An elective monarchy, again

I was reminded of my recent post when I watched Thursday night’s The Big Bang Theory. It was the episode where they try to recreate a high-school prom — at their originals of which, all of them but Penny had bad experiences, of course.

Sheldon refers to the possibility of him being “elected Prom King,” and goes on to say that he’ll point out that kings aren’t elected.

He’s smart, but not that smart. Prom Kings and Queens, by definition, are elected, and in that context, that’s what the words mean.1

And words mean what we make them mean, and meanings change all the time.

  1. People often say that parliamentary elections “shouldn’t become a popularity contest.” But that, of course, is exactly what prom ones are. ↩︎

Space bat angel dragons hatch in their own way

Sometimes you're thinking about writing a blog post and then you write a long comment on someone else's post that contains most of what you were planning on saying. So I wrote this as a comment on The Reinvigorated Programmer, and thought I should repeat it here.

The background: Mike, the Programmer and Doctor Who fan, if that’s not too tautologous, was complaining about the latest episode, “Kill the Moon”. Now, I didn’t think it was all that bad, as these things go, but I knew that other people, on Facebook and elsewhere, have both complained about it and praised it. Which seems to be par for the course this series (and maybe every series). Anyway, I had some thoughts on the matter, and put them like this.

I was disappointed that they didn’t put in at least a handwavy explanation of the extra mass (which they could have done: posit highly-effecient energy-to-mass conversion, and the sun). But as people have said in other places, you’re accepting a time-travelling, dimensionally-transcendental blue box, and a regenerating Time Lord, so…?

As to the biology of the creature… well, it’s alien. Possibly one of a kind. Why wouldn’t it lay an egg as soon as it hatched? Remembering that “egg” and “hatch” are only our Terracentrist words for something entirely other.

Indeed, that could be exactly why the creature’s mass spikes in the last few years or months of its dormant cycle: it’s forming the new “egg” so it itself will be ready to “hatch”.

And by default it would be in the same orbit, unless something displaced it.

But yes, while you can argue all that, the story would have been improved if it had included at least a nod to those points. And they should have got their sums right.

But I think there’s something bigger going on across this whole series. It’s the development of Clara’s character, and Danny’s secret, and everything. It’s more: I just have a feeling that there’s something else behind it all. Maybe I’ve just been trained to expect a season arc since the Bad Wolf, but… there’s definitely something going on.

And Missy and the promised land, of course.

Someone somewhere suggested that maybe the whole series is taking place in a miniscope, since the Doc mentioned them in episode 3. I hope it’s more than that.

The Felice Brothers

As if there weren’t enough reasons to love Outnumbered already, we recently saw an old Christmas special. It ended with the family watching the telly and singing along to a song. I didn’t know it, but liked the sound of it.

The internet knows all, and a bit of googling told me it was ‘Frankie’s Gun!’ by The Felice Brothers.

Emusic has the relevant album, and it’s great. Highly recommended.

Also their site tells me they’re playing London on the 20th of March. Hmmm…

Aliens Among Us

I never bothered to watch Alien Resurrection because I didn’t like Alien3 (or Cubed, as I always see it). So now, browsing the new, freshly-in-beta SF Encyclopaedia I find it was written by Joss Whedon (who doesn’t yet have an entry in said volume, but no doubt will have eventually).

Why did nobody tell me this?

It seems a particularly timely piece of information as we’ve been introducing the kids to Buffy recently (in part to get us all over the lack of Doctor Who), and also to Firefly. We are deep in the Whedonverse.

Golden times of British TV comedy

It has come to my attention that there are some of you who are not aware of two of the best British comedy programmes to come out over the last year or so. Both have links to Green Wing1, which was, of course, famously described (by me) as “the funniest thing since Absolutely“.

First we have Episodes (actually a British-American coproduction), starring Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan, in which a married-couple writing team go to Hollywood to adapt their hit British comedy show for the American market. It also stars Matt LeBlanc, playing himself. Yes, it’s all very meta, and what’s wrong with that?

Then there’s Campus, which has some of the Green Wing writing team, and could lazily be described as “Green Wing, but set in a university instead of a hospital”2.

If you are one such person, then I slightly envy you: you still have these joys ahead of you. And with both of them, don’t worry if the first episode doesn’t overwhelm you; just watch the next, and you’ll be hooked.

  1. Currently listed as “Watch now on 4oD” (sic). I might just do that. ↩︎

  2. And indeed has been, by me, ↩︎

Cheerleader Saved, World Saved...

... for now, at least

(What, you think that’s a spoiler? You saw the future world when Sylar had healing powers: obviously that one wasn’t going to come true).

You know, some things shouldn’t have a second series. They are perfect bite-sized little vignettes as they are (OK, pretty big bites, and not so much of the “ette”, in this case). Their story is told, and while it may not have a tidy conclusion to every thread, it has at least reached a satisfying point at which to stop; there are no downright cliffhangers left.

And that’s like life: there are no beginnings, no endings; not really. Only a continuing narrative that we pay more or less attention to; and that we eventually have to stop reading (or writing), and put away forever (which last fact is intensely annoying, and the sooner we can edit it out of our reality, the better).

I’m sad that Heroes is over; but in a way I’m sadder that it’s going to go on. Because there will be inevitable deterioration – I read recently that Tim Kring has apologised about the quality of some Season 2 eps (oh, there are a few mild spoilers for Season 2 at that link; or not so mild, depending on how you feel about them) – there will be shark-jumping. And eventually it may fall to the lowest common denominator of all serial drama: soap opera.

I’m looking at you, Desperate Housewives.

And things that should go on, that need to go on, don’t get to. One of these days – and it must be soon, I think – Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is going to finish, and then it’ll be gone forever, irrespective of what plot threads are dangling. Bummer.

I fully support the WGA writers' strike, by the way.

Alias Doc and Martha

The new __Doctor Who__ episode was butt-kicking excellence! And Martha is a worthy successor to Rose.

Just replacing the sonic screwdriver like that was a bit of a copout, mind: given that it got destroyed, I thought that they might try to make something of him _not_ having it.

Still, that’s a very minor nitpick; it was much better than the start of the previous series (also set in a hospital, curiously).

A really strong start.

Updated to say: I’m guessing that the “Vote Saxon” poster is the first reference to whatever this season’s “Bad Wolf” may be.

Unless it’s just a reference to a dodgy heavy metal band.

[tags]Doctor Who, tv, sf[/tags]

Welcome to Torchwood

Well, Saturday the 1st of July, 2006 will go down in my personal history as something of a special day. First I manage to end up actually feeling sorry for the England football team (except for the idiot Wayne Rooney) — or more for their supporters, really, in the form of my kids. Then Russell T Davies and the BBC give us the glory that is ‘Army of Ghosts’. Warning: spoilers follow.

Calling all Green Wing fans

Would any kind person out there have a copy of last Friday’s Green Wing on video they could lend me? I had an accidental-taping-over-disaster before we had watched it.

Other formats are acceptable too, of course.

Thanks.

TV roundup: what I've been watching recently

Turning away from politics, for a wee while, I’ve been finding things have been pretty good in the TV world, recently.

I thoroughly enjoyed Life On Mars on BBC 1, recently. I expected slightly better — or at least different — of it when it was first announced: I thought there would be more (or some) ambiguity or doubt about whether Sam Tyler was experiencing it all in his mind while in a coma, or had actually travelled in time.

Shortly after the start there was no such ambiguity about that, and we were deep in The Bridge or Marabou Stork Nightmares territory (if you can compare a TV series with a novel, then I’d say it’s better than the latter but nowhere near as good (obviously) as the former). What I was hoping for in the final episode, though, is that Sam would wake up back in 2006; and that he would then look into the history of the personnel at the station, and find that Gene Hunt and the others (and DI Sam Tyler, for that matter) really existed. Maybe he would even look up a now-aged and retired Gene, an Annie who is a grandmother.

Obvious, maybe, but it could have been a nice touch.

I had some mixed feelings about the whole thing, though. I wanted it to be resolved and completed, for dramatic satisfaction. But I so much enjoyed the interactions between the characters (especially the growing and grudging respect between Tyler and Hunt) and the quality of most of the stories that I became (and remain) keen to see more. If he had woken up, there would be no going back.

The West Wing maintained its high standard through the recent season (in fact this season, 6, was significantly better than 5 was, I would say) and I’m profoundly glad that we got a digibox and so could watch it on the excellent More4, rather than having to wait for the DVDs to be released. More4 are taking us straight into season 7, so only 22 21 more weeks and then it’s over forever.

More4 is also where we get The Daily Show With John Stewart, to give it its full-length name. This is just a fabulous show; hilarious, thought-provoking and informative. What more could you ask for?

Well, I could ask for something as good — and in a similar vein — for Britain.

The IT Crowd was disappointing enough after two or three episodes that I didn’t bother to work around its clashing with The West Wing on Friday nights). I’ve read some positive comments on it, though, and it ought to have been good, given its pedigree; so maybe I’ll watch out for the repeats. I wonder if that stupid announcer ever stopped calling it ‘The it Crowd’, though?

Hyperdrive was largely disappointing, and Invasion just petered out: that is, I petered out of watching it.

Most importantly (in comedy, at least): at last they’ve started showing the trailers I’ve been waiting for: “New Green Wing. Nearly ready.” Hooray! The funniest comedy of the last few years: right up there with Absolutely I can hardly wait.

And to top all that, my old friend from uni, Paul Cockburn inadvertently reminds me that the new Doctor Who will be starting quite soon. Fantastic!

[tags]tv, television, green wing, Doctor Who, absolutely, the west wing, the daily show[/tags]