Review: Doctor Who 4.4 - The Sontaran Stratagem

So, another week, another bout of Who :D

What did I think of the Sontaran Stratagem, I hear you ask

Well, i liked it. But then I do like most Dr Who episodes :)

Let's talk about it some more....

We got to see the return of Martha, which I thought was very well handled, especially since there was no risk of the "fighting companions" syndrome that we saw in School Reunion between Rose and Sarah-Jane, and I enjoyed the Doctor questioning Martha's morality regarding UNIT, while at the same time bringing up ethical questions about his own involvement with them.

Donna getting to go and see her family was good too, and the re-introduction of the Doctor to Wilf and Sylvia was brilliant, especially as everyone realised they had all met him before!!

The evil boy genius and his academy were good fun, and the Sontarans were silly AND threatening, which is what I always thought they should have been in old Who, although they usually came off as silly in that case!

But by far the most outstanding guest star for the episode was the dude who played Ross, the UNIT officer who is assigned to the Doctor. He had such a Benton-ish quality about him, and yet was so in tune with David Tennant's performance that I just felt he would be a great companion, or possibly just a great UNIT contact for the Doctor (alongside Martha of course, unless these Martha/Torchwood rumours turn out to be true)

But still, no Brigadier Cameo :(

Maybe in the next ep, but i doubt it.

What didn't I like about the episode? It was rather formulaic, which I know is an accusation that can be levelled at Dr Who old and new, but if I hold it up against Planet of the Ood last week, even though the base elements of that story are all staples of Dr Who, atmospherically it felt new, whereas this week felt like a bit of a retread of various new and old Who elements.

But, i liked it anyway

Here's to next week :D

I Hate Hangovers

... and yes, I know it's my own fault!!

I'm too tired to do a Dr Who review now, might do it later

That is all

My New Film!

Hey there loyal readers

I just plotted my new film :)

By my new film, I don't mean RSF, which exists, but I cannot afford to shoot atm, but this is my new, new film, tentativly entitled "My First Alien Invasion Movie".

That title will probably change!

So anyway, I started writing an alien invasion movie so that I could shoot something cheaply and easily this summer, but it might have got a bit out of control....

This was designed to be cheap, and has ended up with....

A Dystopian Future

(Lots of) Split Screens

A giant monster that grows to bigger-than-Godzilla sized proportions...

Hmmmmm....

It's fun though :D

Will let you know how it continues.....

Time Travel, God and the Whoniverse

Whilst I was washing up earlier, and then defrosting my freezer (a neccessary evil caused by a combination of a crap freezer door and my own laziness, which in turn has denied me the planned curry for tonights dinner) I started to muse on concepts of God and time travel.

Surely, I postured, if Time Travel is possible in the universe, shouldn't God therefore be able to time travel. Which, in turn, could make him a less imposing proposition, and simply a time travelling person. But what sort of person would be able to get the knowledge and elements of creation and then spend enough time to create the universe from knowledge they had acquired from time travel?

The answer, my Dr Who loving friends is obvious.

God must be.....

Captain Jack Harkness!!

The man cannot die, lives in a universe where time travel exists and is perfectly feasable, and (if you believe that he is the Face of Boe) is "older than the universe itself."

I think that it therefore fits perfectly.

Captain Jack is God.

That is all.

Pointless Error Messages

OK... I understand the concept of error messages on computers (and other electronic equipment as well). If there is a problem, then they tell you what the issue is.

I ALSO understand that sometimes what they show you can appear to be complete gibberish, but would make sense to someone technically minded, or someone who has access to the code of the program.

HOWEVER, (and this is a trend that I attribute to starting with Microsoft), there is a worrying number of applications that simply have messages that are pointless. The one I experienced this morning was BBC iPlayer, which told me "There is a problem with the delivery system. We cannot specify the problem. If this continues, please contact support." (Or words to that effect) That was all the information given. Not even an error message number, to quote if you chose to contact support.

Since the problem eventually went away by the tried and true method of clicking on the same thing repeatedly until it did what I wanted it to do, I have got over it, but the uselessness of the message has stuck with me.

And why do I blame Microsoft? I blame it for this reason... "Windows has been forced to terminate [Application Name]. We apologise for the inconvenience"

That I blame.

And, I know it offers you a "Send information to Microsoft" button, but seriously, do they ever look at it?

And would you want Microsoft to know what was going on with your computer anyway?

And what if your computer is not attached to the internet?

Rant over, for now....

Dr Who 4.3 - Planet of the Ood

For those who are not aware of this, I am a giant Who nerd, loving old school Who, new Who and all whoniverse paraphenalia (would that be abbreviated to whophenalia?) so I thought I'd review this while it's fresh in my mind.

It was a good episode I felt, I can see how it might be decisive for some people, and it wasn't an episode I was particularly excited about, but it felt different for new Who, and that seemed good enough for me.

(EDIT: I wrote Decisive, i think i meant Divisive... is that a word? I mean it might divide peoples opinion.. hold on let me check dictionary.com...yup, I mean Divisive. Back to the previously published blog)

I understand that if you list the ingredients of the episode then you would end up with what would appear to be a bog standard episode:

Nasty Humans + Aliens that are bad, oh wait they're not really + happy ending + hint about what is going to happen towards the end of the series...

But to me it was a nice, well made, entertaining and fun story, and in the Ood I think New Who has finally created it's first long lasting monsters, ones that could continue throughout the Whoniverse.

Oh, and Tim McInnery was great. But that was no surprise. In fact I thought all the supporting cast were very good this week.

On a technical note (people who are not technical ignore this paragraph) this was such a well made episode. Beautiful CG and compositing, some of the best compositing we have seen in the series so far, the battles were very well shot and looked big and busy, even the cheesy claw grabbing chase scene was good :) Hats off to Graeme Harper, a brilliant Who director.

All in all, I think it gets 4 out of 5. :) Shame about the shoehorned in reference to the end of the series "Your song must end soon". I'm normally a big fan of storyarc references, but this just... I dunno, seems different, which is a good thing rather than the single word references of the last three series's, but, it just felt so similar to last weeks "Psychic" references.

Maybe I'm just being fussy, I don't know.

Oh, and Dr Who Confidential... don't get me wrong, I like watching behind the scenes bits, but why did they bother to extend each one to being 45 minutes long if all they're gonna do is pad them with three minute montages of clips from the last 3 and a bit series?

Meh. Who knows.

So .. next week?

Martha :D

UNIT :D

Sontarans :D

Big Spaceships :D

A Brigadier Cameo? (We can only hope, but I doubt it)

All in all, looking forward to it, although I won't be watching it as it airs, so don't tell me anything about it until I've seen it on Sunday!

Mario Kart Wii!

OK, having played this fairly consistently for the last five or six days, I thought I'd write a review of it.

Firstly, if you are a fan of Mario Kart games, then this will keep you happy. All the usual elements are there, loads of tracks, loads of characters, so many combinations of kart and character that your brain will bleed trying to keep track of them all!

So, single player first... it's hard. Much harder than Mario Kart: Double Dash on Gamecube, and also harder than Mario Kart DS. Part of that is getting used to the Wii Wheel....

Speaking of which, I love it. I haven't even tried the game with any of the alternate controls (of which there are plenty) cos there is something so satsifying about using the wheel :)

The wifi is as great as you would imagine, 12 player races with no discernable lag, and it's great :)

This was gonna be longer than this, but I wanna play it some more.

Talk to ya soon

The first update in months....and a request for assistance....

Heylo all of my dedicated readers

Do I have any dedicated readers? I don't know, probably not since I haven't updated this since October!

So where do I start with updates...

RSF - Screenplay 2nd Draft is finished, and now I have no plans to make it yet, as I can't afford it!

Not much else going on in the life of Brawny, just still living and working and not doing much else...

Oooh.. playing Mario Kart Wii a lot :D It's FRICKIN GREAT!!!

Anyone wants to race me, my code is 5284-1595-4190 :)

Oh, and slowly starting to pull together an idea that I may possibly be filming this summer, which is an alien invasion B-Movie :) Which leads me to my request for assistance.... I need a list of cliches that have to happen in B-Movies, so that I can write them in :D

Ideas?

Might post again later, if I feel like it.