Nick R

[Nick R]

I’m statistically 40 times the broadcaster I was then. That’s just maths.

[Nick R]

A Google Images find rather than a Google Alerts find:

This recent article prompted me to search for an image of the Ace Rimmer Worlds Tour T-shirt (which a friend of mine had and I always wished I did too!), and for some reason this picture from Something Awful’s Ctrl-Alt-Delete mocking thread came up in the search results.

I don’t know why but one of the other search results was this terrifying thing. Believe me, you don’t want to click on that link. Really. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[Nick R]

Her knowledge of mimed punctuation was pitiful.

[Nick R]

Whenever someone mentions Jim the Fish, it can’t help but conjure up images of Bob the Killer Goldfish…

I’m seeing a bit of a pattern to the openings of Moffat’s finales/mid-series finales: disorientate us by presenting us with radically different versions of Earth (the sky with no stars in “The Big Bang”; the mashed-up history in this) and skipping quickly between locations (the “20,000 light-years away” jump in “A Good Man Goes to War”; the Doctor’s detective trail in this). It’s still a formula that’s working for me, but the very fact I’ve spotted it means I hope the same structure isn’t used for the next big episode.

Not quite convinced by Amy and Rory and River’s memories of the mashup timeline carrying across to this one, in the same way I wasn’t quite sure about Rory retaining his memories of a thousand years spent guarding the Pandorica.

Also: seems a bit odd to ask how long before the Silence break in and reply “a couple of minutes” when time’s not passing, doesn’t it? ;-)

a lack of actual revelations and too much “fucking foreshadowing”

True, things like the eyepatches being related to Silence memories and the question being “Doctor who?” had been part of many fans’ speculation.

So most of those “revelations” turned out to be secondary to the enjoyment that came from things like the Indiana Jones sequence, the Doctor’s brief “You can’t rewrite a fixed point in time, who told you that?” objection before the universe disintegrated around them, the wi-fi gag, Live Chess, the increasing tally marks on the Doctor’s arm during his talk with Churchill, and the Brigadier mention. And things like that were very entertaining!

As for the foreshadowing, I’ve no problem with storylines bleeding across series. But maybe it’s felt a bit artificial to keep them carrying on so long: “Silence will fall” was introduced all the way back in episode Fnarg.01 (and so was the TARDIS explosion, IIRC).

Also, some of the structuring has been unbalanced during this series. I think the series was hurt by having the very similar “Night Terrors” and “The God Complex” (exit-less settings, childhood fears theme) so close together. Having those three mostly stand-alone tales in a row also drew attention to the apparent ease with which Amy and Rory seemed to accept they’d never be able to raise their daughter, which was a big issue for many viewers. That wouldn’t have been as much of a problem if there hadn’t been a mid-series break, so that “A Good Man Goes to War” and “Let’s Kill Hitler” could have been closer to the finale.

[Nick R]

I enjoyed The Lodger, but this episode was disappointing. “Stormageddon” was funny, but repeated a few times too often. Jokes like that work better in small doses – without a substantial plot, a whole episode of that wackiness just became tedious and irritating, especially with things like Craig’s predictably cringeworthy talk to the lingerie shopper (probably the low point of the episode).

Slightly too much of Steven Moffat’s Gay Agenda ;) too – jokes about “oh, we’re not a couple” mistaken identity are ancient, so if you’re going to write one into your episode it had better be very good – and Frasier this ain’t! Maybe keep either the Doctor’s distracting confession of love OR the “partner/companion” stuff, but not both.

There were some good scenes though, like the Doctor spotting Amy and Rory, and his talk to the baby after (somehow) turning the nightlight into a planetarium. I also liked the seamless first teleportation, and the closing scene linking the blue envelopes and Stetson to The Impossible Astronaut (with its the line about how even a time machine isn’t much help booking a glazier on a Sunday).

[Nick R]

Alan’s got a book coming out. And a promotional video interview to go with it.

It’s not Andrew… McNab.

[Nick R]

I never realised that Kryten says Zee-Deck but Zed-X 81! MIND BLOWN.

(I like the fact that within ten posts the thread subject has veered off from “Red Dwarf 6 – PSIRENS – MILD SPOILERS!” to “ZX81 pronunciation”.)

Fuzzy Fox:

On a related note, why did the actor who played the male Holly (can’t
remember his name!) leave the show?

There’s a good point – who was that guy?

[Nick R]

COMPLAINT THAT THREAD IS NOT STICKING WORD-FOR-WORD TO THIS.

[Nick R]

COUNTER-REBUTTAL OF THE NEXT COMMENT.

[Nick R]

Alastair Reynolds is writing a Doctor Who novel featuring the Third Doctor, Jo Grant and The Master.

Great news as far as I’m concerned, as I loved Revelation Space, Chasm City and his short story collection Zima Blue.

First Neil Gaiman, then Michael Moorcock, then Steven Baxter, now Reynolds… who’s next – Iain M Banks? (Seeing him write a kid-friendly Who book would be quite a sight!)

[Nick R]

I watched the first episode today. It had one really good scene, the examination of the splattered remains of the bomber, which was a great way of addressing the big question of the limits of the whole high concept behind the series.

But other than that, it wasn’t much better than the likes of the godawful FlashForward (of which I withstood two episodes, I think) – it definitely wasn’t any less silly. But I’ll stick with it, because now the exposition’s out of the way it’s a concept that has a lot of potential.

(And I too would like to applaud Carlito’s No One Died post above.)

[Nick R]

Satsumas has gone underground.

[Nick R]

In the Doctor Dwarf thread, Seb wrote:

Also, he didn’t kill the Amy Ganger. He severed the psychic link between Amy and it

Must’ve been a hell of a psychic link, if they were able to stay connected not just across different time periods, but even – as in TDW – outside the universe!

[Nick R]

> Due to the return of Mock The Week

Ah yes, the Seven Mockers.

[Nick R]

Torchwood: Miracle Day trailer, in Access Hollywood 4:3-o-vision.

[Nick R]

It was a fantastic episode, and I’m sure I’d say that even if I didn’t know who’d written it. As I posted over at URP, the only real low point of the episode was the scene where Amy and Rory edge their way past the corridor-turned-pit – a wonderful idea, but the direction (and budget limitations?) didn’t show it at its best. It also would have been nice to see some other rooms, instead of just corridors and the Nine/Ten console room.

But that those are pretty minor complaints compared to the episode as a whole, which was crammed with ideas and humour. It’ll be a very rewarding episode to rewatch! Who cares about Day of the Moon ending with the Doctor pointing out how they’re going to put the series arc on hold to have some one-off adventures, when we got this as one of those one-off adventures?

Anyone want to ask Neil a question about the episode?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/may/14/neil-gaiman-doctor-who-live-blog

Although Gaiman probably should have had the corridor bits from Rory’s point of view with Amy being the one who died or something.

Just saw this posted on the xkcd forum:
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll84s4ZmKh1qafmk8o1_500.gif

lol

[Nick R]

BBC4 have been showing The Hand of Fear the last couple of days as a tribute to Elisabeth Sladen. I noticed it happens to feature this model shot (screengrab found via this site):

http://drwhotht04.my3gb.com/4n-c/d4-4n-c078.jpg

That dome looked familiar to me…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As5eQ58stG4#t=4m41s

For a moment I thought that the Quarantine model was an altered reuse of the one from Dr Who. But now I’ve made that side-by-side comparison, I doubt it. After all, in science fiction the geodesic dome is a fairly common design for bases on moons and planets.

But if not that one, were any other models shared between Who and Dwarf, in the same way that Rimmer’s badge was reused from HHGTTG?

Not an article, but there are plenty of examples tagged thusly: http://www.ganymede.tv/doctor-dwarf/

There’s also this: http://www.ganymede.tv/indepth/now-you-see-it

By the way, G&T’s In Depth/Features index page has somehow become slightly messed up: everything below “The Debate: Series VIII’s Setting” appears in bold!

[Nick R]

Listening to your Backwards commentary was a good chance to take some snapshots from that episode.

What do you think of this set of images? Other than that final shot of the Cat (which is also the one Wikipedia uses in its infobox for this episode), I’ve gone for frames that are representative of the episode but don’t feature the main characters. Note the Four R’s: Reagan, Rob, Rabbit, and Rampant Woman. (Gotta have that rabbit in there!)

View post on imgur.com

I also flipped them horizontally and arranged them in reverse chronological order. So they’re BACKWARDS!

[Nick R]

River’s comment about how the more she gets to know The Doctor the less he knows her is slightly odd since we already know that time isn’t linear. Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey!

Maybe she just means that it seems that way to her, but her reaction to The Doctor saying they’d never kissed before is a little extreme – just because it’s his first kiss with her doesn’t automatically make it her last kiss with him.

Yes, IIRC in Silence in the library/Forest of the Dead the implication was that they were meeting each other randomly. But now that seems to be have been changed to “strictly linear, but in opposite directions”.

Someone (from Something Awful, apparently) came up with this timeline of what we know of their meetings:
http://i.imgur.com/RAbmS.png

[Nick R]

Congratulations!

If I didn’t know better I’d swear (s)he was trying to moon us.

[Nick R]

First-person games should not be played with anything other than mouse and keyboard.

Strongly disagree with this. All the arguments about mice being more precise and practical for aiming are perfectly valid, and there are certain FPSs that I’d never dream of playing on consoles (the PS2 port of Deus Ex for example).

However, I always find pads more fun to use, because to me some of the appeal of videogames is the sort of motions your hands go through. If you take the action of simultaneously strafing, aiming, and pulling off a headshot, I just find its motion on consoles (one thumb held in position + other thumb quickly flicking + index finger pulling trigger all the way) more satisfying than its PC gaming equivalent (holding down keys + twitching the whole wrist + index finger clicking mouse button a very slight distance).

But only if the pad controls have been well-calibrated! Sometimes you get games where no matter how you mess with the analogue sensitivity, it still feels awkward on a pad – usually only in older, lazy PC-to-console ports, but it applies to certain console-exclusive games too.

Shamus Young once pointed out a distinction between the two control schemes that I’ve never seen anyone else mention:

Those old PC shooters were all about aiming. Being “good” at the game meant being able to snap your wrist and headshot a guy the moment he came into view. It meant circle-strafing: orbiting a foe while keeping their vulnerable bits in the center of the screen. Mice, being pointing devices, are really handy for this. There was never any reason to take cover in those games because hiding would just delay the inevitable. Gameplay was about diving head first into the sea of bullets and dogfighting your way out.

But if you watch someone play a console shooter you’ll see the game is less about precision aiming and more about precision timing. Instead of trying to line someone up with the stick, a player will get close with the stick and then run sideways, pulling the trigger during that split-second when the enemy’s head passes through the reticule.

The latter is the type of FPSing that appeals most to me. But then again I also find Hadoukens more fun to pull off on a decent D-pad than an arcade stick, so what do I know? :P

Anyway, none of the above really applies to Portal 2 because firing a portal is appealing in a very different way from getting a headshot! And no matter how good the 360/PS3 ports Portal 2 might be, Valve games are among those that just instinctively seem more at home on the PC. Plus, Portal’s the sort of game that really benefits from fan made levels (even though most of the ones I tried on Portal 1 had nowhere near Valve’s wonderful level of difficulty-balancing – ever try Ren Test 2? A really impressive design, being based in a giant rotating room, but pure evil to solve!) About the only thing that the 360 version of Portal 2 has over the PC version is that I care more about Live Achievements than I do about Steam Achievements.

So when I get Portal 2 it’ll be the PC version. Unfortunately that won’t be for a while yet because I’m poor and unemployed and years of buying games years after their release dates has impressed upon me certain habits about how much I’m prepared to pay for even the very best games. So the next Steam sale can’t come soon enough!

[Nick R]

Jape of the decade!

[Nick R]

Jean Michel Jarre is a fraaaaaaauuuuuuud.

[Nick R]

Danny Stephenson:

Has it really been about 8 years since the first DVD was out? Holy shit, I remember those days of finding out what the buggers were going to have on them.

Yes, I remember one comment from Andrew Ellard in a series 1 DVD preview article particularly well: “I can actually read what Rimmer’s writing on his limbs, for smeg’s sake!”

Now that line turned out to be a slight exaggeration. But it did contribute to Red Dwarf series 1 being – along with The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition – one of the first DVDs I ever bought.

[Nick R]

Christmassy Ted is brilliant. In my opinion, the worst episode of Ted is the very first one.

I could never call the first episode the worst, when it features the Dreams/Reality diagram.

Assuming they get clearance for showing Simpsons clips, I guarantee that the AA/pub/ambulance bit in “The Mainland” will be shown back-to-back with Homer getting the “free shrimp” from the Kwik-E-Mart. GUARANTEE.

… and on the subject of Simpsons comparisons, having just re-watched said Diagram scene, I’d forgotten how similar “it’s got the body of a spider… but it’s actually a baby!” is to Chief Wiggum’s legendary esquilax: “A horse with the head of a rabbit… and the body of a rabbit!”

(That’s the second time “Lisa’s Wedding” has come to mind recently… I couldn’t watch the Christmas Dr Who without thinking of this!)

[Nick R]

Here’s the interview’s page on the BBC website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vhkv2

It’s a good interview. Next one in the series will be Neil Innes, which should also be worth a listen!

[Nick R]

I very much doubt it’s a playable game – it’s probably rotoscoped animation based mostly on footage of the original game, like this video. Along with these screenshots, they make for very different, but very impressive, interpretations of what a HD Sonic game should look like.

[Nick R]

Trailer of the year? I think so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uco41pOKeJg

[Nick R]

Oh – duh.

Reminds me of this Sky advert and certain shots in the Watchmen title sequence.

I always like seeing those layer-by-layer breakdowns of special effects shots – this bus crash clip is probably my favourite example.

[Nick R]

I don’t believe in xbox

I just believe in me
PC and me
And that’s reality

[Nick R]

A few days ago I bought one of those fancy new, hopefully-slightly-less-unreliable-than-before Xbox 360 Esses. (My Gamertag’s VariedVarieties, if anyone else here is on Live.) I spotted this in Halo 3’s multiplayer armour menu (apologies for the crap photo of a crap 4:3 SDTV):

[Nick R]

SPOILERS

> I thought it was clever that we’d already met Moriaty earlier in the episode but didn’t suspect him.

Yes, by episode 3 the viewer had been conditioned to expect that the scenes involving the woman who worked in the morgue would be there largely as comic relief, and that anyone we met there would be a pretty inconsequential character. (Well, I had, at least.) Nice bit of misdirection!

[Nick R]

For my taste, the metal nipples are a bit too close together.

[Nick R]

Pete Part Three:
> Moriaty didn’t need to be linked to this case at all.

That was definitely the case in this second episode. Moriarty (whether that’s one person, or a SPECTRE/Quantum-type organisation as suggested earlier in the thread) seems to be the “season arc” of these three episodes, and the mention of M__ right at at the end seemed tagged on just for the sake of sustaining it.

I suppose it wasn’t essential to link Moriarty to the first episode’s case either, but the Mycroft red herring helped give the illusion that his presence could be felt throughout the story, so the mention of him in the last few minutes didn’t feel tagged on like it did this time.

[Nick R]

May have been me, but I think Moffat sometimes wrote Sherlock like the new Doctor….I got these strange moments of deja vu whilst watching it…

Definitely. I suppose the big difference (well, y’know, apart from all that time travel) is that the Eleventh Doctor’s a little less blunt and more tactful than Holmes!

In terms of specific moments reminiscent of the last series of Doctor Who, both The Eleventh Hour and A Study In Pink used ultra-slow-mo/bullet-time-esque/time-slice effects to illustrate the superhuman observation abilities of their lead character.

[Nick R]

Miles better than Jekyll, so far!

SPIOLIERY BELOW

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.
.
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I’d been wondering all the way through if they were going to introduce Mycroft, and when that umbrella-leaning fellow first appeared, I thought for a moment that it might be him. But I quickly dismissed that and bought into their red herring that that was Moriarty. Shoulda stuck with my instincts!

[Nick R]

And why the hell didn’t we get a proper balloon payoff with Roy? Instead we got it explained with a title…not remotely funny.

“Gave Roy a little fright” was an amusing phrase!

I thought that was a great episode. It also contained at least the second reference to “Are We Not Men?” this series.

I did guess the reveal of who Bad Boy Moss would be talking to right at the start of the episode. Lots of comedies have featured “Scared Straight” scenes were kids get shouted at by a prisoner/cop/soldier, and I’m sure at least one of them has done the same gag where the kids turn out to be toddlers, and I spent ages after the episode trying to remember which. (Simpsons? Malcolm in the Middle? Maybe I’m getting mixed up with the school assembly scene in Hot Fuzz…)

[Nick R]

I loved the subplot about Moss and Douglas’ rivalry to acquire a robot hand. And Moss’ insistence that no-one except Jen could possibly find being kissed on the bottom funny (and then being proved right). And “Jen’s going out with a geek!” And the technical term “cleftal horizon”. And the keyboardist’s static poses in the romantic spinning-round-in-the-playground shots. And the quoting of “Did you see that ludicrous display last night?”

And even though Scientology parodies have been a dime a dozen online since South Park’s Trapped in the Closet/Return of Chef and the Project Chanology protests, Douglas’ infomercial the start of this episode was a pretty fun one. (It was only after the episode aired that I was told that it was more of a spoof of “cosmic ordering” than Scientology – something that, luckily, I’d never heard of before.)

So for me individual gags like those made up for any problems with the plot. Not the best episode, but far from performingmonkey’s description of it as “dire”!

[Nick R]

The bits in the club were good, but the Fight Club-style Street Countdown reminded me a little too much of Spaced’s Robot Wars pisstake.

The idea of a spelling competition being taken outside reminded me of the ending of the spelling bee episode of Frasier:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yucudEjrqE

I didn’t think it was as good as that Frasier episode, or as good as the first episode of this series. It had its moments though, such as the reveal of what was really going on in those meetings (but did the camera really need to linger that long on Douglas’ lycra-clad body?)

[Nick R]

Pete Part Three:

The Eleventh Hour : 4/5
The Beast Below : 3/5
Victory of the Daleks : 2/5
The Time of Angels : 3/5
Flesh and Stone : 3/5
Vampires in Venice : 2/5
Amy’s Choice : 4/5
The Hungry Earth P1 : 1/5
Cold Blood : 2/5
Vincent and the Doctor : 3/5
The Lodger : 4/5

My scores would generally be a point or two higher than yours: I’d give 5s to The Eleventh Hour and the Angels two-parter, and The Beast Below and Vincent and the Doctor would both get 4. And The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood would only be 1’s relative to the rest of this series – neither of them came close to “Fear Her” levels of badness.

[Nick R]

Dare I say it? The game looks even better than the film!

[Nick R]

> Seasons 1-5 are all very good, especially the first one.

First half of season 1 is very good, before the amnesia bit. Then it picks up again at the end when Dennis Hopper (RIP :( ) arrives. Season 2 is better overall (not sure why everyone complains about the Kim Bauer/cougars bit; it only goes on in the background for about one episode and there were far sillier bits of her storyline that season).

Those are the only two seasons I’ve seen all the way through – though I did see the beginning of the one with Sean Astin (S5 was it?).

[Nick R]

First game episode out:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/theadventuregames/download/cityofthedaleks

Downloading now…

[Nick R]

New trailer!

Almost makes up for the news about Guillermo del Toro is stepping down as director of The Hobbit. :( Though he’ll still be working on the scripts for now, and presumably much of his influence on the production design will be retained by whoever takes over.

[Nick R]

I don’t entirely buy what is being mentioned on other sites either. That everyone else and the world is a fabrication of Gene’s mind. (For example I’ve seen comments like “If he died in the 50s why didn’t is he dreaming of the 70 and 80s rather than a time in which he’d be more comfortable.”)

I assumed the idea was that as new cops arrive, they gradually contribute their own knowledge to the limbo reality. (Maybe childhood memories? That definitely works for the dates of Sam and Alex’s arrivals.) So time does flow there, but the dates there lag behind those in the living world.

[Nick R]

SFX’s interview with Matthew Graham is well worth a read.

So when you created Life On Mars did you have a long-term gameplan in mind? And is this the ending you always had planned?

“Bits of it are. When we got to the end of Mars we planned to do a third series, as you know. In the third series of Mars we would see Sam realising that he was dead – he knows he’s dead at the end of series two, but in series three he would start to believe that he could cheat a final death. He thinks that’s Heaven, and gradually it would dawn on him that this wasn’t Heaven. So it was going to be all the back story that we have in Ashes, of Sam saying ‘I don’t want to leave here’, and we would learn more about Gene, that Gene was actually this young copper. Because we were never able to do that third series, when we came to Ashes we thought let’s start again, let’s not rush to get to that conclusion. Obviously the BBC didn’t want just one series of Ashes, so we said right upfront to the Beeb we’d like to do three series – we’d like to start frivolous, and get darker as we go. And, amazingly, they said ok, let’s give it a go. And luckily the first series did well enough to get a second series and so on, so we were able to do that.

This comment reflects something I’d wondered about:

And I also imagine that if you had two more episodes after the end of Ashes, by the end of that second episode he’d talk about Alex, and Ray and Chris, he’d refer to them, but he would almost have forgotten that last scene in Ashes outside the Railway Arms ever took place.”

In the scene at the end when the guy comes in looking for his iPhone, I’d wondered (only for a moment!) whether Gene would break the cycle by explaining to this guy right from the start what was going on. When he didn’t, it brought up the question of how much he would remember about the revelations of where he came from, what his role was, and what had happened to Sam, Alex, Chris, Shaz and Ray.

Also in that interview, he mentions how much he knows of David Bowie’s opinions of the shows – and points out a line in the series that I’d missed but which could be taken to be them specifically working Bowie into the series’ mythology. And there’s a bit right at the end of the interview where he mentions the title of another of his songs that they jokingly proposed to make into a series! Now that I’d like to see…

[Nick R]

Incidentally – given how many people were concerned that the “seeing stars” thing was a hint that we were heading for a retread of the US LOM’s ending… do you think that was a deliberate tease on the part of the writers?

I do – especially given that a few episodes ago there was a line that specifically mentioned astronauts.

[Nick R]

It was a brilliant conclusion. I’m guessing that in the next few days there’ll be a lot of TV bloggers writing posts comparing how well the two shows Lost and Ashes to Ashes went about concluding their mysteries…

How great was Keats’ raving as he smashed up the police station, and his cackling as he staggered away from Gene at the end?

The post-credit clip… I was expecting the test card girl to appear again. But what was actually shown was better!

I was only half-joking when I wondered whether David Bowie would appear to deliver a Vanilla Sky-style infodump explaining what was going on…

Regarding the expected appearance from John Simm – I’m aware of Jonathan and Seb’s comments on Twitter about it, and I agree that even though it would have been a cool fan-pleasing moment, it wouldn’t have made sense within the story to have him appear again (he’d already passed on). Matthew Graham has done a post-series Guardian piece (similar to the one he did after LOM), in which he comments on how far they considered having Simm appear.

One bit of nitpicking – I can’t help but question the way the dates when coppers die (or are near-death) correspond to the dates they arrive in Gene’s reality:

Shaz: 1995 (judging by Wonderwall) -> 1980ish?
Sam: 2005 -> 1973
Alex: 2008 -> 1981

So Sam died at a later date than Shaz, but appeared in Gene’s reality before her. This could be viewed in one of two ways:

– It’s consistent because it means Shaz would have gone back to a time in her childhood, like Sam and Alex.
– It’s inconsistent because it means that Shaz should already have been in Gene’s police station when Sam arrived, and yet she wasn’t.

But I suppose there is a way for it all to make sense – as Matthew Graham says in that Guardian TV blog post:

“When we discussed the philosophy behind it we decided that, seeing as how the cosmos was infinite, everybody who dies can afford to go to some kind of purgatory plane that is relevant and significant to them.”

So in an infinite universe/heaven/hell/purgatory, all times in Gene’s fantasy reality can take place simultaneously. (Woah.) So it doesn’t matter when a copper dies, or how old they are, they can always slot neatly into Gene’s world.

[Nick R]

Den of Geek’s spoiler-free review:
http://www.denofgeek.com/television/487790/ashes_to_ashes_series_3_episode_8_the_spoilerfree_review.html

They also have a Matthew Graham interview:
http://www.denofgeek.com/television/487791/matthew_graham_interview_the_ashes_to_ashes_finale.html

[Nick R]

Because I watched Hush for the first time a couple of weeks ago:

[Author]

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