Ditch the Rote Hog

Inspired largely because several of my friends have decided to watch the latest few series of Doctor Who, and by the fact that I've been largely enjoying the new Matt Smith episodes (despite being finished in the UK, the last few are still to air here in Canada), I've decided to go back and watch the previous episodes.  I've also decided to see if I can lay my hands on earlier material, after looking through considerable histories of episodes, radioplays, novels and such and reading up on many of the past incarnations.

I know that I've seen many of the Tom Baker episodes, and at least a handful of the Jon Pertwee episodes, as I can remember watching them early mornings before going to school either on A&E, PBS, or TVO.  Looking at the DVD releases, though, it seems nigh ridiculous what's been released and what hasn't, haphazard and all over the place.  I also remember the TV movie; I know that I watched it, but I can't remember much about it.  I think I may start there, since I can find a copy, and the BBC radioplays with Paul McGann also seem to be available.

Unthoughts Unknown: Don't Piss On...

"The Edge", the second episode of the new Persons Unknown series, I thought was largely better than the first episode.  The pilot basically set up the situation and gave broad strokes toward the characters, this second episode gave us more showing the characters actually trying to deal a wee bit more with the situation.  It's also nice that we've finally got names for some of them, although I still think most of the relevant information on surface character background should have been related at their first dinner together.  Details and backstory naturally coming later, but it seemed like the usual introductions were only half-delivered.  The "microwave" fence, blinding white light, and driving back into the town after trying to esxape definitely gave off more vibes from The Prisoner, as well as Dark City.  The night manager and the Chinese restaurant waiter are also officially creepy.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

It's unsurprising that as the series progresses, Happy Town is indeed getting better.  I thought last week's episode was a little bit like treading water, but this week was certainly firing on all cylinders.  Shame that the show's been cancelled (what possesses them to essentially cancel it after only airing the two parts of the pilot?)

Unthoughts Unknown

I caught the pilot episode of NBC's Persons Unknown tonight.  I thought it was a decent entry into The Prisoner/first-season of Lost/Cube vein of storytelling, with a group of strangers waking up in a deserted hotel in an initially deserted town with no recollection of how or why they got there.  I think the cameras themselves are the interesting part, some sort of black market reality television is what I'm thinking right now.

I did, however, catch a continuity error between the episode and the preview for next week.  When we're shown Eleanor's fortune cookie message in the episode, "Kill your neighbor and you will go free", is on one line.  In the preview, it's on two.  I wonder how many months went by between filming the pilot and starting the reason of the series to cause that gaffe?

Getting Lost

I'll not go into any spoilers here, but I just wanted to say that the ending itself is kind of what I came to expect over the course of this season.  Back in January, I decided to go back and re-watch all of the previous seasons.  Due to unforseen events, I only ever got through season one and haven't moved on from there, but after tonight, I think I'm going to finish it off.  Maybe write about it.

What I do find funny, though, is the amount of people decrying the ending, saying that it was terrible, and that six years of our collective lives have been...well, um...lost.  I think the ending itself proves that old chestnut; it's not the destination that matters, it's the journey.

Tired Starlings

I'm still conflicted about the season finale to Supernatural.  I think I liked it.  I also think I hated it.

So, until I watch it again, I'm just going to post the video to a live performance of "White Room" by Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, and others. The really good part starts around 4:09 if you want to skip ahead, but I'd just sit back and listen.

All Out of Happy

Yes, I realise that the series has been cancelled and I'm a little saddened by it.  I can't say that I'm surprised, though, since the series is rather quirky, which doesn't necessarily seem to go over well with typical American audiences.  This week's episode continues on with more of the same, plus random sex and an out-of-left-field appearance by David Cronenberg.  That kind of elevates the show to awesome, which is of course why it needs to be cancelled.

The New Doctor

Up until the David Tennant run on Doctor Who, there had always been an odd quirk, something that I just couldn't take seriously, that would keep me away from regularly watching any run of the series.  I enjoyed watching the old Tom Baker reruns when I was a kid on the CBC, much in the same way I enjoyed watching the black and white sci-fi movies, but there was always something hokey about them that kept me from really being a fan.  The Christopher Eccleston series started to change a lot of that, and then with Tennant, I was watching as soon as they aired.

Unfortunately, that hokey quality seems to be creeping back in to this new run with Matt Smith.  Now, I like Smith as the Doctor.  He's not as good as Tennant, Eccleston or Baker, but he's still rather endearing, and Karen Gillan is quickly becoming my favourite companion since Billie Piper, but...Daleks in WWII facing off against Winston Churchill?  Part of me liked the absurdity, part of me wanted to change the station.  This week's episode, with the weeping angels, however, seemed to appeal to me more.  I'm still watching, but it may turn out to just be an occasional thing if nothing else is on and I'm home.

So Happy You Could Cry

Well, I hate to say it, but I don't think that Happy Town is going to last much longer than its initial batch of episodes.  Despite having its strongest character (MC Gainey's Sheriff) unconscious for the episode, I still kind of liked it, but I do think that it's being too quirky for its own good.  The mystery of the intial murderer is solved in a fairly unusual fashion, so it gets points there, but at this stage in the game, everything's still so fresh that we don't necessarily have any baseline to be shocked by any events.  Everything in Haplin seems off kilter, so there isn't any sort of "normal" grounding.

C'Mon Get Happy

I watched the first episode of Happy Town.  It's too early to really say much, this episode really was just an introduction of characters, basic premise and setting, but it did a decent job.  MC Gainey is great as Sherriff Conroy, but he's really the only one whose individual performance stands out.  The group of catty widows and their landlady were interesting, emphasizing the oddball characters bit.  At some points, it feels like it's trying too hard for the Twin Peaks by way of Stephen-King-made-for-TV-mini-series tone, but we'll see how it turns out.

You Won't Know

After finally catching the latest episode of Stargate Universe, "Divided", I must say I'm really enjoying this show. I was never a fan of SG1 or Atlantis, both shows just seemed to focus more on the humour and seemed to lose the plot half the time, that I just tended to leave them alone. This placement in that universe, however, has enthralled me since the beginning. It's still early in the series development, but the characters seem more engaging, the writers are actually contributing to regularised serial story, and although the overaching plot seems borrowed from Star Trek: Voyager and -- along with its shooting style -- Battlestar Galactica, it seems like something different.

I think it could partially just be the outstanding performances from all of the actors, specifically Robert Carlyle, Louis Ferreira and David Blue, maybe it's just because Blue's character of Eli Wallace just lands so close to home, maybe it's Elyse Levesque spending most of the season in yoga pants, or maybe it's because the rest of the rabid Stargate fans seem to hate it, but I'm quite enjoying this.

House Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Damn good writing.  I actually like this concept for the show more than the previous set-up, and as it was House was probably my favourite show on television.  Sadly, though, given the nature, it probably only works as a one-off with the occasional continuing element and then it's "back to normal".

Most times the hardest part is asking for help.

The fifth-season prmiere of Supernatural was awesome.

That is all.

Angel Smells Like Fish

So the show hit the shark on its way down, that we're fairly sure of, but this week's episode has me thinking it may at least be trying to crawl out of the water.

Cordelia and Connor definitely rate on the 'ew, that's disgusting' metre even more so this week, added to the fact that it seems weird that two established demon hunters, one who lived on a bloody hell dimension, would just run and hide after receiving a thrashing from some demon that looks like a bad rip-off of Tim Curry in Legend. I mean, hello, when big bad comes a knocking, you do not cower in your hovel and make sweet passionate Sarah McLachlan desperation love. You go to the rest of the Los Angeles Scooby gang and help them beat the bloody shit out of the thing, even if you have to get thrown of a building in the process.

The rest of the episode actually wasn't too bad. It's nice to see some kind of purpose again to the show, even if there are some aspects of it that are falling a little low, as is the continued "working relationship" with Wesley.

Angelus, Oh Angelus, Wherefore Art Thou Angelus?

...rotting in a wooden box at the bottom of the ocean is where. I purport that Angel didn't jump the shark, but managed to strike it and crush it as the coffin sunk to the seabed. Thus far, this season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has shown incredible promise, reinvigorating the series, and making it fun to watch, Angel on the other hand, seems like it's just going through the motions.

On thing that I always loved about Buffy was that each season, despite having character threads that carried on, was essentially self-contained. There have never been any bloody season ending cliffhangers that drive audiences nuts, up until last season Angel was pretty much the same, but we got one hell of a cop-out in this last one. The whole thing just feels tired, there's no pep, no interesting character development, no surprises, and in a word, I'd honestly have to say that Angel has become: boring.

No amount of Wesley sleeping with the enemy or beheading an upper eschelon member of Wolfram & Hart is going to change that feeling right now. This show needs an enema.

Revenge of the Incoherent Sissy Boy

You know, I'm really liking this new season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The first episode was pretty good set-up, and the second episode was damn good. The main focus is on a new woman and her ex-boyfriend who got turned into a giant dog-eating worm, but what's really interesting is the new characterisation of Spike.

Toward the end of last season, Spike really let loose the monster in him, attempting to rape Buffy. In a season that has us empathising with him and essentially cheering him on as a "good guy", it was truly a horrifying turn of events. What he did, in response was to travel of to somewhere in Africa and essentially ask to be returned "the way he was". For some reason, I had the notion that he was turned into a human being, period, but that's not the case.

The season premiere had him as an incoherent sissy hiding in the basement of the newly rebuilt Sunnydale High School, but this episode had him trying to help Buffy with the guy turned into a worm. Pretty normal, seeming back like himself, but it begins to fall apart when Spike gets into a tiff with Anya over keeping his secret, and eventually at the end, when he injures an "innocent". That's when the big reveal (technically, we already know the fact that he's gotten his soul back, I just expected slightly different circumstances) happens and Spike just falls to pieces.

He seems to have been driven absolutely fripping loony by the guilt he feels over everything he's done, everything he thinks he is, what he should be in Buffy and god's eyes, and I can honestly say it's one of the most wrenching portrayals I've seen. I wonder if this happened to Angel when he first got his soul back. I definitely think I'm going to like this season, if it remains as strong as the first two episodes.

Are You My Mother

There's a new show you may or may not have seen on Fox on Friday nights, (actually two new shows, but I only really care about one, the one I don't being Joss Whedon's Firefly), under the title John Doe. I missed the episode last week, but the premiere caught my attention.


Basically, it's a show about a man who awakes naked, off the Western seaboard, can't remember who he is, but can speak a variety of languages, learn how to operate anything, and has no bloody clue who he is. This man "John Doe", in his quest to find out who he is, moonlights as a piano playing detective, solving murders and kidnappings on the side. Did I mention that he doesn't know who he is? The premiere was actually pretty decent, the only question I really have is, why does he have what looks almost like Joe Quesada's signature on his chest?