wai with guns and more angst (if such a thing is possible). Good entertainment. We’re off to the ‘The Hangover’ Monday night - which admittedly, would not have been my first choice, but I do need to get out of my work-sofa-work-sofa routine of late. It also looks like I’ll be going to see ‘Drag Me To hell’ on my lonesome, as I’m the only one round these parts as likes a bit of Sam Raiminess int dark. But at least I’ll see it on big screen. Huzzah!

Then there was the arsing about with Twitter and Facebook. Granted, I avoid Facebook unless I get an e-mail telling me summat less boring or inane than usual has affected my profile, so I really couldn’t give a pair of foetid dingo’s kidneys what happens there. I was rather annoyed at the mess that became of Twitter though, seeing as how I’m using it habitually these days. It was rather rude to find out I was unable to connect to the annoyingly addictive timeline anywhere other than on Tinternet - purr wee iPhone Dax did her best, but she was shut out for days. Resetting my blip.fm and Twitpic log-ins was a bummer, but it did seem to restore access. Until Twitpic went tits up again and stopped adding pics and links to my Twitter timeline. Ah well. And blip.fm does keep forgetting to add my blips to my Twimeline, too. Git. I’ll sort it later.

Which brings me to one of the two major reasons I’ve not been blogging: writing fan-fiction for ‘Supernatural’. Finished a wee one-shot for that challenge back last month (failed miserably, but hey, I took part). Here we go with a shameless plug:

“Triquetra”
Rating: Rated K+
Summary:
SEASON 4 SPOILERS. Written for UnGen Summer 09 Challenge re: The Fire, November 2nd, 1983. One fire, three perspectives, only one conclusion. References episodes 1x09 (Home) and 4x17 (It’s A Terrible Life).
Posted first (as always) at SPNVille.net.
Disclaimer:
I do not own the TV show ‘Supernatural’ either in whole or in part, but I wish I could write episodes full time. Or get a life. Or both.
Linky-link-link:



And that zombie story I started in February? I put it away for the LA convention in March, pulled it out again last month and still haven’t quite finished it yet, but it is finally starting to roll off the post-production line:

“Abra-Cadaver”
Rating: Rated T for language. And maybe the McNasty. And perhaps spades in necks.
Summary:
Set mid season 4. In 1987, John has a bad case of zombies, perhaps his worst yet. Meanwhile, in 2009, his boys discover that while some witches do no harm, objects in the rear view memory may appear hazier than they are. And they carry shovels.
Posted first (as always) at SPNVille.net.
Disclaimer:
I do not own the TV show ‘Supernatural’ either in whole or in part, but Eric Kripke is my dealer.
Linky-link-link:



So all I have left to say is that the other reason I haven’t been blogging is cos I’ve been wetting myself over watching ‘Farscape’ (one day I will have to make a note here of John Crichton’s best one-liners) and finishing that work of ‘Enterprise’ fan-fiction. Which I have technically finished, except for naming the bastard. I’ll sort it very soon.

Can you say ‘when fandoms collide’? I can - especially as I’m trying to get through season two of ‘Psych’ before I get to catch up with season three and the new season four as just started airing. And I’m mourning the airing break that ‘Burn Notice’ is going through right now until bloody January, and still wibbling over the end of ‘Torchwood’ series three and what that smug bugger Russell T. Davies did to my favourite character (yes, over and above my unearthly love for Captain Jack Harkness). GRRRR! Bad RTD, no cookies! And then I’m only up to season three of ‘Farscape’ but have to be ready for 10th September (or 11th in my neck of the woods) for season five of ‘Supernatural’ to start all over again… Another six (or seven) months of start-stop-start-stop sweeps / seasonal breaks / repeats mid-season broadcasting, avoiding spoilers, refusing to look at casting for next week’s episode and generally getting much too excited about each story as it airs. I’m hoping for a re-appearance from Chuck Shurley, the Trickster, Anna Milton (please don’t say she was brain-bleached by God’s minions) and of course Castiel. I can only hope he made it out of the season four finale, even after the way it ended. Oh, and that Dean finally goes postal on Lucifer. Please, please can we have Dean Winchester go Dark Side and eee-vil (like fruuu-its of the devil) and carve him / it / him into small pieces? (And I still vote Lucifer be played by Lucy Lawless - or David Duchovney. Or Jeffrey Combs. Or The God Who Is Bruce Campbell, seeing as he was down to be Big Damn Hero John Winchester but was unavailable…) Yes? Ok, thanks. Many cybercookies your way, Mr Eric Kripke. Love you long time.

Ok, that shallot. Onion. Thing. Time for more Farscape. I doubt anything could compete with ‘Crackers Don’t Matter’, ‘They’re Out Of Their Minds’ or ‘Relativity’ for Best Frelling Episode Other Than ‘Scratch ‘n Sniff’, but I’ve been surprised before. You never know what will come next to trounce all that’s come before. Fuck me, do I love sci-fi. (But not ‘Sy-Fy’. That’s just silly.)


Soopytwist.

Tags:
Hollinwood ~ Hollywood ~ Public Enemies ~ Sam Raimi ~ ED: The Musical ~ Twitter ~ fan-fic ~ Torchwood ~ Ianto Jones ~ Star Trek ~ Enterprise ~ Burn Notice ~ Supernatural ~ Farscape ~ John Crichton

Elation / Disappointment

My Tinternet is fixed again. We’ll see how long it lasts. But more on that in a later post.

Danger! Danger! Spoilers Will Robinson!
Doctor Who season four finale episode 13 (‘Journey’s End’) spoilers are contained in the following post!

So where did we find ourselves at the end of the penultimate episode? Oh that’s right - on the edge of our seats. Seriously, could that episode have been any better? Really? No, I didn’t think so either. Which brings us to the latest one:

After the amazing cliffhangers at the end of the last one, RTD now gets himself out of every single one so quickly and effortlessly, using a whole slew of Miraculous Escapes, I felt like pressing pause to make sure I’d actually seen them. If I’d blinked I would have missed it, I’m sure. At least Mickety-Mick-Mickey was back (we love Mickey!), so Sarah Jane is saved. And Ianto (oh, and Gwen) saved by a Torchwood timelock booby-trap thing set up by Tosh. Hmm.

Now then. This using the regeneration energy of his stored hand to heal himself business - what the hell? Really? Really? Was it really necessary to put the Doctor in such dire straits, just to find such a blatantly contrived and let’s face it, little silly, way to save him after all? Hmm… Not too impressed, but bearing in mind it’s a radical improvement over the finale of season three, I’m going to let it go. And it was fun to see Captain Jack’s reaction. Now, Donna and Jack in the same TARDIS? How excellent is that? But we have to have the much-vaunted hyped-up final hello-hug between Doctor Ten and Rose, or it wouldn’t be an RTD episode. Perfectly understandable.

Daleks nicking the TARDIS and everyone inside - nice work. Sarah Jane getting herself, Mickey and Jackie to the Dalek Crucible too, excellent work. Martha sending herself to the UNIT base to try and use the Oster-Häagen-Dazs key. And just when you thought the daleks couldn’t get any cuddlier, they’re speaking whatever language they need to get people exterminated. Excellent.

And we get the first suspicion that Donna is not all that she seems - all timelines converging on her? Whatever could that mean? Please let her be a Time Lord - please please please! So everyone leaves and Donna’s trapped in the TARDIS - or did the TARDIS close the door on her on purpose? Cos she needed her? She needed Donna cos she knew what she could do? Ooohhhh, I love the TARDIS… and Donna… Can she be a Time Lord now please?

Then we get more of RTD’s Miraculous Escapes as we’re landed with a fully-functional re-grown Ten. Except he’s not though, is he? He’s half Donna and half something else - and then a quick dalliance with slapstick as we find out that New Not Ten speaks a bit ‘rough’ (what’s the difference between ‘rough’ and ‘Mockney’, then?). I did like the fact that he finds only having one heart and being half human ‘disgusting’.

Martha doing battle with the great language of Germany to get herself into the secret underground bunker - ace. But daleks incinerating Jack? That’s going to really hurt. Sarah Jane, Mickey and Jackie, being frog-marched into the Crucible. We’re really jumping around now, aren’t we? Trying to draw all these strands together, to get everyone into the right position for a showdown. And we’re getting some fantastic music from past and present - Murray Gold, you are a genius.

Enter Davros - and the exchange between the Time Lord and the Kaled scientist is indeed interesting. And Dalek Caan and his crazy, crazy prophecies… Nice. Got to love a madman. And then comes the revelation of the whole Dastardly Plan - swiftly followed by another Miraculous Escape, this time by Jackie. Can’t say I blame RTD for this one - you can’t kill off Jackie. But isn’t Davros just excellent? What a fantastic bit of acting, there, well done, son. Although, if I could just point out the obvious - if you destroy Reality itself, what’s left? You’re all going to shelter from the cataclysm, are you? And when you come out again and you’re victorious, what do you do then? Retire? Tend gardens? Get a job counselling post-war daleks? Cos there’s going to be bugger all else to do if you’re truly the last race left in the entire bloody universe.

Love the meeting between Mickey and Captain Jack - cheesecake, beefcake, same-same. And then Miraculous Plot Device occurs as Sarah Jane whips out her warp-fold conjugation trapped in a carbonised shell - cos we all pick up these little trinkets from dodgy back-street markets, right? Anyway, true to form and the herding mentality, everyone then decides to do the same thing at the same time, which is give the daleks an ultimatum. Nothing at all to do with bringing everyone together, or contriving to get three different kill-or-be-killed plots going at once? But hey ho, what’s this? New Not Ten planning to whack a rubber band on the back of the daleks’ Death Star beam, so it’ll slap back and kill them all? Say whaty who now? Since when does the Doctor (or any part of him) plan to kill people? He didn’t even do away with the Family of Blood, after all they did.

And Rose likes Martha - who wouldn’t? Final clarification of all that cack flying about that there’s some kind of competition or sense of one-upmanship between Companions. Bollocks, all of it. Of course Rose would recognise that Martha - and of course Donna - are worthy Companions. Surely the Doctor wouldn’t have travelled with them otherwise? (No, he wouldn’t - and don’t call me Shirley.) Cos Martha’s not stupid, and she’s an expert negotiator - cos we know that true negotiators don’t care about the outcome. They’re willing to gamble everything. Which means she will bloody well destroy the Earth just so that the daleks can’t keep their precious twenty-seven planets. It’s bigger than just the Earth, after all, and perhaps only someone as well-travelled as Martha woulf really understand that.

Nice bit of emotional torture from Davros - how many good people have died in the Doctor’s name? A stirring montage, coupled with some expert Unshed Man-Tear wrangling by David Tenninch Tennant, remind us that you can never truly get away from a bit of Bond Villain on a Saturday night as Davros goes into full-on Crazy Mode, screaming those fateful words: “Nothing can stop us now!”

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Nothing appears from the TARDIS and she does. The Doctor-Donna, that is. Just as the Ood predicted. Weird, little bit freaky, but YEE-HAAA is she so very, very ace! Oh yes Donna, the universe has indeed been waiting for you!

And the manipulator - the meddling kid that stopped every dalek getting away with it. Oh Dalek Caan, you’ve taken it a tentacle too far. But it’s ok, cos even though Big Bad Supreme Dalek comes to clean the slate, Captain Jack is there to point and laugh at his attempts at Ass-Kickery and blow his head off. Good boy, Jack.

But there we are - Dalek Caan smooth-talks his way into New Not Ten’s head and makes him turn every dalek into a lovely fiery Catherine Wheel. Nice, emotionally satisfying, but absolutely not what real Doctor Ten would do. Hmm… But Davros. Oh, you cheeky git - had to get the last word, didn’t you? Naming the Doctor the Destroyer Of Worlds? That’s going to come back and bite him in the arse, mark my words…

And then again we lapse into Sentimental Mode as we try to jam in as many missing faces / GUIs as possible. Out comes K-9 as we roar headlong into Happy Ending Mode, towing the Earth home. (Nice mention of the fact that TARDISes actually need a six-man crew. Was wondering when RTD would get that into an episode.) But what is that music as they’re towing? Started out sounding like summat I recognised, but then appeared to turn into some semblance of some Eastern European country’s national anthem. I loved the overhead shot of everyone twiddling, pumping, fiddling with the controls - and Martha’s cheeky grin directed straight at the camera.

Very quick goodbyes from Jack, Martha and Mickey - please say Martha and Mickey are going off to work for Torchwood. Please, please? And then we’re back to Sentimental Happy Ending At All Costs Territory. Yup, the final solution - and this is where I’m not happy.

Part of it makes sense - yeah, shuck off the extra New Not Ten and leave him with Rose. I mean, next best thing, right? What she always wanted - except she weren’t careful what she wished for. Clever Doctor Ten, using a bit of subterfuge to cover his escape. However, if I’d written it, I’d have killed off New Not Ten. Sorry, but I would. It’s just not right. He’d have been a kind of hero though - wiping out daleks, whether it was genocide or not, then dying heroically. Would have gone down better than ‘now I can bunk off and die of old age with Rose, ah happy days’.

And then to top it off, we have to lose my favourite Companion in active memory. Taken back to her family, memory wiped, all those amazing things she said, did, accomplished despite thinking she was useless. All of it gone. Poor Donna. Poor Wilf and Mum. Purr wee Doctor Ten.

Donna’s complete ignorance of him as he tries to say goodbye is painful enough. But Wilf’s parting shot was worse. Calling him Sir, telling him he’ll look for the TARDIS in the night sky, oh it were heart-breaking. Bernard Cribbins, you are still a hero. And poor Ten all alone again, dripping and not caring, leaving by himself.

Finally, there's a ten second ‘coming Christmas 2008’ trailer - featuring the amazing David Morrisey! Oh, and some Cybermen. It’s going to be a long wait till Christmas, I know that. But int it weird? This episode for me were a bit 50/50. Some of it I loved, some of it were over-done, some of it were a little silly. But in the end, I know I’ll be glued to the set to watch the Christmas episode, same as I was last year. Let’s face it people - Davids Tennant and Morrisey back together ont BBC? Has to be good!

That shallot. I’m all tired out now, and have fanfiction to proof-read. Not just for me, mind. Believe it or not, other people write it too.

So soopytwist everyone - you’re not getting peach or lube tonight, and you can blame that on RTD. However, you can all have a bit of peach on account, as we eagerly away Steven Moffat’s helming of Christmas and the Easter specials beyond…

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 ~ Torchwood ~ David Morrisey

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

More stuff wot I’ve done

I’m trying to post shorter more often. We’ll see how long it lasts.

So onto more updates as I couldn’t fit into the last essay I submitted here:

Done and dusted a new ‘Supernatural’ fan-fic, ‘Illegitimi Non Carborundum’ – this time only a 4,500 word humorous look at the trials and tribulations of exorcising demons who come knocking. Concept to polished end product in approximately five hours, fuelled by vodka and then Purple Nurples. I’m not defending it (I’m actually thinking it’s some of my best work), I’m just pointing out how yer brain does funny things, creative ability-wise, when suitably lubricated. Go on, read it and prove me wrong.

Also updated the Winchester Wallpapers, and found myself pondering, if fleetingly, why The CW doesn’t release a ‘Dean Winchester’s Book Of Contemporary Latin’ paperback, which I think would go down very well. I am slowly letting meself watch the rest of filmed season three, but am also making meself wait for it. Thinking that there may not be an end of season three has made me slow it down and enjoy each one as if it’s the last. Cos one day, it will be.

Then there was the ‘Ashes To Ashes’ episode 4 – we’re halfway through now already! Not so sure I like the conspiracy overtones here – smacks of ‘The X Files’ when it were cracking telly till the Smoking Man and wider conspiracies were seen to hove into view. Hmm. However, some fab acting and some wonderful, wonderful lines. Go Chris!

And then there were ‘Torchwood’ episodes 2.7 and 2.8 – we’re two-thirds of the way through the series already! Is it all kicking off before ‘Doctor bloody Who’ starts again in April / May? Hmm… We all know Captain Jack’s back for some of series four (probably kept for the end finale again), but then so’s Sarah Jane, Martha and Rose. Not so excited about the Rose bit… Series four trailers are looking good though, so can’t wait for that, obviously. Anyway, back to ‘Torchwood’, I’m wondering why Martha were there for just three eps and then sent back to U.N.I.T. Although she were fun to have around, and definitely different, I didn’t see the point. And the whole thing with Owen not being dead – well, alright, he’s dead but not completely, Captain Carrot of Terry Pratchett’s ‘Night Watch’ books’ stylee, and nearly turning into Mort too – it’s all pretty good sci-fi. Not sure it’s delivering on an ongoing arc level, but we’ll have to wait and see, eh.

So just to show that yeah, I am still the geek that people take me for, I’ve been looking to upgrade my phone to a PDA for a while. Well alright, not a while. But I were looking at a Motorola to replace my Samsung E-908, and then thought I may as well go for a full-on PDA, seeing as I’m finding not being able to do note-taking or e-mailing on the go a little irritating. So I’ve been in shops, playing with Blackberries and Motorola Qs, but been unimpressed with the reliance on Windows Mobile or just plain ugly GUIs. I do not want a touch-screen phone or PDA again, that’s for damn sure – ask Our Dave how many times I’ve hung up on him wi my face cos it’s wandered too near the flamin’ touch-screen button. Anyway, we go down the pub for the usual and there’s a mate of mine, playing what looks like a PSP but thinner.

Yeah, you’ve clocked it already, haven’t you? It’s not a PSP, it’s an Apple iPhone. He pauses the game to answer a call, putting them on hold (I assume) to check summat on Tinternet before confirming wi said caller and then getting back to his game. How fab is that? I were stunned at the simplicity – especially when he thrust it at me and told me to play wi it. Point, understand, do. Pretty simple, really. I’m sold. Absolutely and 100% sold. There’s just one problem wi the Apple iPhone if you live in Hong Kong – it’s not (officially) for sale over here yet. Matey bought his last time he were in New York, brought it back, went to Apple and got some updates and Chinese input downloads, and now runs it on CSL. So I guess I’ll just have to buy one next time I’m in L.A… Which is pretty soon, actually. But that’s another story…

Right, that’s yer onion, I’m off. Peach and lube, everyone. I’ll see you all again very soon.

Tags:
BBC ~ Hong Kong ~ TV ~ fan-fic ~ A2A ~ Torchwood ~ Supernatural ~ Sam Winchester ~ Dean Winchester ~ iPhone

Stuff wot I've done

Bloody hell, I’ve not been here in ages. I do have reasons.

Saw ‘Jumper’ a while back. Verdict: not great, not very very poor, but somewhere in between. Good times: features wee Billy Eliot, all grow’d up and out-shining ‘I was Anakin Skywalker’ Boy as soon as he got there. Using The Streets’ ‘Lay Down The Law’ and opening the film with the bloody fab ‘Blackened Blue Eyes’ by The Charlatans. Bad times: Was I the only one who clocked (literally) that the clock on top of the Clock Tower (or “St Stephen’s Tower”) in London (the one attached to the bell called Big Ben) was showing half past the hour, but started chiming the hour anyway? And did someone edit out twenty minutes of much-needed explanation and/or reasons for… well, anything?

We saw Aaron (Aaron Kwok, Sing-Sing, Mr K., 郭富城, 城城, 舞台王者, 舞神, and any other nick-names he may have but I’ve forgotten to include) in concert last Saturday. To say he were bloody ace would be like saying “sea: big”. He danced, he sang, he bantered, he got all us girlies thoroughly, thoroughly drenched. By dancing in water, Gene Kelly style, I might add. Although we were quite damp in other places too, after watching him dance. Oooh, Mr K., you are bloody fab.

Ahem.

Also caught up on ‘Torchwood’ – last we saw were Martha Jones being absolutely bloody marvellous again, elbowing her way in and taking charge, being immune to certain things us normal people ain’t, and generally being fab like she used to be. Oh how we all love Martha. But did you clock wee Inspector Blythe, from the BBC series ‘Blackpool’ as Adam, just before? Hair’s all different, so it took me a minute, but there he is – DI Carlisle (David Tenninch Tennant)’s trusty sidekick research boy, in the flesh. Kinda.


But Owen? Owen? You’re going to kill him off? Really? Really? I’d just warmed up the stroppy bugger, and were even thinking he could be relied on for a few cheesy one-liners or simple distraction sub-plots while the big boys got on wi it. Now I’m pissed off – and I never thought I’d miss Owen. I’m just thanking the Powers That Be that it weren’t Ianto who got ganked – that would really have put me off the show for good. Pity it weren’t Gwen… Have to wait for this Saturday to get last week’s episode and the one just aired. Oh I hate time lags.

Talking of which, also caught up on (sort of) ‘Ashes To Ashes’. Episode three were ace, weren’t it? Weren’t it ace? I’m really warming to this Alex Drake bird, even if I found her a bit take-her-or-leave-her to begin with. With that slap and uppercut to the Gene Genie she really went up in me estimation – not to mention taking that toff home and shagging him to within an inch of his life, then turning up in shades the next day. Oh, my heroine. The Gene Genie’s still coming out with his Huntisms – I loved the crack about a kebab being “a pasty with its arse hanging out’. I’m sure there were hundreds more, cos I guffawed me way through it all, but I just cannot remember ‘em here. But Ray Carling and his sock puppets, eh? Who’d have thought?

And then onto other programmes as have been making me guffaw – and you knew this were coming, right? ‘Supernatural’, season three. How fucking fab is this series so far? It blows seasons one and two out of the water, hands down. Maybe cos it’s been in a ratings war, maybe cos its just got over the first two seasons’ familiarity and now has a chance to do more, but goddamn, if this ain’t some of the best writing and acting I’ve seen yet. Having Dean trapped in a basement with a demon, quietly discussing facts and futures (or lack thereof, in his case), was spine-tingling. His desperate clinging to every effort to make it seem like he’s relieved about going to Hell in under a year’s time is wavering between noble and heart-breaking. And if he has to tell Sam one more time to stop trying to find a way out of the deal, I’ll swing for Sammy on his behalf. Not a happy pair of Chuckle Brothers, those two, and it’s only going to get worse before owt’s sorted either way. The fifth episode, ‘Bedtime Stories’, had me in stitches at times, then thinking about blubbing, then jumping up and down ‘yay’ing as Sam took matters into his own hands.

I take back everything I ever said about Sam being a pansy-assed, book-loving pacifist. Oh yes. Sam is my new hero.

This is a Sam we’ve not seen before – and the whole ‘has he come back from the dead all evil, or has he not?’ thing doesn’t apply. It’s not evil, it’s desperation. No-one else can save Dean, that’s for damned sure, and if they could, how could Sam leave it to someone else anyway? This Ruby girl has her own agenda which is being toyed with by my imagination, but she’d better be careful if she thinks she’s just going to arse about with Sam, dangle carrots and then disappear like she doesn’t owe him owt. He’s nearly shot her before with the re-built Colt, and it’s a bloody good chance he’s thinking about doing it again, properly this time. Poor young men full of frustration and rage are not the people you want to stand in front of when they’re holding a loaded gun.

Having said that, he has dug up a lot of very useful info, some of which is going to be very instrumental in finding a way out of Dean’s deal. I am confident that, if anyone could find it, it’s going to be Sam. Although… Naw, forget it. I’m just grasping at straws. I just don’t want Dean to go down (at least, not like that, arf arf!) – who does? You know when you have a job, and you politely ignore that fact that, while it’s fun at times, it’s just not what you really want to do until you die? And then summat happens and you resign. Then it’s smiles all round – you only have to work yer notice and yer out of there. Excellent! No more caring about who’s going to be on shift in a fortnight, who’s going to get the parking space out by Smokers’ Corner, who’s going to have to perform the Month End shite. How fab is that? I mean, Dean’s in a similar post-resignation rut right now, but he can get out of it again. At least, I hope he can.

That’s about it, I think. Have to get to bed, this is getting on fer an essay. Just have to post shorter more often, I spose. I am trying, but this thing called ‘Real Life’ keeps getting int way. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Soopytwist.

BBC ~ Hong Kong ~ TV ~ David Tennant ~ A2A ~ Torchwood ~ Supernatural ~ Sam Winchester ~ Dean Winchester ~ Aaron Kwok ~ Jumper

Telly Tussles

This week I have mostly been socialising and entertaining. Yeah, drinking and laughing a lot. Which is a good thing, int it?

Anyway, in between all this merriment and unexpected arrangements, I have actually been trying to catch up on all the telly goodness I’ve been missing. First though, a gripe.

I, along with a lot of other ex-pats and general viewers, pay to watch BBC Entertainment, one of five BBC channels available to cable or broadband subscribers over here in Hong Kong. As channels go, it’s pretty poor. Gratuitous repeats of ‘Red Dwarf’, ‘Little Britain’ (series one), ‘Life On Mars’ (series one!), ‘Hustle’ (series three), and complete and utter shite like ‘Footballers’ Wives’ (puh-leeeze…) make you wonder why you bother. Then they pull out all the stops for a fantastic, amazing February – and what do we get? ‘Robin Hood’. Series one.

Riiiiiiiiiight. “Saw it, tolerated it, turned off the pirate DVD and dropped it somewhere I forget,” would be the best summation of that particular series.

So it came as a shock – and not a pleasant one, I can tell you that – to find that ATV, one of the local Hong Kong terrestrial channels, is showing ‘Doctor bloody Who’ – SERIES THREE – starting February 14th and running fert next twelve weeks. Free channel. Free. No broadband boxes required. Just turn ont telly, and bam, there it is. Hmm.

Good for ATV. Bad for BBC.

And ooh lookie, they’re also showing ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’ on Sunday afternoon fert kiddies. Fantastic for Hong Kong kiddies, another point lost by the Beeb.

I’m not upset cos it’s free. I’m upset that I pay for a bloody channel run by the Beeb themselves, and yet they’d rather make money selling it to the local network to show for free (with adverts! Adverts!) than put it on the channel that people actually pay for anyway. Cos let’s see, ooh, letting Beeb subscriber’s in Hong Kong see it first COS THEY PAY FOR THE BLOODY CREATORS’ CHANNEL would be wrong, when you can make money selling it to ATV first. You do realise we will get ‘Doctor bloody Who’ series three eventually in Hong Kong. I say eventually – I mean 2009. I e-mailed em and asked the bastards when they were going to let us watch it on the subscribed channel. Could they afford to bump the 379th repeat of ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ or ‘Spooks’ to possibly squeeze in a little new programming? And I’m sorry, but ‘Robin Hood’? ‘Robin bloody Hood’? Are you taking the piss? This is the flagship series for BBC Entertainment in Asia? Really? Really?

And let’s not even get onto how they pixel out the merest suggestion of a patch of skin or flesh in any shape or form – and every single word that even falls into a grey area (‘crap’, etc.) is bleeped out or simply dropped from the soundtrack? I shit you not – the slightest mention of impropriety is vanished from the soundtrack or picture, Gestapo-style, until it defeats the object of watching the Gene Genie int first place. Gone are all those golden one-liners, replaced by background noise cos he called someone a ‘nonce’. Yes, ‘nonce’. Not the nicest of words, I grant you, but really? Really? Isn’t there summat else they could be doing to waste as much time?

All of which brings me to the fact that the telly I’ve been catching up on has been ‘Ashes To Ashes’, ‘Torchwood’ and ‘Supernatural’. A weird combo, I know, but it’s all so very, very good.

Let’s start with ‘Ashes To Ashes’, shall we? Sat and watched a double-bill of episodes one and two of this shiny, shiny new series. First thoughts? Not exactly gelling with me at moments, and yet the Gene Genie is so very good. Back with a vengeance, except he’s also got a Sam side at times. Not bad at all, not bad at all. The settings and costumes, cars and wine bars, it’s all good. DCI Alex Drake? Not so sure… Didn’t take to her very easily int first episode, but during the second ep while the poor bird’s doing her ‘this is my fantasy, I’ll do what I want and you lot will bloody well listen to me’, I did start to like her a lot. And they have given us a new series so far – and at least they’re not trading on Sam Tyler to get em by with this new tart. Speaking of which, I’m not happy with poor Sam carking it in a river due to chasing robbery suspects, or whatever the excuse was for him having disappeared. It does throw up all kinds of metaphysical and quantum-related arguments such as just how linear Time is supposed to be, and how it’s supposed to pass in different situations. I was upset to see newspaper clippings in Gene’s office with headlines like ‘Force pays tribute to Tyler’ etc., after he’s supposed to have died in the river – except no body was found. Insert another round of ‘hmm’s here. Anyway, it’s doing the job at the moment, so I’ll be hanging on for all eight episodes (I assume the format will be the same), but I’m already hoping they won’t drag this out for two series.

‘Torchwood’ then. Cracking first episode, good second and third, but the hyowj alien space-slug ‘Meat’ episode was the best I’ve seen so far. Lots more ‘just who is this Jack person anyway?’ stuff, more Ianto being a bloody hero and getting most, if not all, of the best one-liners (the phone gag was ace, as was his penchant for slipping in comments when no-one else is supposed to be listening). Oh yes, we like Ianto for his derring-do sentences. He is well-liked in our house just cos he’s funny. Of course he couldn’t knock Jack off our top spot (ooh-err Missus), but that goes without saying.

And so to ‘Supernatural’. How absolutely cracking were that first episode of season three (‘The Magnificent Seven’)? Someone’s definitely whacked up the gain on Sam’s whole ‘Ah’m savin’ ma brother’ thing while throwing in new characters that are thankfully not going to irritate me, and then we have all kinds of personal hunts going on with purr wee Sam. And let’s not forget Dean’s new-found ‘live before I die – or rather, get sucked down into Hell’ kick. It’s all good. It’s all fab. And the second episode ‘The Kids Are Alright’ had me in stitches. There were so many hilarious moments as purr neglected Dean tries to believe that the wee kiddie he meets is not actually the result of one of his weekend chick-orientated roadtrips in his dim and distant past after all. But then him being all disappointed and doing the balloon-burst shoulder-sag manoeuvre as he finds out for definite that little Ben is not his kid was heart-breaking. Awww... it’s going to be a bumpy ride for both brothers before all this is sorted out, and no mistake.

Which, according to reports, may never happen. Apparently the CW channel has not yet commissioned the rest of season three for filming, post-WGA strike. We think this is wrong. We think this sucks. We think this series is in dire need of finishing its third season, and possibly another season after that. We think it’s the best telly to come out of the US since… er… hang on… let’s see… carry the one, add the three… oh yeah, since sliced bread.

Unfortunately, TV execs don’t seem to care. We hated them for cancelling ‘Firefly’ too, but who noticed? Well, Joss Whedon and his pals, obviously, seeing as he went about making the film ‘Serenity’ to produce some kind of ending for us poor neglected viewers. And although we had to make do with two hours instead of a whole new season and probably twelve or even thirteen hours of Cap’n Mal Sir and his crew, we snapped his hand off cos it was all we were going to get. Let’s just hope ‘Supernatural’ doesn’t go the same way.

Anyway, think that’s everything. Have to sort my life out and get down to the pub quiz.

Soopytwist.

Tags:
BBC ~ Hong Kong ~ TV ~ Doctor Who ~ Robin Hood ~ A2A ~ Torchwood ~ Ianto Jones ~ Supernatural ~ Sam Winchester ~ Dean Winchester ~ Firefly ~ Serenity