The Impossible Quest

The Stand

2012-02-07T13:23:00.011Z

I'm about to ask you all a favour. Please don't click the big red X when you start to read it; I promise, the whole post isn't that; there is actual discussion of the telly box after the waffle.

Have you read many posts on here? If you have, you'll understand what I'm about to talk about.

I struggle with finding a consistent tone for this blog (and for the other critical blog I write). Some posts are a sort of potted history (mostly cribbed from Wikipedia) of whatever show I'm in the process of watching. Other posts take the form of reviews. Some are just surreal stream of consciousness waffle. From one post to the next, you don't know what you're going to get and in fairness, that's in large part because I just make them up as I go along, and see where they take me. Still though, it's always me doing the writing, so you would expect some kind of uniform style to develop, wouldn't you?

Anyway, I've had a think about this and I've decided that... I can't decide. I don't know whether this wildly inconsistent tone is a good thing or a bad thing. I don't even know if people read this blog enough to have noticed it. Certainly I get a relatively high view count but, somewhat tellingly, the majority are on posts that contain pictures of particularly popular stars; I'm not naive enough to miss the connection there.

So I'm going to do something now that I would normally never do. I'm going to specifically ask for people to comment. If you are a regular reader, who has partaken of the Quest's dubious pleasures enough to have formed an opinion (or, of course, if you're a newcomer willing to spend a bit of time poking around in the archives) I'd like to know what you think of the Quest. Does it need a more consistent tone? Do you even care? If you like, feel free to comment merely to say you just come for the pretty pictures. I'm genuinely curious as to how people perceive the Quest. (Cue zero comments and I look like a needy fool)

And now, to the actual point of this weeks post.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

I read The Stand (The Complete and Uncut Edition) when I was, oh, must have been about 15 or 16. I think I'm right in saying that it was one of my earliest encounters with the work of Stephen King; certainly it was the spark that ignited the desire to read a hell of a lot more by him.

Maybe I loved it because it fulfilled a subconscious need for something a little bit larger, or a bit more 'epic', to mark my true ascent into adult reading. Maybe I loved it for precisely the opposite reason; that it's huge death toll appealed to the adolescent bloodthirstiness that still abided within me, whilst allowing me to feel 'grown up' by sheer virtue of it's heft. To be fair, though, that desire for a nice big bodycount has never really left me, and I suspect never really will. If it did, slasher movies and fps video games wouldn't be the money spinners that they are. Maybe the desire to 'grow out' of those urges is the true sign of lingering childhood, and the acceptance that you never will and shouldn't want to, the true sign of maturity. Eh? Yeah!

Anyway, whether it be the epic scope or the multitude of cool deaths; or more likely an amalgam of both of those things and a multitude of others; I loved The Stand with a fierce and abiding passion. Until I forgot it.

I mean, I was young, and you do, don't you? There will always be specific scenes that never leave you; Nick's early exit from the story, and the female spy doing what she does to avoid interrogation being two prime examples for me with The Stand; but many aspects of the book fade from memory, leaving just the bare bones of the plot behind. You could re-read it, of course, and one day I plan to do just that, as I have several times with such classics as The Borribles, but The Stand is a big book and King so prolific, that there is always something new on the horizon from him; some new wonder demanding your attention. So it sits untouched, awaiting my return.

In the meantime, a TV version hoves into view. I remember a time when a new Stephen King mini-series would pop up once or twice a year, and Channel 4 seemed to have something of an unofficial monopoly on broadcasting them in the UK. They became 'Event' television, in a very real way, with Storm of the Century in particular being a massive talking point; what did that dude want? For the record, I nearly called it. Nearly.

The reason I bring up these other King shows, is that I want to say that The Stand was the one that started that little golden age of King minis. I'm not entirely sure that it was, but that's my recollection, and I don't feel inclined to look up the dates so I'm gonna stick with that assertion; in much the same way that I think the Ted Danson Gulliver's Travels was the first of the big all star Hallmark mythology minis. (And didn't they settle into a pronounced downward trajectory pretty body quickly?) If The Stand was the first though, then it's easy to see why it might have made networks sit up and take notice of King as a television writer; because it is superb.

The show, even at it's not inconsiderable 6hr length, had to apply some fairly intensive nips and tucks to the story, so perhaps it's for the best that I don't remember the specifics of the book all too well but I'll tell you this; whatever changes were made, be it sub-plot excision, character amalgamation or whatever other tricks King applied; the story didn't suffer a jot. When I sat down to watch it again just recently, I was held rapt for the duration.

It's down in large part, I suspect, to King's willingness to spend time building his characters before tearing them down; something he used to great effect in novels Salem's Lot and Needful Things, amongst others. Indeed, I'd be hard pushed to name any character in this show that you could point at and say "they're cannon fodder", because they're all of them afforded the screen time to really appear relevant. Not to mention, for the most part they're all cast to appear relevant as well.

With every role, from leads Stu (Gary Sinise) and Franny (Molly Ringwald), to relatively small (but still pivotal) roles like Judge Farris (Ozzie Davis), the cast is a veritable who's who of stars. I mean, who watches a show with Rob Lowe and expects him to die 2hrs before the end? Or for that matter, you don't tune into a show, see Ed Harris and Kathy Bates, and say "I reckon they won't even last the episode."

Yes, this is a dream cast and, for the most part, one that recognises what it's a part of. The weak links; because in a cast this size, of course they exist; are few and far between (I really don't know what Laura San Giacomo thought she was doing) and they can't even begin to drag down the average.

Even King himself, in a role that is considerably larger than the tiny cameo I remembered, manages not to embarrass himself. (Of course, he missed a trick by not playing himself as a survivor. Would have been a nice hint at the meta stuff in the Dark Tower series, don't you think? Although all of that was still years away at this point.)

Long story, well, long I suppose looking at the wordcount, I remember really, thoroughly enjoying The Stand back in the day and I enjoyed it just as much this time around. Even the oft criticised ending worked brilliantly for me. Of course nothing the leads did affected the outcome; that's the point. It was about making a stand because it's the right thing to do, even if it is hopeless. The clue is in the title.

And those are my thoughts on The Stand. Not particularly enlightening, insightful or even, when you get right down to it, interesting, but what did you expect? I knocked it up in about an hour, for Heavens sake. Join me next time, when I shall be discussing something or other that may or may not have been on your TV screen recently, which I may or may not have enjoyed, and which you may or may not be interested in. It'll probably be a cartoon.

Massive Moan

2012-01-25T20:07:00.008Z

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a bit of a whine and a moan about something that most (all) of you came to terms with years ago, if it ever bothered you at all. It's also something which, given the advances in technology in recent years, is pretty much irrelevant now anyway. That said, I'm still writing it, because it wound me up recently and this is my blog, so nyah!

Oh, and I'll be making several references to The TVTimes (other listings mags are available). It's just cos that's what I buy. I am in no way endorsing it especially. (If any other listing mags would like to to pay me to endorse them, I'm for sale. Not TVEasy though; there's not enough money in the world.)

On Saturday 7th of January 2012, ITV began a repeat run of Murder, She Wrote, the classic US murder mystery show starring Angela Lansbury.

Whether it's intended to be a full repeat run, or just there to fill space in the schedules until they can find some new, 'totally unsuited to the timeslot but we didn't realise because we bought it based on the premise without ever actually watching it, but it'll be all right because we'll just skip the particularly difficult episodes and cut the others to ribbons cos no-one will notice, cos it's just wallpaper anyway, and oh look no-ones watching, we'd better shift it to a graveyard slot and never bother buying past S1' show to delight the weekend crowd, I don't know. It's possible of course, that ITV don't have the rights to screen a full run; I haven't looked into it. Regardless, they started from the pilot, so I thought I'd give it a go; I do like a chance to watch a long running show from the beginning, and seeing how it develops.

The pilot being a feature lengther, it was split in two, and we got the second part on the 14th. After which we were told, by the announcer, that the next episode would be on the following day. That's Sunday 15th. Sunday 15th rolls around and Murder, She Wrote is not on. The TVTimes (other listing mags are available, some of them are pretty good) (TVEasy isn't though) backs up the words of the announcer. Murder, She Wrote should be on. What do we get instead, without any explanation? I'll tell you; Doc 'Glorified Sunday Night Granny Telly' Martin. Now, I'm not surprised that Doc Martin was on; you can usually find it somewhere on the ITV network, whenever there's a Y in the day, but at this particular time, I had been promised a bit of JB Fletcher magic. I was livid! (I wasn't really. But I was genuinely annoyed.)

The following week, the TVTimes (other listing mags are available, email me for my competitive rates) (not TVEasy, those knobs; I mean, massive fucking spoilers on the FRONT COVER!) promised more Murder, She Wrote. I settled in, and waited to see what would actually appear on my screen. Lovejoy? Dixon of Dock Green? Bad Girls: The Next Generation? No, wonder of wonders, it was Murder, She Wrote. And here is my complaint... what do you mean you thought the last paragraph was my complaint? Don't be silly; my complaint is as follows...

We got episode 3. The episode that had been advertised but never materialised the week earlier (episode 2, in case you weren't paying attention, come on, keep up) was just forgotten about. Now, you might argue that missing out one episode from a series that's decades old and has little to nothing in the way of ongoing storylines, should not be considered a major deal; you know, by sane people; and it's possible that you're right. Maybe. I guess.

Except actually, no, it's not possible you're right at all.This particular instance is mild, I'll admit, but it's typical of the kind of indifference that big broadcasters have in this country when it comes to imported shows. There is simply no respect (I refer you back to the start of the post; those italics? yeah).

Whether it's shoving shows ever further back in the schedules until they disappear forever amongst the Roulette wheels and chatline ads, or stripping shows across 5 nights a week, making it virtually impossible for anyone with even a semblance of a life to keep up; and yes, we have recordable TV and series link buttons and all that jazz, and people like myself (read; sad cases) will always find a way, but it still means a commitment, which most won't be willing to make, of 5hrs a week devoted to one show; or just not bothering to show stuff at all past a certain point (ITV viewers have only been waiting 15 years for S2 of Millennium); the fact remains that the major terrestrial broadcasters in the UK show little to no respect to their acquisitions. Which means, by extension, they're showing little to no respect to those viewers who might want to watch said acquisitions.

ITV viewers only saw 1/3rd of this show.I've just been through next weeks TVTimes (other listings mags are available; seriously, I'm skint) (not skint enough for that, Mr 'Lets announce on the cover that a major character dies even though all the trailers and hype are built on speculation over his fate'). In it I see yet another example of what I've been moaning about here. BBC2 is going to screen US thriller serial Rubicon (previously seen on BBC4), starting from Tuesday night. Will they give this intelligent, critically acclaimed show with a strong over-arching narrative requiring close attention a prime time slot and decent promotion? Of course not. 11:20, with the 2nd episode straight afterwards at gone midnight. It's a travesty, is what it is.

Anyway, there's my moan. Doesn't really apply to Sci-Fi, specifically, although I did manage to cram a Millennium reference in there, for appearances sake. And now that I think of it, ITV''s treatment of Beauty and the Beast back in the day is probably as perfect an example of what I was talking about at the start as you're likely to find. And CH4's scheduling of Stargate isn't far behind. Yeah, all broadcasters are shit!

With the possible exception of CH5, who are like clockwork with their scheduling of imports. It's just a shame they're so limited in what they buy; there's more to US TV than glossy cop shows, lads. Although, back when they did have more range in their shows, they bought Cleopatra 2525 and never screened S2, so far as I can tell, so that's them in the bad books as well. Sods, the lot of 'em.

EDIT: I've had a comment on twitter by someone who read this post, to say that their complaint about TV broadcasters is down to stations not delivering on promised subtitles. Now, as someone who doesn't require that service I can't say that I've ever noticed a problem but if it's true (and I have no reason to doubt this persons word), then it puts my own petty rantings in the shade.

In this day and age, can they expect to get away with stuff like that? Does the same thing happen with sign language? I don't know, but it just seems really off to me.

In fairness, this person did single out the BBC as being very good with this stuff, so well done them, but the rest need to buck their ideas up.

Next week, I shall have a nice praise filled post on here (and I know I said that last week as well but like I say, Murder She Wrote got me riled up), about an actual show I've watched and enjoyed. I just haven't decided which one yet. Wait and see.

The Witches Of Oz

2012-01-17T14:09:00.008Z

I didn't post over Christmas and New Year, which is probably just as well because had I done so I almost certainly would have been talking about Doctor Who, which would have led me to a mention of Sherlock (which doesn't really qualify for the Quest otherwise) and that would have resulted in me getting dragged into the whole 'is Steven Moffat filled with a burning hatred of all things woman?' debate. Which wouldn't have been good for any of us.

Of course, once the New Year was over with, I still didn't post. Why? Because I'm lazy, basically; lazy, unmotivated and hard to get moving again once I've stopped. I did try, honest guv; this post was originally going to go up last week, but I didn't finish it in time. Not to fear though, it's here now. And what a post it is! (Actually, scrap that, it'll only give you false expectations. It's pretty much the same as all the other posts.)

So, what shall I talk about for my first (belated) post back after the break? Surely, even if I weren't posting, I must have watched shedloads of stuff while I was gone? Well, there are a couple of things that I watched on DVD, but I'm kind of determined to find something in the terrestrial schedules. Luckily, Channel 5 came through big style over the break, with its screening of Baum based mini-series The Witches Of Oz.

I say Baum based, but it's pretty loose, to be fair. What little we see of Oz is, and I really don't want to be mean here, utterly atrocious. The special effects are fake and cheap looking, the performances are hammy and Christopher Lloyd (Christopher Lloyd, for heavens sake!) is obviously extracting the urine with his performance as the Wizard; I mean, he's always been known for his, shall we say, eccentric, performances but this is just... I haven't the words.

Luckily then, if we can call it luck, the Oz based action is relegated to a few flashbacks (and a deeply unnecessary coda that seems, chillingly, to hint at a sequel) and what we end up with is one of those stories where the writer wants to do a big epic fantasy, but is hamstrung by a failure either of budget or imagination (or possibly both) and so all the major events take place in the 'real' world. Because why would the kids want magic and wonder when they can have skyscrapers and cocktail bars?

We spend much of the first episode following our heroine, Dorothy Gale.

As an adult, Dorothy has achieved a level of success writing children's books based on her childhood 'dreams', which explore the weird fantasy land of Oz. She is lured to the big city by a literary agent, under the pretense of selling the movie rights to her stories, when in fact the real goal is to discover how the final book ends; this ending, you see, will reveal the whereabouts of a magical mcguffin that the baddies need, in order to go about their conquery business.

Yes, it's a thrill-a-minute as she attempts to fit in with the glamorous city types (which mainly seems to involve wearing too much make-up and making incredibly risky passes at total strangers in nightclubs); and you'll be on the edge of your seat as she meets up with her old friends, all 'cunningly disguised' as real people. One of them even has the line "Oh, and your little dog, too" which, I'm sorry, but come on!

Although, and I must give credit where it's due, the show does actually pull off something of a blinder in this regard, with one of the characters being so obviously set up in this fashion, to the extent that when the big reveal happens and he heads into the final battle on the strength of it, the audience is all, "well, duh!" And then it turns out he's just an innocent bystander and the real (???) is someone else entirely. It's a clever deception, paid off well, and results in one of the few genuinely amusing moments in the show.

Which is handy, because the designated comic relief characters, who so far as I can tell are barely relevant to the plot, if at all (and if this thing can be said to have a plot), are just utterly, utterly, atrocious.

Frick and Frack (Sean Astin and Ethan Embry) are, actually I can't remember what race they're meant to be, but they're little gnome type creatures, and they spend the duration causing mischief in Dorothy's flat. Yes, yes, they are there to dope her up with some kind of dream inducing drug, but that aspect is dispensed with early and from that point on they just bumble around her flat looking for all the world like a couple of slumming actors prancing about in front of a green screen so they can be superimposed over a kitchen counter in the fakest looking example of the technique since the technique was invented. And it's an old technique.

Of course, there are shining beacons of hope in the whole thing. Jeffrey Combs is always good value and so he proves here, playing Dorothy's Father. It's not a huge role, but it's a fairly pivotal one, and his scenes allow brief periods of respite from the unrelenting Am-Dram awfulness of the main plot. Lance Henriksen meanwhile, seems to be under the impression that he's in a completely different production, and it's to this productions benefit, giving us at least one genuinely warm and likable character.

It's in Henriksen's Uncle Henry that we see our only real glimpse of the heart that should be coursing through any Oz show worthy of the name.

All in all then, something of a failure all round, with cardboard characters played by wooden actors, bringing to life a story so riddled with plot holes as to be borderline unwatchable. But wait, what's this? A genuinely clever twist on an iconic Oz moment? One that the viewer (or perhaps just this viewer) didn't see coming and is, though loathe to admit it, properly impressed by? Yes, it is!

It goes a little something like this; The villain of the piece is defeated, her plans in ruin around her. The heroine refuses to finish her off, choosing instead to appeal to her better nature and bring her to the side of the angels. The villain is receptive (and to be fair, she is fairly sympathetic at points, so this isn't totally out of the blue). In an emotional bonding moment, heroine and villain share a tear. So far so saccharine. It's here that the clever twist comes in. Tears are water, yes? And we all remember what happens when the Witch gets wet, yes? That's right, by bringing her in touch with her softer side, and making her cry, Dorothy has killed the Witch! Ha! You didn't think it through, love!

Don't get excited though; they only go and ruin it. I don't know if it was scripted, or if someone got cold feet and added it in ADR, but there's a line added at the end of the scene that just robs it of any bite it may have had. Cop-Out central, so it is, and we're back to slating them again. Still, it was nice while it lasted.

And that's The Witches Of Oz. I hope that if you had any intention of ever watching it, I've gone some way toward changing your mind. And if you've already watched it, you have my sympathies, you poor poor person. Join me again next week (possibly maybe) when I shall discuss some other show which I haven't decided on yet. I think I'll pick something I can be nice about though. Bit of positivity; does wonders for the soul. See you then.

Blood and Sex

2011-12-21T18:12:00.011Z

As established very early in the life of this blog, I have something of a fondness for the fairer sex; I can't help it, and I long ago stopped trying to hide it. For the most part though, this fondness manifests as a slightly pathetic childlike crush, which I feel is so innocent, if not mockable, as to not require any apology. The truth is, while I joke about my 'pervy' tendencies a lot, when it comes to nudity, or full on sexual activity in my viewing, I barely notice it, unless it's gratuitous, and then it gets more of an annoyed, disapproving 'tut' than any kind of titillated response.

Which is why I tutted a fair bit at the opening episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, but by the end of the season, I was barely aware of the (copious amounts of) flesh on show.

I came to Spartacus, as I did Edge of Darkness, as a stopgap while I was waiting to resume my viewing of Supernatural. In all honesty I didn't expect it to be anything particularly special, partly because it had aired in the UK on a channel not known for importing the most high brow of shows, and partly because I had seen a segment on You Have Been Watching which had made it seem, to be blunt, like blatant homo erotic soft porn. Not that there's anything wrong with soft porn aimed at the homosexual male, but it's not what I look for in a serious drama. Of course, as you watch the beginnings of the series it soon becomes apparent the show is very much a 'something for everyone' provider of naughtiness. Men and women both, wandering around with their bits out, indulging in some quite shocking sexual (hetero and homo; in fact the terms are somewhat redundant) shenanigans, make up a large proportion of the screen time. It all seems a little bit 'try hard' at times, as though the writers and directors were doing it as a sop to Starz (or were indulging the novelty value of being allowed to do it, by said network).

It's sad really, because there really are some very good looking people in the cast, and while I can't speak for the men; both because of my own sexual preferences and because their costumes are restricted to togas for the nobles and almost nothing for the Gladiators; the women were, to my mind, far better served by the costumes than by any amount of nudity; Viva Bianca especially looks stunning in some of the gowns she sports. Maybe that's just me being a prude, I don't know.

Lets leave behind the sex and nudity though, and talk about more dignified matters; namely, violence. Many moons ago I was talking to a gentleman of my acquaintance who doesn't watch a lot of television, and he was bemoaning the fact that he had stumbled across an episode of 'some kind of historical thing, and this bloke was in an arena and he chopped this other blokes head off with a shield; it was disgusting; how was that allowed on the telly?' He was talking, of course, about Rome, and I mocked him hugely for his attitudes, but I was reminded of that incident, and was slightly more sympathetic to his views, when watching Spartacus.

I have no doubt that the violence of the day; be it in the war of the first episode or the gladiatorial combat we see subsequently; was every bit as brutal and bloody as we see here, but the relish with which it is depicted leaves one once again wondering whether the makers may have been better off heeding the sage words of Jeff Goldblum, in that movie about dinosaurs (I forget the name but you've probably seen it; it was a modest hit). Now, I'm far from a gorehound and I don't believe there are many stories, especially good stories, that need it, but at the same time I'm willing to tolerate it to get at a good story; the early Saw movies being good examples; but here the story was sadly lacking, leaving me with the undeniable feeling that the gore was being used to mask this fact.

The biggest problem with the gore, at least to my mind, was the oceans of CG claret that would flood the screen at times. I'm not one of those so ignorant of film making conventions as to assume it was meant as a literal depiction of the amount of blood spilled (and was surprised to learn that some did assume this); I knew it to be a stylisation, used for effect to emphasise the violence; I just didn't think it was a particularly good attempt. The CG looked cheap (rightly or wrongly), and the effect tacky, so all in all a bit of a failure. Luckily as the series progressed this effect was used more sparingly, although it does recur throughout. In the commentary tracks on the DVD the producers have cited this effect as an attempt at 'The Graphic Novel' look. They mention 300 as an influence and since I've neither seen the movie nor read the book upon which it's based it's possible I'm not the best judge of how successful they may or may not have been. That said though, even if they've got it bang on, they haven't really based it on 'The' graphic novel style, they're basing it on 'A' graphic novel style. A distinction worth mentioning I think.

And so to the story. Because despite the impression I may have given up until now, the show does have one. Not just a story, but a tightly plotted, intricately crafted story, with an awful lot of twists and turns, some constantly shifting loyalties and a number of elements carried through from the pilot that pay off in the finale. A good, honest, proper serial; albeit one swamped by sex and violence.

We follow, as you might expect from a show called Spartacus, a man called Spartacus (Andy Whitfield). Or rather, a man who has his name stripped from him and is renamed Spartacus by his new masters. The pilot finds him living life as a loving husband and proud warrior, and follows him as he loses everything and ends up as a slave, bound for the arena, before the series proper charts his rise in popularity with the spectators, rise in privilege within his masters house, and rise in respect amongst his fellow gladiators.

There's more to it than that though. The show is as much about the people surrounding Spartacus as it is the man himself. The House of Batiatus is a hotbed of political intrigue, with Batiatus (John Hannah, playing one of the most entertaining sociopaths you'll ever see) and his wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless, who isn't far behind in the scenery chewing lunacy) leading the way, although clerk (and former gladiator) Ashur could give them a run for their money.

Ashur (Nick Tarabay) is a bit of a favourite character of mine on the show; even though we know from very nearly the outset that he's a conniving little prick, you can't help but feel for him as his injury heals and he thinks he's about to re-enter the arena, before his dreams of glory are stripped from him by Batiatus, who thinks he's more useful as a back room man. All the poor guy wants to do is get his sword back, but he's denied at the last minute, and he's crushed. Of course, the other gladiators see his new position as being unworthy, and he is mocked, so his willing and sometimes even gleeful participation in fucking with their lives (and orchestrating their deaths) is perhaps understandable.

Anyway, Batiatus promises Spartacus that he'll reunite him with his wife if he fights well and remains loyal. Spartacus agrees and all goes well, even past the point where his wife (Sura, played by Erin Cummings) is killed. The way he figures it, Batiatus tried his best and it's not his fault she's dead. Ah, Sparty, how naive you are. There's a lot of that going on, with a number of seemingly permanent cast members, like Sura, getting killed off unexpectedly, and in very nasty ways, as the series progresses.

Spartacus' best friend Varro, for instance, who volunteered to become a gladiator to pay off his gambling debts, is dispatched in a tearjerking (read: emotionally manipulative) scene, which is spoiled only by the antagonist being played by a truly truly awful actor. Console yourselves though, because that guy gets what's coming to him as well. In fact, by the end of the run, I defy anyone to predict who is or isn't coming out of any given episode alive. And by this point, we care, which was far from the case early on; had you told me after 2 or even 3 episodes that I'd give a toss for any of the characters on this show, caricatures that they were, I'd have laughed in your face but by the home straight every death is a gutpunch (so the finale, bloodbath that it is, is very uncomfortable viewing, albeit in the right way).

Creator Steven S DeKnight came up in the Joss Whedon camp, so it's hardly surprising that the characters engender strong emotions in the viewer; what's surprising is that it took so long. DeKnight is responsible for the incredibly poor early episodes here, so there really is no excuse. He pulls it out of the hat though, and delivers a truly shocking finale, that opens up some very intriguing new avenues for the surviving characters going into S2.

Ah yes, season 2. The illness of leading man Andy Whitfield led to a postponement of S2, with a prequel mini-series, that didn't require his presence, going into production to maintain the brand, which if you want to look on the bright side of a very dark situation at least allows for a little more John Hannah, since we're unlikely to see him going forward. Sadly though, as I'm sure most people know, shortly after S2 did finally go into production, Whitfields illness returned and took his life. When we do see the second season, this time called 'Vengeance', it shall be with a new face in the lead role.

That's a ways in the future though; more so for me than for most, as I predict I shall remain a year or so behind with this show all the way (I have yet to watch the mini series). Why? Well, because when you are watching on DVD, waiting a while means the price drops, 'tis as simple as that. I picked up S1 when the mini came out, and I'll likely pick up the mini when S2 comes out. I'm not made of money, you know.

I have no idea what I'll be waffling about next week, but I'm sure it'll be just as insightful, well researched and scholarly as this piece was. So, you know, probably best to read Ally Ross instead. (Joke. Please don't read Ally Ross.)

The Dude Turns Into A Tree? Are You mad?

2011-12-15T16:23:00.012Z

There are few things more exciting in this life, or at least in my life, than the chance to watch, after years of listening to awed conversations and reading reverential magazine articles, a true classic of television. Shows that can evoke such extreme reactions are rare; The Prisoner is one (McGoohan version, lest anyone think me insane), Robin of Sherwood another; Twin Peaks is up there of course, and more recently the likes of Firefly and Smallville (joke!) have staked their claims as likely to be on the list in 10 years.

A Great Show

A Great Show

Not A Great Show

Of the shows mentioned above, I've watched all but a handful over the years. The only one not completely 'checked off' when it comes to the Quest is Twin Peaks; I saw it when Sci-Fi (as was) ran it about 10 years ago, but for reasons too complicated to go into here, I missed a number of episodes at various points in the run, which is far from ideal with any show but as anyone who has actually watched Twin Peaks will attest, with this show it's an absolute nightmare. Thankfully, the modern age has come to the rescue and I now have the complete series on DVD, sitting on my shelf, calmly awaiting it's chance to shine (which should be when I get to the end of Supernatural S5, barring any last minute change of plans).

When I was faced with a derailment of my viewing of Supernatural at the end of S3, I didn't want to delve into Twin Peaks straight away since I hoped that I'd be back with the brothers Winchester as soon as possible, so I picked up a couple of quite short lived shows just to tide me over. The first was Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and the second was another show that belongs on that list of classics above; Edge of Darkness. And it's this show which I plan to talk about here.

I went into Edge... with something of a tinge of regret; I had, after all, been pre-spoiled simply by virtue of the fact that the show was so old and so well regarded. I worried, as I often do with shows of this type (I had similar qualms when I started watching the aforementioned Twin Peaks for the first time), that the impact of the spiritual/mythological aspects would be lessened on me because I knew they were coming, rather than approaching the stories as murder mysteries and having the, for want of a better word, crazy, take me by surprise. Of course, then I realised that if it weren't for having foreknowledge of these elements, I probably wouldn't be watching the shows at all, so, you know...

Anyway, as is my totally arbitrary policy on here (me like, me no spoil; me no like, me spoil the shit out of), I'll not be spoiling this show. This poses something of a dilemma though, since discussing the plot past episode 2, in even the vaguest of terms, is going to result in pretty massive spoilerage. All I'll say is that it's about a copper who, whilst in the process of investigating a particularly personal murder, gets led down some pretty dark, and unexpected, paths; oh, and the people doing the leading are pretty much the epitome of shady.

Our hero is Ronnie Craven, played by perennially, if not underrated by those who actually know of his work then certainly under recognised, actor Bob Peck. Craven is everything you'd expect from the lead in an 80's British cop show; he's middle aged, he's gruff, grumpy and dour, and he leads a relatively dull life of domestic normality. Sonny Crocket he most certainly isn't. What he is, despite all that, is loyal, honest and surprisingly funny when he chooses to be, which is mostly in banter with his daughter. He's also, once he gets his teeth into the case, doggedly persistent; perhaps unsurprisingly given the deeply personal connection he has to it; and it's this quality that leads the various shadowy factions at play in the plot to choose him as their agent, whether he knows about it (or likes it) or not; they know he's going to get to the bottom of the situation, whatever the cost.

Getting second billing is Joe Don Baker, as Darius Jedburgh, an attache of some kind at the American Embassy. Now, we all know what 'attache at the American Embassy' inevitably means but as I say, no spoilers so I'm confirming nothing. What I will say is that it's an absolutely stunning performance that has you liking the guy when you're sure he's a baddie, thinking he's a tit when you're sure he's a goodie, and just plain admiring the guy, good or bad, flaws and all, by the end; layered is not the word for this performance. Of course, he likes Come Dancing, which is almost enough to turn you off him, but we're none of us perfect.

Future Mrs Batman Joanne Whalley plays Cravens daughter, Emma. Emma is something of an activist, and her politics are somewhat (radically) at odds with those of her Father, but theirs is not an antagonistic relationship; they obviously care a great deal for each other, aren't estranged to any great degree, and seem to take great delight in debating (and baiting) each other on the issues of the day. It's a healthy relationship, and it's only when watching this show that you realise how rare that is; it's so easy to go down the route of generational differences leading to ideological differences leading to estrangement and bitter conflict, both in drama and in comedy. It's refreshing to see a couple of people who accept each others views and still manage to live together in relative harmony.

Emma is an important character within Edge of Darkness for... a number of reasons, but it's as her Father's sounding board that she makes her presence most keenly felt; throughout the running time we see him venting his thoughts, feelings and worries at her, while she plays devils advocate, as well as urging him on in his quest. It's an effective means of dramatising the thought processes (and crisis of conscience/confidence) of an otherwise very taciturn man.

Beyond those main three, the cast comprises a veritable who's who? of British television. Look, there's Ian McNeice and Charles Kay! Oh, and isn't that Tim McInnerny? Why, that woman looks a lot like Zoe Wannamaker! Greatest of all though, it's only Brian bloody Croucher! Of course, several of them weren't the household names they are now, but it's still a damn fine collection of thesps, who know what they have with this script and give it everything it deserves; there isn't a duff performance in the six episodes.

Edge of Darkness is murder mystery, political thriller, exploration of grief and... something else as well. What it really is though, above all of those things, is a classic piece of television. Regardless of country of origin, genre or age this is a show which, if you consider yourself a lover of good television, you absolutely owe it to yourself to watch. I'll say no more.

Busty Asian Beauties

2011-12-06T19:08:00.011Z

Welcome one and all to The impossible Quest, back up and running at last (albeit a week later than advertised because wouldn't you know it, as soon as I committed to a start date real life got VERY complicated for a little while). That's by the by though and we're here now, so without further ado, let's kick proceedings off with a look at everyone's favourite show about wisecracking dudes in a cool car fighting monsters.

It's an odd one, Supernatural. I watched S1, way back in the dim and murky past, when it first aired in the UK and I remember it being a really dull, repetitive, stuck in a rut throwback. I wasn't kind to it, in my comments at the time, but luckily this was before my all-conquering assault on the internet (Klout score of 43, baby - no, I don't know what that actually means either), so my hasty criticisms were not recorded for posterity. Fast forward a few years and I decide that the time has come to bite the bullet; The Quest will not be denied and besides, this show has been going for yonks now and everyone seems to love it; it must have something going for it, right?

I realised quite quickly, when I slapped in the first DVD, that other than some pretty iconic imagery; the flaming title card, the Mother on the ceiling, the Impala cresting a rise in a road, and of course the Winchesters themselves, I had very little memory of anything from that first batch of episodes. I had watched them, but their events had slipped from my memory like so much pus from an infected wound. As, it seems, had my ambivalence. You see, it soon became apparent that yes, it does have something going for it; an awful lot, in fact. I look back at the 'me' of all those years ago and I'm thinking 'what the Hell are you on, mate'? (For the record, I wasn't 'on' anything. Just say no, kids.)

Is it flawless? Of course it isn't; it's formulaic in the extremis and is severely hampered by having such a small cast, but those are problems that are mitigated by the chemistry between that cast (and it is small, with only two regulars and occasional visits from their Dad, with his visits being, by necessity, brief and infrequent, since his absence is a core aspect of the shows premise). Big name guest stars, or at least big names in genre circles, help a little more, (I'm particularly fond of the Amy Acker appearance, but then; Amy Acker!) and of course a bit of gratuitous blood and gore never goes amiss. All in all though, I seriously doubt that the show would have enjoyed the longevity that it has, were things to have carried on in the same vein indefinitely.

Things improve immeasurably with the introduction of Sebastian 'I'm in everything but hardly anyone knows my name' Spence and Nicki 'I got my kit off in a rubbish show about soldiers' Aycox, as a pair of recurring villains, along with an almighty mcguffin in the shape of a Demon killing gun. These factors, combined with the return of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as John Winchester, mean that the show closes out it's first season on a reasonable high.

It's with Season 2 though, that the show really begins to show signs of what it's capable of. Old family friend Bobby (the only one of the Brothers oft mentioned but never seen support network not to be killed off at the end of S1) becomes a recurring presence, new allies are introduced in the (shapely) form of a kick-ass bar owning Mother/Daughter combo (and their geeky Tin Dog), and the boys are newly re-energised in their mission to take out the Big Bad, thanks to some additions to the mythology that widens up the scope of the show nicely. And while all this is happening, the human authorities are starting to notice the trail of unexplained deaths left in their wake; that'll be back to bite 'em.

As a serial whore, I make no apologies for enjoying S2 far more than I did S1 (and I enjoyed S1 just fine). The additional cast members and increased reliance on the over arching plot was always going to appeal to me more than the almost anthology nature of the previous year.

Serial structure vs episodic? Check. Recurring support cast instead of relying on the leads alone? Check. Deep and ever expanding mythology? Check. Hot chicks and violence? Check (Come on, I'm not gonna deny that's a motivating factor). The show had arrived. This was the year that I really felt like a fan for the first time.

The improvements continue into S3, with a new enemy being introduced as well as some intriguing new characters (one of whom would be given short shrift by the writing strike mandated curtailed season, with her storyline ending without the necessary build-up; a missed opportunity).

Of course, as all true Supernatural fans will tell you (or at least, all the Supernatural fans I've dared talk to, given my spoilerphobe leanings) the show really kicks into high gear with the dawn of S4. Why? Because it's here that we see the introduction of a certain Angel, going by the name of Castiel (as played by Misha Collins). He's the canine danglies, by all accounts, and I'm very looking forward to seeing what he brings to the table. As it stands right now though, I can't really venture an opinion because I've only actually seen his first couple of episodes.

You see, as much as I might have wanted to immerse myself in S4 immediately after the slightly rushed but still very very good cliffhanger ending to the 3rd year, I couldn't. Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Not a single shop in my near vicinity could see their way clear to selling me a copy. 3 different branches of HMV in 3 different cities and numerous smaller retailers all failed me. They all had S1-3, and 5-6 as well, but for some unfathomable reason that no-one could explain to me, not a one of them had 4. I was distraught. (One of them actually tried to convince me to buy S5 without seeing 4 first. I considered getting the guy sacked, I'll be honest with you.)

All is well with the world now though, because whatever caused the drought has been fixed and my last little excursion netted me a copy. So it'll not be long now until I;m singing Cas' praises with the rest of you. Or, you know, slagging him off; I'm a contrary bastard you know. Until then, in a blatant and cynical atempt to drag in views, have a picture of him. You're welcome.

WHEN I was blasting through the first 3 seasons of this show, and ruminating on what I'd write on this here blog about it, I asked a couple of questions on my beloved twitter. I figured, the show has a lot of very dedicated fans online, I may as well attempt to tap into that and cater the blog visuals accordingly; every view counts, right? The first question I asked was which of the two Winchester Brothers was considered hottest by the ladies (or gay men, I don't discriminate). The answer surprised me in it's vehemence, because I didn't get a single reply favouring Sam (Jared Padalecki). Bit of an ego blow for him, I'd think, if he ever, you know, gave a shit about a tiny little 5 minute poll on a twitter account with no folowers. Dean (Jensen Ackles) on the other hand; he'd get trampled in the rush. In the end I featured both of them anyway; it seemed wrong not to.

The 2nd question was whether people would rather see a picture of the iconic Impala, or a picture of Jeffrey Dean Morgan? If it's possible, the response was even more emphatic. And so, as a parting treat, to say thank you for reading this waffle, I give thee:

Daddy Winchester

Awesome Relaunch! Kinda. Ok, not really.

2011-11-15T23:08:00.005Z

Hello, and welcome once more to The Impossible Quest. It's been a while, so it has, but never fear, we're back in business. Almost.

Next Wednesday - make a note in your diaries - should see the first post on a new look Quest. Well, I say new look... basically, it'll look exactly the same, read exactly the same and, you know, be exactly the same, apart from one or two little tweaks.

I'm gonna stick a few links over on the right there; to some podcasts and whatnot about various shows, (and if you listen to more than a couple of episodes of any of them you'll be ahead of me, because I'm notorious for downloading shedloads and then forgetting to listen to them), and I'm planning to replace the blog list too. Most of them will find their way onto my book blog (as will an entry very similar to this; cut and paste, me?) and will be replaced with a few that are, funnily enough, TV related. (If you have any interest in television production at all, and you aren't reading Ken Levine's blog, you are seriously missing out).

Also, I'll have a list of lovely lovely twitter peoples that you should follow. Not celebs, but people that are great fun to shoot the proverbial brown stuff with regarding the telly. And isn't that all any of us really want?

So, yeah, a few minor changes to make the format a little more consistent and we'll be up and running and back to business as usual in no time. Upcoming shows I'll be writing about will include Spartacus (HIS WIFE HAS VISIONS SO IT'S FANTASY SO LEAVE ME ALONE IT HAS BOOBIES AND I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE BOOBIES), Dangermouse (oh, yes), Edge of Darkness (really looking forward to this one) and a round-up of recent US pilots. Oh, and of course Supernatural, since I said shortly before disappearing from these parts that I'd be writing up my thoughts of S1 'imminently' (it'll now be S1-S3).

Until next week then. (And if I don't post, after all this, please leave me a shedload of abusive comments on here. Or you could send me hate tweets, those are always good motivators.)

A Good Show, A Bad Show and an I Don't Really Know Yet Show

2011-08-30T22:13:00.012+01:00

So, while I saw bits and pieces of these shows as a child the Quest is not satisfied with such lackluster performance and I am engaged in a full, chronological rewatch on DVD to fill in the (many) blanks. Said rewatch has now seen me reach the end of Season 3 and as such the halfway point of the series as a whole; an opportune time, one might think, for a little well thought out, constructive criticism of the kind I am justly famed for. Hah!

CHILDHOOD. A time in all of our lives when we are awestruck by pretty colours and loud noises and need nothing else to entertain us; a time when our critical faculties are about as finely tuned as Channel 5 circa 1998; a time when it doesn't matter how utterly dire a show is so long as it's trippy enough to hypnotise you while your parents argue in the back yard about whose turn it is to lie to the landlord (although that may just have been me). Except that, despite what most adults think (which is odd, because weren't they children themselves once?), that's not really the case is it? I for one have some very clear memories of watching TV and thinking that it was just embarrassing, (especially in the post Tyler Butterworth days*), but by the same token I have been very pleasantly surprised to find that most of the shows which I remember as being good have in fact aged very gracefully when I've returned to them as an adult. X-Men is no exception.

Terrible animation - watch those wild gesticulations as characters get angry; I swear Wolverine is crouching to go No.2 when he's in growly accusation mode - and voice acting from the 'shout everything at the top of your lungs regardless of context' school of acting, mean that the show is VERY MUCH an acquired taste but stick with it and you are rewarded with some really rather good superhero action adventure stories that aren't afraid to tackle the big issues - Magnetos childhood as a Jew during the Holocaust and Morphs post traumatic stress are just two examples - while still remembering to be entertaining.

Now, as I confessed here, I'm no real expert on mainstream superhero comics, but even a relative philistine such as myself is going to recognise the likes of 'Days of Future Past' and 'The Phoenix Saga/Dark Phoenix'. This, coupled with onscreen acknowledgments for comic book writers on many episodes, leads me to believe that this show is likely far more faithful to the comics that spawned it than the fans would have had any cause to expect, or even hope. Which, while good for said fans, was a bit of a gamble for the producers, given that the comics in question are very long running with complex months, years, even decades long storylines behind them. To try to transfer that to the screen in a way that didn't bore the kids must have been a challenge. Luckily, a challenge they were more than up to the task of meeting.

I've gotten the impression from somewhere, I'm not sure where, that the show becomes a lot less serialised from this point on, devolving into the more standard episodic structure that you would expect from a Saturday morning cartoon of that era. I'm not sure how happy I am about that, to be honest, but we'll see how it goes; these writers have earned enough good will from me that I'm not going to write them off without a fair crack of the whip. It'll be a while before I find out though.

YES, I AM TAKING A BREAK, (the halfway point seemed as good as any) to make an attempt to get a little bit caught up on a show some of you may have heard of called Supernatural.

Currently in it's 87th season I am slightly behind in that I have only ever seen the first and if I'm honest I can't remember a thing about it. So I've started from scratch and am currently chugging my way through the first season.

It's a little early to say, but first impressions are that I'm going to enjoy it, so long as it breaks out of the anthology rut and develops a decent story arc and support cast. I'm assured that it does and indeed I've already seen some signs of it as I delve into the back half of the season so signs are positive.

I'll talk more about this show next time, when I should have finished off at least the first season.

I KNOW IT'S SLIGHTLY LESS THAN TOPICAL NOW, as the show has been off the air for a few weeks, but this blog has been inactive so now's my first chance to say it; Camelot was a proper turkey wasn't it? I talked about my first impressions of it here and to be honest I'm disappointed in those who told me it improved because it blatantly did not. It carried on in the same bland, uninspired and frankly, boring way right up to the final cringeworthy twist. (I joked about Arthur/Morgan incest when the pilot aired, mocking the shows desperate shock tactics. I didn't think they'd ever actually do it.)

While I never actively celebrate a shows cancellation - every show has it's fans and who am I to deprive them - I'm certainly not going to shed any tears over this one either. Hopefully, the talented members of the cast can look on this as a lucky escape and move on to better things quite quickly. And if I could only think of any talented members of the cast I'd name them.

That's your whack from me for this here edition of The Impossible Quest. I'll be back, hopefully next week, with an in depth look at Supernatural. Until then, Go Away (c. Charlie Brooker)

My First Sci-Fi

2011-07-20T23:25:00.005+01:00

Despite being determined to get a new post up on all my blogs this week I have singularly failed to put anything together for the Quest so I've decided to just waffle a wee bit of nothing about the first sci-fi show I can ever remember watching.

While I have literally no idea when it was, I can pinpoint exactly where I was (and even the position I was in; laid on my belly in front of a roaring coal fire) and exactly what the show was - to the episode. Why? Because it's a bloody good episode and one of the finest hours of a true legend of 70's/80' TV.

Dirk Benedict. Even his name is brilliant. Not until the arrival on our screens of Benedict Cumberbatch would a name ooze arsomness in quite such copious quantities. Just say it; Dirk. Benedict. Class.

The Return Of Starbuck (although I didn't know that's what it was called at the time) is basically Enemy Mine (it predates the film but is a contemporary of the novella that spawned it) or that thing with the Yank and the Japanese dude at the end of WWII (I forget what it's called and since it doesn't have aliens or robots I'm disinclined to look it up), except with a Colonial Warrior and a Cylon Centurion, but where Return...scores over both of them (aside from having Benedict) is that, well, I watched it first so it is obviously best.

Seriously though, it's hard to believe I would be the person I am today, or that this blog would even exist, were it not for this episode. Had I lain down a week earlier and seen - looks it up, sighs in dismay - 'Space Croppers', as my first ever sci-fi, things would have been very very different.

Years later, when BBC2 was running it's veritable feast of classic and modern sci-fi every night at teatime, we got a complete run of Battlestar Galactica. I remember thinking that I was going mad, as each week I would sit down in the hopes that this would be the week I'd get to rewatch the classic I remembered so well and it never came. Then that awful, awful day when suddenly it was over and this... this abomination that was Galactica 1980 was in it's place. What had happened? Where was Starbuck? Diiiiirk! Come back Dirk!

I literally could not get my head around the fact that Starbuck/Benedict had been written out and I had still not seen the episode of my memories. Had I imagined it? Surely not. And yet the fact remained that the episode heavily featured a character that simply was not on the show anymore. Try to remember, this was in the days before the internet; I had no way of bashing a few keys and having all my queries answered. I just had to sit there, week in and week out, becoming ever more sure that I was, in fact, insane. An insane person with a hell of an imagination, but an insane person nonetheless.

Then it happened. Another week, another naff disappointment as the once great show limped ever onwards; or so I thought. But no, what's this, 'The Return Of Starbuck'. Could it be... It is! Vindication is mine, I'm not mad after all! Sadly, no further episodes were produced after The Return... I would have liked to have seen the elements introduced here explored further in the series; perhaps they could have gone some way toward redeeming it. The damage had been done though, and the cancellation axe fell. I suppose it's some grim consolation that at least being canceled at that precise point meant that it went out on an absolute high. Galactica 1980 ended on the best episode it had ever produced.

Farewell and Welcome

2011-06-22T21:53:00.012+01:00

One in, one out, as the old saying doesn't really go, but would if their was a bit less poetry and a bit more literalism in the world.

The last couple of weeks have seen me smash my way through the final few episodes of Battlestar Galactica and add to my schedule the new Arthurian show, Camelot. One endeavour gave me immense levels of entertainment, with action, emotion and noble sacrifices galore while the other was a big pile of try hard adolescent nonsense. Guess which was which.

I've been guilty in the past of judging shows before I've even seen an episode. I assumed, as I think most people did, that Buffy The Vampire Slayer was going to be disposable fluff; I assumed that Spooks: Code 9 was going to be arsom; and I assumed that Merlin was going to be really irritating youth oriented nonsense, more Robin Hood than Doctor Who. We all know about the incredible legacy that Buffy has left, the less said about Code 9 the better and Merlin has fast become a firm favourite of mine. The success of this latter show in winning me over was largely responsible for me attempting to put aside my prejudices regarding the latest addition to my schedule; Camelot. The thematic and narrative ties between the two led me to hope that where Merlin had succeeded in winning me over, Camelot would as well. Sadly, my preconceptions in this case were quite strong, since everything I heard about this show prior to watching pointed toward it being a dismal failure.

The first problem with Camelot was of course it's casting.There is no way on Earth that even the most talented PR man or woman is ever going to convince me that Joseph Fiennes is a suitable choice to play a) Merlin or b) any other character at all, in this show or any other, ever. To put it simply, The. Man. Can. Not. Act. Sorry, but there it is.

Other casting decisions were less worrying by comparison but only in the way that getting run over by a car is less worrying than getting run over by an articulated lorry; Eva Green, whose work I'm not overly familiar with, seemed to be talked about entirely in terms of how often she got her kit off, which while always a welcome trait in attractive female characters, dosn't constitute a character in and of itself.

Meanwhile, Jamie Campbell-Bower as Arthur spends the whole show looking like he'd be more comfortable running up and down a beach in Summer Bay than charming a nation into proclaiming him the greatest monarch they'd ever had. I should say that I have no problem with the concept of a reluctant young hero forced into responsibilities he doesn't feel ready for; it's a standard trope of the fantasy genre and plenty of solid drama can be drawn from the premise when it's done well but you need a charismatic lead for it to work and here we have, well, look at him.

All the casting woes aside though - and I won't even go into what a drippy mare Tamsin Egertons Guinevere looks - pale into insignificance when you factor in the big one; Executive Producer and head writer Chris Chibnall, who has proven time and again over the last few years that there isn't a cliche or plot contrivance he won't stoop to in his quest to thoroughly dumb down genre drama. I can see why Starz felt he was the man for the job, what with the two seasons of Torchwood he oversaw doing such great numbers in the States but really, they are television proffessionals; could they not recognise that that shows success was almost entirely in spite of his efforts? He wrote 'Cyberwoman' and 'Countrycide' for Gods sake.

So, despite my best mental efforts I couldn't go into Camelot with high hopes. The question is, did the show (under)perform as expected, or did it blow my socks off? I'll be brutally frank, it was the former. I tried, I really did, but Arthur was a sulky prick, Merlin was another one note performance from Fiennes exactly as I'd predicted and Eva Green seems to have been watching the BBCs Merlin series as research on how to play Morgan, since she has got Katie 'Morgana' McGraths blank eyed woodenness down to an art. Chibnall meanwhile has fulfilled all of my expectations of him by littering the script with dialogue that is by turns crushingly bland and cringe-inducingly try-hard, while his attempts at fore-shadowing and portentousness are so maddeningly unsubtle as to be insulting to the audience; we see Arthur sleep with his brothers girlfriend and then an hour later he meets Guinevere but, gasp, she is engaged to Arthurs new friend. Surely Arthur, as figurehead of the Government and squarejawed hero, wouldn't steal his friends woman? Of course not, he wouldn't drea...WAIT A MINUTE, THAT BIT AT THE START! HE TOTALLY WOULD! That's subtlety for you, people, Chibnall style.

I am reliably informed, by various anonymous commentators whom I've never met and whose opinions are therefore bullet-proof, that the show picks up dramatically as it progresses and ends the season on a massive high. I genuinely hope that this is true, but I'm afraid it's very much a case of "I'll believe it when I see it."

So, if Camelot is the less than stellar of this weeks featured shows then Battlestar Galactica must be the one that managed to float my boat. Having amassed a pretty hefty backlog of episodes I had resigned myself to having something of a slog ahead of me, due in large part to the attitudes of several people who had convinced me that it suffered a huge downturn in quality in it's latter days. Imagine my surprise then when what I actually encountered was a show so confident, both in it's story and in it's cast, that it continually pushed the limits of what it was and what it could be, right up to the very end of it's run, producing what I would describe as pretty much the exact opposite of a downturn in quality.

Knowing well in advance that the 4th season was going to be the last meant that there was no longer any need, nor indeed time, for tedious filler episodes like S2's 'Black Market' or S3's 'Unfinished Business'. Instead we got the most consistent run of episodes since S1, that looked, from the premiere onwards, for all the world like a show on a mission; confident in their story and in the ability of their cast to tell that story, the writers gave us a rollercoaster tour-de-force that more than delivered on the properties early promise. They even back-burnered the awful Apollo/Starbuck romance nonsense.

The biggest factor in the show going out on such a high was the recognition from the writers that when you make a show about warfare, and indeed genocide, you'd better be willing to shed a little blood if you don't want to appear toothless; and boy oh boy did they spill blood in S4. To be fair, the show had always acknowledged, and remained truthful to, the very dark premise with several recurring characters meeting untimely ends over the years but as the big finish began to loom it became apparent that while the writers may well be willing to give Humanity a happy ending, it was going to make them sacrifice a hell of a lot to get there.

Case in point; quite early in S4, the death of Callie (best looking woman on the show, fact) was as brutal and shocking as it was dramatically honest. I can't believe anyone, viewer or crew member, genuinely relished the prospect of Nicki Clynes departure from the show but the story is King and she needed to go, so go she did. It made me genuinely angry, but it also made me understand, perhaps for the first time, how far this team were willing to go, and made the rest of the season all the more thrilling, because you never quite knew who might be the next to go. I'll admit, too, that it did my little fanboy heart good to see that my favourite characters death was given extra meaning in the finale, as the reveal of her murderer initiates the last bout of bloodshed in the entire series.

When you take into account suicides (it comes out of nowhere and is properly shocking), executions (another of my favourites went in this way, following his part in a mutiny), and combat deaths (sudden and unglamorous, the way they should be) it really is shocking just how many regular and recurring characters don't even make it to the finale, and then it all kicks off just long enough to cull a few more, so that only the chosen (very) few make it to the redemptive new home. It's bleak, but probably realistic (if you can apply that term to a show about robots and spaceships), and one suspects that to end any other way would have fallen pretty flat.

Uber-foot RIPNow, final thoughts on the finale. In much the same way as Lost did, the finale ends on a very spiritual note. This has been used by several of my acquaintance as a negative, again just as with Lost. Now, without wishing to over stress the comparison, religion and spirituality has been a huge part of Galactica since the very beginning, just like Lost; in fact, Galactica was if anything even more explicit in that respect, so to point to the inclusion of such themes in the finales as a flaw or in some way a betrayal of the audience seems a little, well, dense and swimming in point missing. Maybe that's just me, though.

So there you have it. One great show ends and one mediocre show arrives and the wheels of the Quest continue to turn. Join me next week when I talk about something or other to do with the telly.

Psychoville. God I Love This Show!

2011-06-15T22:16:00.010+01:00

I have put off writing this blog for a week because I was trying to prolong the notion in my head that the show in question was still an active concern in my viewing schedule. I've tried my best to draw out the experience, watching the first series again this past weekend and using said viewing as a chance to re-engage various twitter friends in discourse on the show, but it can be put off no longer; the time has come to put finger to key and discuss the show that I believe, in all honesty, to be the best thing on television this year.

I came to League of Gentlemen, as I seem to do to many things, late in the day. I caught an episode from the tail end of S2 on the BBC2 and decided at that moment that this was something I was definitely going to get into in a big way. If you want to know, it was the episode in which Tubbs and Edward attempt to get a girl for David from the supermarket, which I now know to be 'Anarchy In Royston Vasey.' Then,as was so often the case when you're trying to watch everything, it slipped my mind. Shocking, I know. It wasn't all bad news though because it meant that when I did come around to watching them all from the beginning they were readily available to buy. It was off to my beloved MVC (rip) and home again with the first 2 seasons on video (rip2).

I watched all 12 episodes of the first 2 seasons in what can only be described as a gluttonous orgy of sick, twisted, pitch black laughter. I was hooked, and would remain so for the remainder of it's life. Season 3 is of course the year that many fans abandoned the League, claiming that it wasn't as good, when what they really meant was that it wasn't the same, but I loved it right up to the final grotesque yet oh so brilliant twist, as Royston Vasey was once more visited by possibly it's most iconic guest.

With Mark Gatiss off making himself indispensable to the Doctor Who production team while co-creating Sherlock with greatest living television writer Steven Moffat and Jeremy Dyson enhancing his reputation with comedy/thriller Funland and stage play Ghost Stories, the other two members of the team set about creating what many assumed would be League of Gentlemen MKII. A show about a group of grotesques? Check. Multiple characters played by the principals? Check. Surreal, horror tinged comedy? Check. The show that eventually graced our screens, however, was so much more than that. Coming as it does from the pen of two of the League of Gentlemen you could pretty reasonably expect that Psychoville was going to be a little, shall we say, dark. And you'd be right. What you might not have expected, given the sketch based nature of much of the Leagues output, was that the show would become as much tightly plotted serialised thriller as it was sit-com. Is there no end to these guys talents?*

The show begins with a mysterious masked figure sending blackmail messages to five disparate characters;

Oscar Lomax (Steve Pemberton)

Mr Joll...sorry, Jelly (Reece Shearsmith)

Joy Aston (Dawn French)

David Sowerbutt (Steve Pemberton)

Robert Greenspan (Jason Tomkins)

and proceeds to follow the five as they deal with this unwelcome reminder of a shared past that they'd rather forget, and that we the viewer will have to wait to see, as it is drip fed to us over the course of the first series. Except, well, that's not what the show does at all; not really. Joy tries to ignore the letters and carry on with her 'normal' life, David doesn't actually see his, while Robert assumes that he's being blackmailed about something completely different. Oscar Lomax, meanwhile, is far more interested in tracking down the last 'commodity' he needs for his collection. Only Jolly, sorry Jelly really makes any attempt to get to the bottom of the note, teaming up with rival clown Mr Jolly in the process, but even here things are very much 'not what they seem'.

I really, truly adore Psychoville. The six main protagonists (Davids Mum Maureen, as played by, you guessed it, Reece Shearsmith has as big a part to play as any of the aforementioned five) are all (with the possible exception of Robert) beautifully observed examples of how to make 'crazy' characters sympathetic and likable, while the supporting characters - including a couple played by, what where their names again, oh yes, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith - are never less than utterly believable in this world, however insane the idea behind them or the events they are involved in.

One of the biggest differences between this show and the League shows is that while Royston Vasey was populated almost entirely by freaks, Psychoville goes to great pains to show us that this is the real world, with real people, whose reactions to our 'heroes' is often fodder for some beautiful little moments. Like the married couple who are fascinated by the bodily functions of the Crabtree Siamese twins, or the family who have to deal with Joll...shit...Jelly at their daughters birthday party and of course the ultimate 'ordinary' bloke, Michael 'Tealeaf' Fry, who gets sucked into the bizarre world of Oscar Lomax when assigned to help him as part of his community service. Tealeaf, or Teeaaaleeaaaf, became a firm favourite of mine, with his weary acceptance of all the weird stuff he encountered and also, subtle though it was, the genuine affection he obviously had for Oscar.

As the first series nears it's climax all of the characters converge on the same location and we learn the truth about just what they really did.Then everything is turned on it's head with a masterstroke of a twist and everyone appears to die in a massive cliffhanger. You don't get that with Life Of Riley.

Before I move on to Season 2, check out what I think is one of the greatest moments of television comedy ever. Hilarious in the context of the show, it's almost as funny simply as a sly dig at todays bureaucracy fuelled world.

Anyway, Psychoville returned with first of all a Halloween Special - and boy did it live up to that tag - that told a few apocryphal stories about it's leads before introducing a shadowy new figure that we would see a lot more of in S2, and then a brand new 6 episode season. There was no trepidation this time around, only excitement, as the thought that they would let us down was, well, unthinkable.

Even the most excitable fan, though, couldn't have predicted what they delivered. If season 1 was great then season 2 was nothing less than an absolute masterpiece. Far more tightly plotted than the first run, which was actually quite loose in it's early stages, the writing is never anything less than tightrope taut with the - surprisingly large number of - survivors of the season 1 cliffhanger discovering that their ordeal is far from over and the new threat in their lives, though it be chasing the same Macguffin as the S1 villain, is rather more ruthless and organised about how it goes about it.

Some complained that too many survived the events of the cliffhanger; that the loss of life would have been far greater and they had perpetrated a cop out. These complaints didn't last very long. Had they given a reprieve to more people than was perhaps realistic? Yes, they had, but those same characters were very soon being picked off by the psychopathic Detective Finney, a Police Detective ostensibly investigating the events of the cliffhanger who nevertheless has some much more sinister motives.

Make no bones about it, S2 is darker, scarier and more violent than anything S1 provided. Characters; and we're talking major regular roles, are despatched left and right as dark forces close in on our heroes; new character Jeremy Goode manages to go from deeply sinister to likable to ultimately pitiable defeated figure while his unwelcome companion Silent Singer is just, if you'll pardon my French, creepy as fuck; and Finney is as remorseless a killer as you'd find in any Bourne movie. No-one is safe in this story and it's safe to say that every Psychoville fan will have lost a favourite or two - I know I did - before the last men standing find themselves at the eye of the storm as all is explained - if you said you'd guessed it you're deluded or lying - with the MacGuffin they'd all been chasing being revealed as exactly that and most of the loose ends from both runs nicely tied up while leaving a number of intriguing avenues for any potential third season to explore.

Only two left
Sadly, the likelihood of a third season is slim, by all accounts. Viewing figures were down and reviews from the mainstream press less than stellar, which can only be described as a travesty. I can not overstate to you how sad this makes me. With the exception of Moffat Doctor Who and, maybe, the Life On Mars / Ashes To Ashes franchise, British telefantasy has not produced anything at even a fraction of the level of writing, performance and just sheer class of this production in many many years and here we have a team that has the talent, not to mention a sheer love of the medium that shines out of every scene, to provide us with something that could, if nurtured, have run for years of classic material and what do we do? We throw it in their faces. The British public get what they deserve. And they deserve what they get.

In a final note on this show; the viewers may not have been there in huge numbers but those that did stick around where of the none-so-loyal variety. Watching this show in the company of fellow fans via the wonder of twitter has done nothing but enhance the experience and I have connected with a couple of people this way that I am still in contact with on a daily basis. This is my first experience of this phenomenon of people coming together online over a shared love and I'm better off for it. If we get no more Psychoville, that at least will be a pleasant legacy.

*Well, Steve Pemberton failed to make Benidorm watchable but we're none of us miracle workers are we?

A Good Man...

2011-06-08T14:47:00.015+01:00

So, the last few days have seen not one, but two absolutely glorious finales grace our screens. And they were both British shows as well, what are the chances?

First up was Saturdays 'Mid-Season Finale' of Doctor Who. As big a fan as I am of this show - and I am - I have to admit to a deepening sense of frustration with this first batch of episodes from what is the second season under the control of Steven Moffat (Winner, Faplads Favourite Showrunner, 2011)

There have been a number of complaints that the show has, under Moffat, become too dark, or too complicated, or that there are too many unanswered questions. Funnily enough, most of these complaints seem to be coming from adults; the kids are loving it the same as ever. Personally, while I do think that this latest batch of episodes has had problems, I don't think that it's any of the above named; it's simply that too many of the episodes have just not been very good. Moffats episodes, as they invariably are, were fantastic; exciting, clever, funny,thought provoking and just a little bit scary (or a lot scary, in places), they did everything you want a Doctor Who episode to do, and then some, but sadly, of the episodes between, only master fantasist Neil Gaiman has managed to write, with 'The Doctors Wife', something that in my opinion deserves to be in the company of Moffats contributions.

That the Steve Thompson penned episode 'The Curse Of The Black Spot' was poor should perhaps not have come as a surprise, given that Thompson was the weak link on the writing team that brought us S1 of Sherlock and has done little else of note in the world of television. This relative inexperience should perhaps earn him a little leeway though.

Mathew Graham on the other hand has no such excuse. A highly experienced television writer with form for producing classic science fiction works of his own (he was one of the big guns on the Life On Mars/Ashes To Ashes project and was responsible for many of the best episodes on that, including it's extremely well received - and rightly so - finale), Graham also has previous experience of writing Doctor Who. His episode starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, 'Fear Her', was not the best received of Tennants first season but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it; woefully saccharine ending aside of course. I had high hopes indeed for what he could produce with a 2part running time and a decent Doctor to write for.

Sadly, he let me down here with 'The Rebel Flesh' and 'The Almost People', producing a story where the characters just lurched along from one poorly contrived set piece to another with little in the way of natural plot progression or relatable character motivations. Indeed, the guest cast, superb performers though most of them were, were locked in a constant struggle to convince us that we were watching actual people, living actual lives. In the end, the struggle proved to be a futile one; rather than becoming products of their experiences throughout the tale, characters became what they needed to be to forward the plot. And not particularly gracefully either, the main antagonist played by Sarah Smart being the prime but by no means only offender.

So with three of the six aired episodes having been duffers, the season was looking a little shaky. Luckily though, the man himself stepped up to the plate for the final episode of the run and what a magnificent return to form it was for the show.

Matt Smith showed us once again why he is quite possibly the greatest actor to play the Doctor (he has yet to topple John Pertwee from the top spot for me but he's very comfortably ensconced in the no. 2 position, and gaining fast) as the Doctor moved from comic bravado to chilling menace to sheer, red in the face anger; and when the Doctor is truly angry, the Universe shakes. You only need to listen to the Doctors response as Kovarian mocks the rules good men live by. "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many." Translation: I am a badass. Fuck with me and mine and I will end you. This is a Doctor we've not seen before (although it perhaps owes a debt to the later McCoy stories) and I for one am very intrigued as to where Moffat intends to go with it.

Elsewhere; we get laugh out loud comedy from, of all things, a Sontaran nurse, ("Don't slouch, it's bad for the posture", he tells his defeated foe.); there's a joke involving a tongue that I still can't believe they got away with; Oh, and the 3yrs in the making mystery of River Songs identity is finally laid to rest. Well, sort of; I have no doubt that there is a lot more to this particular story.

In all then, Moffat did what Moffat always does; he brought the genius and proved once again that writing Doctor Who is pretty much the job he was born to do, managing in the process to banish some of the sour taste this run had left. It's to be hoped however, that the back half of the season sees him perhaps exercising a little more quality control over the work of the other writers, so that watching Doctor Who doesn't become a game of 'waiting for Moffat'.

Could this man soon be dethroned?

Far more consistent in it's quality (if not, sadly, its ratings) was Psychoville; the second of this weeks big finales.

However , you shall have to wait until next week to find out what I thought of that because before I put pen to paper, or finger to key, I feel it only right and proper that I do my research and re-watch the first series again, to the ensure that the whole thing is fresh in my memory. It'll be tough, but I'll persevere.

The Vampire Diaries. What's changed?

2011-05-30T21:22:00.014+01:00

In 1991, author L. J. Smith published The Awakening, the first in a 4 book sequence called The Vampire Diaries. Years later, another author, Stephanie Meyer, began releasing her own 4 book sequence, The Twilight Saga. This series would propel Meyer to the top of the bestseller lists and the books themselves were soon adapted by Hollywood into a series of movies, each a bigger smash hit than the last. As is usually the case, where the movies go, TV follows, and before you could say "I smell a cash cow", The Vampire Diaries(TVD) was winging it's way to the screen.

Of course, the TV guys could just have created their own version of Twilight; changed a few names, cast a blonde instead of a brunette, claimed "they're all archetypes really aren't they" and "certain elements are generic, that's why it's called a genre" and put out a show that was basically Twilight with the serial numbers filed off. No-one could have touched them. Instead they shelled out for the rights to TVD and thus saved themselves the bother of having to make excuses; after all, TVD pre-dates Twilight by a number of years so if anyone was copying anyone...

Kevin Williamson, whose work I've admired for a number of years, and Julie Plec, whom I was completely unfamiliar with, were responsible for transferring Smiths characters to the screen. To their credit, while recognising that fairly major changes would need to be made, they didn't engage in the kind of scorched earth, 'baby with the bathwater" approach that is so often utilised when attempting to mold a finite text story into a viable continuing drama. In fact, I've been shocked by how faithful they've actually been, with many elements of the books story being present right up to the recently aired S2 finale, although in a tweaked fashion.

Some of the changes do seem somewhat arbitrary, at first glance. For instance, while most of the characters, though not all, that appear in the show have their genesis in the books, they are often bastardised or amalgamated versions. Take the two best friends of lead character Elena. In the books they are ditsy, scatterbrained witch Bonnie and far more sensible Meredith. In the show, Merediths sensible personality is given to witch Bonnie, while the 'dizzy' role is given to the character of Caroline, who in the books is much more of an annoyance/nemesis for the core group, while Meredith doesn't make the transition to the screen at all.

Bonnie
Random as the alterations may seem they make perfect sense on closer inspection. In the books, Elena is written out for most of the final novel, which forces Bonnie to step up and become the heroine. In that scenario, it made sense for her to start off as a lightweight character, in order that her arc, as she grew in confidence, should hold more weight. Since they had no intention of writing Elena out of the show, even temporarily, they didn't need Bonnie to go on that journey so she was pretty self assured from the get-go. Instead, they gave Caroline the strong, maturing in the face of adversity storyline, albeit intended to get her to a very different endpoint. Watching her develop from stereotypical self absorbed teenager into a strong willed, loyal heroine, by way of unwilling pawn of a vampire and then terrified girl struggling to control her vampire urges, has been one of the most compelling and affecting throughlines of the shows two seasons to date. Much credit is due here to actress Candice Accola, so often overlooked by those clamoring to heap praise on the three leads. As for why they chose to call the character Caroline rather than Meredith, I can't really say, other than the fact that Meredith does sound a little, well, old fashioned, doesn't it?

Caroline
Other changes continue in a similar vein. Elena loses the baby sister of the books but gains a sulky teenage brother. Presumably their desire to constantly put Elenas sibling in harms way prompted this change, given that they may have been on dodgy ground threatening the life of a toddler on a weekly basis, and anyway, it allows them to cast one more hunky young dude than they could have otherwise. Not to mention widening the number of possible romantic entanglements between the young cast (and the lad has done well for himself).

Jeremy
Elenas Aunt, as well as getting a name change from Judith to Jenna (possibly for the same reason as the Meredith/Caroline shift), also manages to lose a fiance in the transition from page to screen, making her nicely placed to form a romantic entanglement with hunky supply teacher/mysterious vampire hunter Alaric. Be glad they did this, because in the books that honour went to Meredith, in a plot development that never seemed anything less than creepy. (Yes, I'm well aware of the irony of being uncomfortable with a teenage girl having an affair with a teacher when another teenage girl having an affair with a centuries old bloke doesn't so much as raise an eyebrow.)

Jenna
Tyler Lockwood, who in the show starts off as a bit of a tit but shows himself to be a decent bloke as he struggles with his burgeoning werewolf-ism, is never more than a cliched 'baddy' in the books, so that's another one in the plus column. To be fair, it's hard to see how the character would have remained viable as a continuing presence were he to be portrayed as one dimensionally as he is in the books.

Tyler
Unfortunately we then come to Matt. Now, in the books Matt is right there in the thick of it from day one. He's been thrown over by Elena; spoiled, selfish little bitch that she is in the books, when she decides to set her sights on Stefan, but he nevertheless manages to be the bigger man, sticking by the girls throughout their troubles and forming a strong bond of friendship with Stefan (in one of the few friendships in the books that actually 'feels' genuine to the reader). He's with them all the way and is right there in the thick of the final confrontation. The TV show gives him another reason for getting involved, by making him the brother of early vampire victim Vicky. (Vicky is in the books, but isn't related to Matt.) Why then, does he manage to fade so completely into the background for almost the entirety of the first two seasons? It's a waste, frankly, although I'm tempted to say that it may have had something to do with the actor being a wee bit, er, bland.

MattVicki
On top of those we see the town all of these characters live in changing it's name from Fells Church to Mystic Falls. While Mystic Falls does sound cooler, I can't help thinking it may have been a little bit too on the nose.

A lot of changes then, but none of them massive and none of them doing anything to radically alter the premise, nor, I would imagine, piss off any rabid fans of the books. Although to be honest, it's difficult to imagine any of those actually watching the show in the first place. The books are well over 20 years old. So if we assume that the majority the teenage girls (and make no mistake, these books are very much aimed at teenage girls, and don't I know it) who read these books at the time are now well into their 30's or 40's and are therefore not really the target audience for a teen oriented show of this type, I don't think the producers needed to worry too much about them. And anyone who reads them now, on the strength of the show, has plenty of bigger dissapointments in store than these differences.

I haven't mentioned the main trio yet though, have I?

Well, I called Elena a selfish little bitch, but apart from that... The Salvatores have been vampires a lot longer in the books but the circumstances of their turning, with the love triangle involving Katherine, plays out very similarly, and in casting Nina Dobrev as Elena they actually went for someone who looked like a normal girl (albeit a beautiful one, but then this is US TV) rather than the frankly ridiculous 'Disney Princess' or 'Barbie Doll' wish fulfillment figure of the books. These are cosmetic changes though. In truth, the biggest change they made to the 'big three', and the most necessary, was in completely re-writing Elenas character. To attempt to have put the Elena of the books on screen as a lead heroine would have been madness. Have a read of this:

He'd walked right by. Without a glance. She couldn't remember how long it had been since a boy had done that. They all looked at least. Some whistled. Some stopped to talk. Some just stared.
And that had always been fine with Elena.
After all, what was more important than boys?

It goes on for a while about why boys are important before we get this gem:

Most boys, Elena reflected, were like puppies. Adorable in their place, but expendable.

Pity me people, for I have read 800 pages of this nonsense and have another 1500 to go. Yes, that's 1500. Curse my completist OCD. And that right there is what I believe to be the biggest positive contribution made by Williamson and Plec; an Elena that you didn't want to slap every time she opened her mouth.

Now that I've told you all the ways that the show is different from the books I'll sign off, because frankly this is far too long and rambly (and ultimately pointless, now that I read it back) to be allowed to go on any longer.

I hope you won't be dissuaded from joining me on Friday, over at my book blog, for part 2, in which I talk about how I feel the show and books compare in terms of quality. See It Here

Without Whom Television Would Be Rubbish

2011-05-03T23:15:00.009+01:00

It's that time again, when I bore you all senseless with another of my Top 5 lists. I've done my favourite actors, and I've done my favourite actresses but now it's time for the big one. The one that you've all been waiting for:

Faplads Favourite Showrunners. Oh Yes.

Usual caveats apply. Not restricting myself to genre stuff here and this is all based entirely on how I feel right now; ask me again in a week and I could well have changed my mind. Although that's less likely with this one than the other two. And so, without further ado...

5 Joe Straczynski

Years ago, when I was but a wee teen, a show arrived on Channel 4 that was set to change the landscape of televisual science fiction completely, revolutionising the way we looked at our shows and raising the bar for what we were going to expect from them. It wasn't very good, and I stopped watching. That show was Babylon 5, and I very quickly came to regret that decision. (It wouldn't happen now, but back then the Quest hadn't quite taken as thorough a hold over me as it would.)

Of course, we all know that the reason Season 1 of Babylon 5 seemed so lifeless and dull was that it was essentially 22 episodes of expository set-up, designed not to entertain (at least not primarily) but rather to prepare the way for future episodes that would entertain; and would do so on a much grander scale than they could ever have achieved without that massive amount of background detail. Was it a flawed way to write a television show? Of course it was, but it was also the first time anyone had tried to do anything on anywhere near this scope in televisual sci-fi. The creator of the show was on a very steep learning curve, and it was one that would almost kill him.

That creator was of course Joe Michael Straczynksi, or JMS as he became known to fans. (Yeah, and you whippersnappers thought you were so clever with your RTD nonsense. Well my generation got there first. Ha) JMS would go on, after B5, to write a few telemovies based on the concept, as well as creating spin-off series Crusade and later the - very good but sadly under appreciated - series Jeremiah, starring Luke Perry.

These days he mostly spends his time taking absolutely ages to write comic books of variable quality, but it shall be for the classic, epic masterpiece that was B5 that he shall forever be remembered. Even if his dialogue is pants.

"Get the Hell out of our galaxy"

4 Howard Overman
(There would be a photo here of Howard Overman but he is religiously opposed to anyone capturing his likeness. Either that or I'm just useless at finding pictures of people on the internet. Feel free to believe whichever seems most likely.)

Vexed is (or was; I'm not sure of the status of any potential second run) a decent enough little comedy but it wouldn't get you on this list. Oh no, I am far more exacting than that. Luckily, Vexed is not the only show Howard Overman has gifted us with.

Misfits. That is all.

3 Aaron Sorkin

Sports Night, The West Wing and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. Two of those would be on my top 10 (possibly top 5) best US shows of all time; one of them was at No.1 for a long time before it was knocked down a peg, by a show created by the next guy on this list funnily enough.

Sports Night even managed to make me a fan despite having the two seemingly insurmountable drawbacks of A) heavily focusing on sport and B) heavily featuring Peter Krause.

Responsible for one of the most standing ovation worthy, "you tell 'em", moments in recent television history (in the Studio 60 pilot; shame no-one listened), Sorkin is nevertheless most famous (in television terms at least), for The West Wing. The show that gave us the White House we all wanted to believe existed but knew didn't, and likely never would. It also gave us Martin Sheen as President Bartlett, Richard Schiff as Toby Ziegler and the late John Spencer as Leo McGarry (great characters all) but the shows, and Sorkins, greatest contribution to popular culture was the one, the only, Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford).

Whitford was on my list of top actors and when I get around to doing it, Lymon will be on my list of top characters. And I'd not have heard of either were it not for Aaron Sorkin. If he didn't deserve his place on this list for anything else, although he clearly does, he'd deserve it for that.

2 David Simon

No big spiel about David Simon. Have you watched Homicide : Life On The Street, The Corner, Generation Kill and the sublime The Wire (the show that knocked The West Wing off the top show ever spot)? If you have, you know why David Simon is on this list. If you haven't, you need to go and watch them. Now.

Can't speak for Simons latest show Treme, because I haven't seen it yet but I'd say that it being a quality production is probably the safest bet I'd ever make.

1 Steven Moffat

My first encounter with the work of Steven Moffat was Press Gang, one of the seminal shows of my youth. The show starred Julia Sawalha and Dexter Fletcher as the perennially sparring but obviously meant for each other Linda and Spike (think David and Maddie if they'd met at school and had to run a newspaper together).

Nowadays he is the big cheese on Doctor Who and new kid on the block Sherlock (this with Mark Gatiss).

He's done other stuff in between of course. Coupling was his, and so was Chalk and of course Jekyll, but really, none of that matters*; he wrote Press Gang and he saved Doctor Who.** Those two achievements alone would earn him this most coveted of no.1 spots.

*It does really. They were great.

**He won't thank me for saying that, given that he has often (and vigorously) defended the work of his predecessor on Doctor Who. At first I thought that was simply professional courtesy. Over time I've become convinced he actually means it!

Battlestar Galactica. Finally.

2011-04-26T22:58:00.005+01:00

Well, it's been another few fruitless, unproductive weeks for the Quest. I shouldn't complain though, because this time out it hasn't been my own laziness that has prevented me from doing anything so strenuous as getting out of bed for more than a couple of hours a day and picking up a television remote. No, work has eaten up my time; the hard graft of proving to an employer that I was a good fit (by doing the job unpaid for months at a time) and then settling in once I was actually employed, has pretty much left me shattered. What can I say, it's been a while, I'm not used to it. I've settled back into the groove now though, and should be back to regularly filling my head with nonsense at my old prodigious pace.

In the meantime, what scant morsels have I managed to take in? Well, to be honest, other than keeping up with stuff like The Event and The Walking Dead (now that it's on a channel I can actually watch) and of course the Season premiere of Doctor Who (because having my scrotum eaten by a swarm of Bolivian fruit flies, high on hexocryaponitonin, wouldn't stop me watching a new episode of that), I've watched one episode of Heroes (Art of Deception, I wasn't much fussed) and the first 2 and a bit seasons of Battlestar Galactica. That's it. Pitiful really.*

Still, at least what I have watched has been good (Heroes aside, naturally). I started watching Galactica because, quite frankly, I saw the day looming when I'd have another Stargate on my hands; that is, a franchise so prolific that you turn your back for five minutes and you've got a 90 episode backlog. I'd seen the mini-series and the first couple of seasons, a while back now, but then lost track. Now I look and see that there are 4 seasons, a couple of telemovies (Razor and The Plan), a one season spin-off (Caprica) and another spin-off (Blood and Chrome) on the way. Bloody Hell!

So I dug into the box-set. Because it had been so long I decided to start from scratch and I'm glad I did. It's got a lot of dingly dangly plot threads this show, hasn't it? First things first, I got nice and reacquainted with my requisite 'crush', in this case Callie.

The Best Lookin Woman On Galactica. Fact.
Then I got all warm and tingly (not like that) at the way old school uber-foot Richard Hatch managed to parlay a one episode sop to the fans into a major recurring role.Then I got annoyed at the utter pointlessness of the Black Market episode. Then I hit the point I'd got to before and started delving into new episodes.

Fucking Hell! Suicide bombings, Murder and Death Squads. That's just the good guys, and it's just in the first 3 episodes of the 3rd season. Baltar living with the Cylons was another nod to the past, although I doubt John Colicos ever got quite as close as James Callis did.

None Of These Are John Colicos

And Kat! Shit!

Unfortunately I'm now getting to that point which I suspected would happen when they first cast a female Starbuck, and rejoiced when we didn't get it in Season 1. Yes, the God awful 'sexual chemistry' between Starbuck and Apollo is being rammed down our throats. Who thought this was a good idea? Aside from the fact that Katee Sackhoff can't act at the best of times, she has zero chemistry with Jamie Bamber and the whole thing is just an awful, awful mis-step.

Truly Awful

Not to mention, it's utterly unimaginative. "Oh look, the two young leads who had a platonic friendship are teasing getting together. I've never seen that on every other show ever." I thought this creative team were better than that.

You See, Chemistry

Still, it's one storyline among many and it won't break the show. (I hope) With about a season and a half to go - they've just found the Eye of Jupiter - I should be due some major revelations soon, to propel the show into the home straight, not least regarding the Final Five, a plotline which I have managed to remain un-spoiled about and am on tenterhooks for, although one of them seems fairly obvious, given the way Xena reacted in the temple. We'll see though, I could be way off the mark.

Anyway, that's a decent load of waffle spouted, for someone who said they had nothing to say, so I'm out of here.

Oh, one last thing, the Doctor Who premiere was arsom and it wasn't too complicated at all if you paid attention, so there.

*Actually, that's quite a lot isn't it? That this is a pitiful effort by my standards probably says something about my life. Not to worry.

Goodbye,Sarah Jane Smith

2011-04-20T18:07:00.005+01:00

I haven't been online for a couple of days. I log on today and the first thing - the very first thing - I read is that Elisabeth Sladen is dead. Elisabeth Sladen.

I'm not gonna write a long winded attempt to eulogise her because others will be doing that and far better than I ever could. Besides, any attempt to explain the impact she had on me, or the depth of affection I had for her, and for her most famous character, would be doomed to cliche, and serve only to make me even more maudlin than I already am.

All I will say is, Elisabeth, you will be missed.

Hazy Recollections

2011-03-30T10:31:00.009+01:00

I watch a lot of sci-fi for the quest. That is, I watch a lot of sci-fi generally, but there are a lot of shows that I watch only for the Quest. Deathly dull shows like Project UFO, intelligence insulting (yet oddly popular with the masses)shows like Charmed, and mojo losing shark jumpers like latter day Heroes. So I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that I find that a lot of what I've watched over the years has just disappeared from my head.

Take Prey for example. It starred Debra Messing and had something to do with the next stage in human evolution deciding to have a pop at us. That is the sum total of my memory of that show.

I definitely watched it, that much I know, but without a google search I couldn't tell you a thing about who else was in the cast, who created the show, who was on the writing staff or any story specifics. (Although as I'm typing this I am getting a vague hint of something involving a man being set on fire, possibly while standing in the bed of a pick up truck. I could be talking bollocks of course.)

Or Haunted. It starred Mathew Fox as (I think) a Detective, who was able to see ghosts. I distinctly remember two things about this show. The first is that I quite liked it despite something of a critical mauling. The second is that it starred Mathew Fox as a guy who could see ghosts. Again, this is a show I remember liking. I just can't remember why.

Then there are the phantom shows. The shows that I only know exist because I wrote their names down once in a file. Although in many cases I don't remember doing it. For all I know they could have been huge phenomenons at the time of their initial broadcast. Or maybe they were cult hits, shunned by the mainstream and yet having pride of place on the DVD shelf of any self respecting geek. Or maybe they just sank without a trace. Whichever it is, I have no memory of them. They popped up on my radar just long enough for me to enter them in my file and then I promptly forgot about them again.

A recent trawl through an old 'pending' file unearthed an episode list for something called Welcome To Paradox. What is it? When was it made? Who was in it? All good questions. I don't know the answers to any of them but they are good questions.

There are loads of them. Shows like Century City. From what little I've got written down it was fairly short lived. So was it designed as a self contained limited series or was it just a dismal flop? Or what about Something Is Out There. What a title! There was... something. And it was Out There. I bet that show was Arsom.

I've decided that this year is the year I tackle some of these long standing residents in my files. Pull them from the dingy recesses of the condemned squat of 'pending' and into the warm, cosy, warden protected retirement village I call the 'Canceled' file. I could go off and do some research as to what these shows were about, or who was in them. Just to give myself some idea of what I'm about to let myself in for. But come on, what would be the adventure in that, eh?

Back on the 'net

2011-03-19T16:25:00.010Z

The Net is Sci-Fi only in as much as it depicted computer technology as being a trifle more advanced than it actually was. And I do mean a trifle because 5 minutes after it aired it looked pathetically dated, real computers having evolved far beyond the capabilities of their fictional counterparts depicted here. That's all part of the shows dubious charm though.

I've written about The Net before on The Quest. I spoke of the haste in which the early episodes blasted through all the Fugitive Show staples and worried that they were blowing their load too soon, as well as the risk of repetition inherent in having regular villains, before praising leading lady Brooke Langton for rising above the cliches and really elevating the material. Sadly, I must report that while the worries proved founded the praise was premature, leaving the show incapable of living up to whatever slight promise it may have held.

Brooke Langton:Decent actress who gave the material what it was worth.
Credit where it is due though, the producers did not go down without a fight.

The show lasted a grand total of one season. 22 episodes. During this time they managed not one but two major format changes in an attempt (one assumes) to boost the shows popularity, although you have to believe that the second change, coming as it did a mere 4 episodes from the end of the season, might have been a bit of a wasted effort.

The first change to the show might have seemed a logical one at the time. Up until this point lead character Angela had been assisted/manipulated by an unseen ally calling himself Sorcerer. Sorcerer was represented by the instantly recognisable tones of the legendary Tim Curry but never actually seen on-screen. In theory, bringing Sorcerer out into the open would serve not only to widen the story possibilities surrounding the character but also furnish the show with a second protagonist and thus slow the pace at which the Angela character was burning through potential plots.

Problems arose straight away however. Firstly, the character reveals himself, voluntarily, because he wanted to save Angela from the threat of the week. Now, were the threat of the week a particularly potent one this may hold some merit but it wasn't. In fact, it was one of the weaker plots they uncovered over the course of the series which made his decision, when he had remained hidden during times of much greater danger to Angela, and indeed had manipulated her into many of those situations himself, a pretty laughable one. Of course this was only the beginning of the 'Sorcerer acting out of character' problems.

You see, they decided that Sorcerer was a teenager. A genius teenager but a teenager nonetheless. Now, on the face of it, not that big of a problem; the Tim Curry voice was explained as a construct and the hints of Sorcerer having been involved with Angelas Dad were actually, it seems, referring to Sorcerers Dad. So far, so clever cop-out. The problem was that they then started writing him as a teenager. His attitudes, his motivations, his speech patterns (the Curry voice disguised his voice, it didn't translate it into fuddy-duddy), every aspect of his personality changed. He simply wasn't the same character anymore.

Never mind though, we'll forgive them, because, well, we've got no choice have we, it's done now. In any case, they at least sweeten the pill by casting future babyfaced CSI underdog Mr Eric Szmanda. Say what you will about the guys choice of shows, he has a natural charisma and easy charm that make him one of the easier to like people on television. And you need to be likable if you're trying to replace Tim Curry.

Not Tim Curry

The second change was harder to swallow, not least because it altered the entire premise of the show. Having Angela defeat the Praetorians once and for all was a gutsy move by the producers but it was knee-jerk and unnecessary. Unless the show was already canceled and this was their way of freeing up the actors a couple of weeks early. If it wasn't that, and the producers genuinely thought that they were putting in place a new format that might stand the show in good stead going forward then I'm afraid it's a typical example of baby/bathwater syndrome.

Not to mention, and much like the Sorcerer reveal, an anti-climactic one at that. You see, this shadowy conspiracy that had it's tendrils in every aspect of worldwide computer use, able to topple major political figures, rig stock markets and lotteries and dealing with major criminal and political organisations from all over the world, was brought down in a perfunctory shoot-out with a bunch of street thugs. A cheaply shot, amateurishly edited(I swear, the same shot of a guy strafing the room with a machine gun was used 3 times), perfunctory shoot-out to boot.

The new format saw Angela, now exonerated, training as an FBI agent and going to work in a new division of the bureau dedicated to cyber-crime, called the CIC. Now, what they say this stands for is Center for Intrusion Control but you just know they wanted to call it Center for Internet Crime before someone told them it sounded naff. I mean come on, what does Center for Intrusion Control actually mean?

Anyway, she has a new boss/partner/potential love interest, good old Sorcerer is still around, as a 'consultant', and the whole thing could not scream 'kill me now, we've lost the plot' any louder. Bore zero resemblance to the movie anymore either, barring the leads name. Didn't save the show. Didn't deserve to.

Catsuits, sex and fond farewells.

2011-03-15T20:43:00.007Z

Righto, little bit of a placeholder, stream of consciousness waffle post this week. You see, I vowed to myself that this was the week that all of my blogs would get back to running on their regular schedule and to that end spent most of the last weekend slaving over a hot laptop to make sure I had someting lined up. Then some of my 'too frequent to be funny anymore' laptop woes (oh for the funds to replace it) struck and the planned post is stuck in limbo for the time being. So instead, you get this rubbish...

I recently spent 4 days(4 DAYS!)completely unable to remember Julie Newmars name. "Who is the hottest Catwoman ever?" was the question posed by one of my pseudo-colleagues. Only one possible answer to a question like that of course but could I Hell pull the name from the pits of my so called memory. It was only when I heard Eartha Kitts name mentioned on the radio later that week (why did that jog my memory?, God knows)that the answer popped into my head. So of course, I promptly blurted it out, to the complete bemusement of everyone in the room at the time (none of whom had been part of the original conversation). Such are the highlights of my life.

Watching The Vampire Diaries recently it occured to me that this show has an incredibly casual approach to teenage sex. They don't agonise over it and when it happens they don't make a big deal and immediately set about 'punishing' the participants. It's refreshing.

Being Human S3 built to a rousing finish. Killing off Herrick, for good this time, was sad, if probably for the best but it was the double bluff, will they/won't they way that Mitchells story ended that really made the episode for me. A cracking finale all round and one that even Russell Tovey couldn't spoil. Although,as I opined on twitter at the time, just think how good that final scene could have been were he not so utterly utterly devoid of any acting ability whatsoever. Just think.

Still, Hooray for Nina surviving.

There you go. Actually, that wasn't too bad was it? Maybe I should make these things up on the spot more often.

A Bunch of Talented Ladies

2011-02-27T23:31:00.026Z

It's been a while since I posted the first of my top 5 lists so I thought I'd trot another one out. Having done my top actors first time round it seemed fitting that number two should be actresses.

Same caveats as before. I'm not limiting this to the sci-fi/fantasy genre (although as a rule it does seem to do particularly well with it's females so there will be more genre vets on this list than on there was on the male one), and we aren't talking all time greatest here, just the ones that have really impressed me recently. Ask me again in a year and it'll probably be a completely different list. Hell, ask me again in a week...

5 Lucy Griffiths

What is a woman who has yet to appear in anything I could, in good conscience, call a decent show, doing on a list of top actresses? Well, to be honest, her performance as Marion in the first couple of seasons of the Jonas Armstrong starring Robin Hood show would have earned her a place on it's own. In what was a very early role for her she absolutely owned the show and without her presence this project, which in almost all other respects was awful, would have been pretty much unwatchable. Indeed, the only time Armstrong ever truly convinced as Robin was in scenes with Griffith, such was the chemistry between them.

It's a little sad that the only halfway decent season that show managed was the 3rd, so she didn't get any of the credit. Criminal really.

Since leaving Robin Hood I've seen her in a serial about a traffic accident (Collision), which was a waste of her and everyone else involved (including writer Anthony Horowitz who is, quite frankly, better than this) and also Little House, in which she plays a young mother caught up in a battle of wits with her manipulative and psychotic mother-in-law. While Collision was just poor Little House managed to be utterly horrible. Trite, cliched dialogue, some of the most unsubtle 'unbalanced' acting I've ever seen from the woman playing the Mother-In-law and as for the ending; if you didn't see it coming from the first 10 minutes of episode one then you need to go back to watching tellytubbies.

She's the best thing about both of those shows and that, in a nutshell, is why she's on this list. Anyone can be good on Spooks (except Hermione Norris) or Being Human (except Russell Tovey) because the material is there to carry you but to be consistently good on shows as bad as the ones she's been on takes some serious talent.

Blonde hair really doesn't suit her though.

4 Heather Morris

Not claiming that she's any kind of future Oscar contender or anything (although she might be; it's hard to tell from the role she plays on Glee, which hardly taxes the old emoting skills) but Heather is on this list for the simple reason that she cracks me up, without fail, every time she opens her mouth. Even when her dialogue makes zero sense, which is often, she delivers it in such a way that you just can't help but love her for it.

The fact that she is hot and her character is a promiscuous, bi-sexual cheerleader who is regularly seen in compromising positions with another, equally hot, bi-sexual cheerleader, is in no way affecting my choice. Not at all. No way.

3 Antonia Thomas

Misfits is awesome, we can of course all agree about that. Personally though, I reckon that was almost entirely down to the scripts. Robert Sheehan aside, the first season did nothing to get me raving about any of the cast. Lauren Socha was actually pretty bad, if I'm being honest, and the other 4 were just okay.

That all changed in S2, I'm happy to say, with all of the cast raising their games considerably, and none more so than Antonia Thomas.

Given more to do this time around than simply be 'the hot one who wanks herself off', Thomas actually became one half, along with Iwan Rheon as Simon, of the couple around whom the entire arc of the series revolved. And she rose to the occasion brilliantly. Her performances as Alisha gradually falls for 'current' Simon almost despite herself, because she is so in love with 'future' Simon, were so sweet and genuinely affecting that you could sometimes forget you were watching a show that revels so much in toilet and sexual humour as to be borderline pornographic. Not for long of course, Sheehan would see to that.

2 Nicki Clyne

I recently broke the wrapper on a complete boxset of Battlestar Galactica, which I've owned for quite a while. Galactica is one of those shows that I lost track of when my Sky subscription went bye-bye and I've never seen past the end of Season 2 so I'm really looking forward to finally seeing what all the fuss was about with the later seasons (even if some sources would have me believe it went off the boil towards the end). I've started from the beginning, so I'm still in re-watch phase at the moment but the one thing that is really standing out is Nikki Clyne.

I once participated in an (admittedly shallow but what the Hell, I'm a man) debate on a forum about which female characters from our favourite shows that "we would". I argued that the lovely Miss Clyne was far more attractive than any of those (Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff, Grace Park) that were getting all the attention on Galactica and that I would certainly take her over any of them. I of course received a degree of gentle mocking. At the time, I was basing that championing of Callie purely on the fact that I had a major crush on her. This time around however, older and wiser as I am (yeah right), I'm starting to appreciate what Nicki Clynes real contribution to Galactica was.

Joss Whedon used to say that they loved putting Willow through the ringer on Buffy because Allyson Hannigan was so cute and so good at playing hurt that it would break your heart every time. I'm paraphrasing of course, but you know what I mean. I realized recently, while watching Callie get dragged off by a convict to be raped, that this was exactly why I adored the character so much. She played vulnerability better than anyone (except possibly the aforementioned Miss Hannigan) I'd ever seen, but always maintaining an air of strength. The character may have been physically weak and emotionally vulnerable (she was young after all and being put in scenarios way beyond what she should have been asked to deal with) but she never gave in and always came out the other side.

I'm closing in, as I write this, on the end of S1 and I remember early S2 sees Callie go through a hell of a lot worse than she suffered on that prison ship. In a queer way, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

1 Karen Gillan

No, not really, I just wanted an excuse to stick up a picture. And have a bit of a rant. This woman keeps getting all his adulation thrown her way and it mystifies me. I'll admit, when Season 5 of Doctor Who launched I was one of those singing her praises but that was me being caught up in the hype and jumping on the bandwagon. It didn't take long for common sense to prevail and the bubble to burst. Yes, she's a very bonny lass (at least in the face; she needs to eat a few more chips if you ask me) but as an actress she's average at best and there are many lines that could and should have been great throwaway gags that are wasted because her readings are just wrong.

I wouldn't mind so much but the straw that broke the camels back for me was when reader of SFX magazine voted her Best Actress. By a considerable margin. Shameful. Almost enough to make you wish they hadn't caught the Nina Dobrev block vote cheater.

Anyway, to the real #1

1 Sinead Keenan

She'd get a spot on this list just for being able to maintain her dignity in 'officially the worst Doctor Who story of the modern era if not all time including all episodes yet to be filmed'. otherwise known as 'The End Of Time', but she has other notches to her bow.

Firstly, as Kelly in Moving Wallpaper. In a show that has Ben Miller as the lead and features Jason Donovan, Hugo Speer, Kelly Brook and the now legendary Jim from Neighbours all playing themselves, you have to go some to stand out and Keenan managed it, despite her character not having a whole lot to do. Bravo.

Both of those achievements pale of course next to her current regular gig. She not only has to portray a werewolf who lives in a house with another werewolf, a ghost and a vampire, she has to convince the world that when she looks at Russel Tovey she sees the love of her life and not a squealing imbecile.

That's acting ladies and gentlemen.

Dino Power

2011-01-04T19:37:00.009Z

So, my last entry before Christmas was a lengthy whinge about how the Doctor Who Christmas specials were always crap and a plea for this years (or last years now, I suppose) to, well, not be crap. Did the Gods heed my prayers? Did Santa see fit to grant the world that most wondrous of gifts that is a decent episode of festive Who?

Depends on who you ask. I think the simplest way to put it is that if you enjoyed the Davies specials this wasn't for you but if, on the other hand, you are sane, it was.

With that settled, on to other business. Since last I posted I have watched lots of bits and pieces of things. A Forever Knight here, a V there, a The Event or two. You know the drill. No major finales, no huge format shattering episodes, no major character deaths or allegiance shifts. All fairly run of the mill stuff. So much so that I was almost lost for something to write about. Saved at the last moment though, because what should come galloping across the horizon, trumpets blaring and pistols firing wildly, to save the day and slaughter a few indigenous tribes? Er, that analogy kind of got away from me there but you get the gist.

PRIMEVAL! Yes, Primeval, the briefly defunct but now very much alive and kicking ITV time travel drama about big nasty dinosaurs eating inept soldiers before being brought down by a geek, his hot girlfriend and their stuffy but hilarious boss. Plus a few other interchangeable blandos.

The show returned this past weekend weekend with 2, count them, 2 episodes. The first suffered slightly from having to explain away the cast changes that have occurred offscreen between seasons but other than that it was vintage Primeval. Truth be told, in the shows relatively short life it has never had the most stable of casts (although departures have usually happened in-story and on-screen) so it's not to much of a leap to ask fans to accept the newcomers quite quickly.

From This

To ThisAnd we're only on Season 4

From there it's business as usual with creatures coming into our time from the past and the so called 'elite' military forces getting their arses handed to them before the civilians save the day. Often in ludicrous circumstances, although while I can accept that some people don't like that kind of self referential stuff I I have to admit that Abby distracting a creature with an S Club track had me grinning like an idiot.

The slightly ridiculous notion that Connor managed to get mixed up with a creature on his own time within hours of getting fired (5 minutes on the internet and a bit of a wander were all it took) would seem to make the huge multi-billion pound government department seem a tad superfluous but it didn't matter because all it really did was highlight the fact that despite the constant changes at the top of the bill it's he and Abby who have always been the core of the show.

I've heard tell that a number of ex regulars will be making return appearances this year. While this should serve to further undermine the lacklustre current crop I really don't care because one of the names mentioned has been Lucy Brown, playing Jenny (yes, here comes another embarrassing infatuation confession) who is really rather lovely and was very much my obligatory crush on the show (gotta have at least one on every show) before her rather abrupt departure during the revolving door S3.

I'm not sure when she's coming back or for how long but I'm just grateful for whatever they give us. I just hope they don't forget the lessons learned in S2 when they suddenly started making her up to look like a cheap hooker doing night classes at clown school. Less is more people.

We're pretty lucky to be getting this season at all of course, after cost cutting measures at ITV forced its cancellation and a hodge podge alliance of various broadcasters had to be pulled together to finance a revival. This kind of reprieve is rare in television and those involved are to be applauded for their perseverance but it would all be for naught if the end result were substandard. On the evidence of this opening weekend though(and the hope of more Jenny, who aside from what I said above about fancying her was actually a decent character as well) I for one am very happy with what we are getting. Sometimes good things really do come to those who wait.

Please Doc, don't be naff.

2010-12-21T18:14:00.009Z

Ah, Christmas, how do I love thee? Not at all as it turns out, sorry. Yes, I am of the Bah Humbug persuasion, and proud of it.

Anyway, this is not the place for a big woe is me whingeathon, this is a place to discuss television shows. Of which there are none worth watching over the 'festive' season. The US imports have either ended (and I talked about those a couple of weeks back) or are winding down for mid season breaks (I've not watched last Fridays The Event yet; I'm rationing it). The only bright spot on the horizon is a Christmas special that holds out a little hope of not being totally shit.

I speak, of course, of The Weakest Link. No hang on, Doctor Who, that's the lad.

I know, I know. I'm well aware that since Doctor Who returned to our screens with 'Rose', the annual Christmas special has fostered a jealously guarded reputation for being, well, a bit rubbish. Credit where it's due, it's a rep they worked hard for. To produce something as mind bogglingly atrocious as 'Voyage of the Damned' or the execrable 'End of Time' takes true grit and determination.*

To be fair, The Christmas Invasion wasn't all bad.

The novelty factor of Tennant assuming the role for the first time bought it a lot of leeway, any episode that heavily features the rather wonderful Jackie Tyler scores points from me and then we have the delightful Penelope Wilton back. Of course, Tennant is hardly present for most of it and when he does wake up he struggles with some of the awkward tonal shifts in the script, Jackie is saddled with that Godawful clunker of a line that absolutely NEVER works (you know the one) and Wilton is only back so Davies can contradict what he wrote in the Slitheen storyline in aid of a half baked 'dark Doctor' moment that isn't half as clever as he thinks it is. Add to that the frankly ridiculous notion that there would be a button on the side of the ship that makes a huge chunk of said ship fall off and, well...So swings and roundabouts.

The Runaway Bride is better, because we at least have a Doctor who's active throughout, we're finally free of that nauseating Doctor/Rose pseudo romance thing that fucked up S2 and the Racnoss makes a half way decent villain but it still had it's flaws. Chief among them one Donna Noble . Now, I'm not one of those people who hated the Donna character. Indeed, I think that the Doctor/Donna relationship in S4 was probably the best Doctor/Companion pairing in RTDs era but I absolutely do subscribe to the theory that she was bloody awful in her debut. And I think that the blame for that is pretty evenly shared between the writer (who was it again?, oh yes) and the actress. Given that she was written as a screeching harridan for most of it, Tate probably took one look at the script and thought 'to hell with it, if they want pantomime I'll give them pantomime'. She's capable, as she proved so well in S4, of more than that but she lowered herself to the material rather than trying to elevate it.

The Voyage Of The Damned was next and was the first time I watched one of these and thought 'this is shit' while I was still watching. Previously I would get swept up in the moment and only realise during the comedown just how riddled with flaws they were but here it was just in your face from the get-go. I won't go into all the flaws, because frankly I don't have the inclination to waste my time on what would be an overwhelmingly negative rant so I'll just mention the one moment that actually genuinely offended me in it's heavy handed, club to the head, oh fuck off, Doctor Messiah bullshit.

It was the heavy handed, club to the head, oh fuck off, Doctor Messiah moment.

Seriously, that speech? And the striding through the wreckage, with the lighting and the flashes around him and the soaring music? The ship is falling apart and they are all going to die so the Doc figures now is the perfect time to stop for 5 minutes so he can tell everyone how great he is and how he's going to save them all. Which he then doesn't do. Awful. Still, Kylie in that uniform. Phwooaar eh? Weeell, kind of anyway.

Then we come to that Cyberman bollocks with that giant machine thing terrorising London and finally The End Of Time.

One had Dervla Kerwan looking lovely, offset by Davies forgetting (or just not caring) that he'd retconned the Cybermen origins, so he could crowbar in a past Doctors montage. These montages work, and fans like to see them, but they have to have a logical reason for existing. This one didn't.

The other story has Davies pissing on everything he'd done in the previous 5 years.

Here's the thing though. Poorly thought out, lacking in any kind of logical story structure and chock full of risible dialogue they may be; alright, definitely were, but there was one thing that can not be denied; they didn't lack for spectacle. The hope then, is that under the new regime, that spectacle, which is a big part of what you want from a Christmas blow-out, can be married to something resembling a cohesive narrative.

You see, for all my carping and moaning, (and I'm not alone and far from the most vicious) these shows were successful. Massively so. They pulled in the punters and got the big numbers. Is that enough though? Eastenders and The X-fucking-Factor can do that. As a writer, wouldn't you like to do the big numbers and tell a good story at the same time? The two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the episodes above could all have been made so much better with an extra draft and a few nips and tucks. None of them were unsalvageable. If they'd had a writer who cared as much about making good telly as he did about boosting his own ego, who knows what they could have been.

My policy on spoiler avoidance means I am probably the least 'in the know' person in Britain right now when it comes to this years upcoming Christmas special. However the (slightly excessive) case of hero worship I have going on for Steven Moffat (come on, the man wrote Press Gang) means that my expectations are raised and I have well and truly 'got my hopes up'. I just hope they aren't dashed come Christmas night. I have faith.

*Seriously though, he was taking the piss with that one right? I mean, surely even the staunchest Nu-Who/RTD apologist can't defend that bilge, can they?

Lovers Walk

2010-12-15T10:48:00.006Z

It's that time of the week again when I put pen to paper, so to speak, and waffle a bit of nowt about the tellybox. It's a bit of a rush job actually, because the thing I intended to post, I've held back until next week, on account of it's slightly christmassy themed and I realised I'd jumped the gun slightly. So here I am, making it up as I go along at the last minute again.

There's a lot of stuff I could talk about of course. The Vampire Diaries and The Event are both well into their respective seasons, there is my tale of woe about how the person I was trusting to tape The Walking Dead for me has let me down, Misfits is trundling along being all kinds of awesome and of course I've always got the option of sticking up one of my top 5's that are tucked away for an emergency but it feels a bit soon for another one of them.

No, it's not going to be any of them. Instead, it's going to be about a certain episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And not just because the last time I wrote about Buffy on here it got more views in a day than pretty much all my other posts combined have managed in months. The power of this show, and Joss Whedons body of work in general, to pull in the punters, years after the fact, never ceases to amaze me. The strength of feeling his stuff brings on is phenomenal.

So if it's not just a cheap attempt to court the attentions of one of TVs most loyal fandoms then why am I talking about this show? Well, I'm in the midst of a rewatch, something I haven't done in a number of years, and I've come across, would you believe it, an episode I've never seen before. I was sure I'd seen all of this show, most episodes several times over, so I had a quick look at my Quest checklist and sure enough, the episode is ticked off. Something obviously went wrong somewhere along the line.

It's funny because the episode in question is actually a fairly pivotal one and I should have noticed that something was amiss during my original viewing of the show. It's from S3 and features the return of extremely popular character Spike, a major presence in S2 who had left town in that seasons finale. This was his sole contribution to S3, so it was a trifle cheeky of them to plaster him and his girlfriend Drusilla (who doesn't actually appear at all) on the packaging of the video releases, but that's by the by.

Spike returns to town because Dru has dumped him. One thing leads to another and he decides to kidnap budding witch Willow and force her to do a love spell so he can get Dru back. As you do.

Of course, none of that pesky plot stuff is really important (at least until the closing minutes). The episode is just an excuse to have Spike back doing what he does best; being really evil while at the same time being really cool, and winding up the regulars with his sarcastic, but true, insights into their lives. He doesn't give a shit, so he can say everything everyone else is thinking. And he does, taking great joy in it. He also gets one of his all to infrequent chances to interact with Buffys Mom Joyce, a character pairing that is never anything less than delightful together.

Those closing moments though, in which every romantic pairing on the show, Buffy/Angel, Xander/Cordelia, Willow/Oz, falls apart, some more permanently than others, is where the episode becomes truly pivotal. Which is where my confusion lies. You see, by rights, I should have noticed something was amiss when I watched the next episode and all the romantic entanglements were so screwed up. What did I think had happened? Especially odd when you consider that that next episode was The Wish and was entirely dependent on the break up of Xander and Cordelia for it's plot. I honestly don't remember. In my defence, it's possible that I did wonder what had happened for about 5 minutes and then just got swept up in The Wish, because it is a bloody good episode.

Anyway, at a time when I'm watching an awful lot of stuff that I'm not particularly enjoying for The Quest (buck your ideas up, terrible new V) it's hard to describe the thrill that comes from finding out that there is a little slice of goodness waiting to be sampled from one of my all time favourite shows. What other missed or long forgotten gems will I uncover on this rewatch? I don't think there are any more, but then again, I didn't think there was this one. For the first time I'm actually hoping for errors in my filing system. When you think about it, it's pretty damning on the current TV output, that I have to turn to 10 year old reruns for my jollies.

Next : Doctor Who at Christmas.

Endings galore

2010-12-07T18:34:00.018Z

And so, the end is near. Over the last couple of weeks I've watched the season finales of Merlin S3 (BBC1), True Blood S2 (CH4) and the S1 (and series) finale of Blade : The Series (Five USA). I don't really like it when a lot of stuff comes to an end at the same time ; makes the schedules feel all barren. What makes it worse is that I'm pretty sure CH4 and ITV2 are going to have to take a break pretty soon, with The Event and Vampire Diaries respectively, because they are awfully close to catching up to stateside screenings. At least I still have Misfits to keep me warm at night.

Blade

The Blade finale was a slight disappointment in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, the exercise was hampered slightly by the fact that the writers felt beholden to the idea of having Blade himself be involved in the big finale. Understandable, I suppose, given that he was, on paper at least, the star of the show, but since he was always the least interesting character in their arsenal his inclusion felt intrusive and unwanted. Marcus facing down the purebloods, and the enmity between Krista and Chase coming to a head would have been much more dramatically satisfying if it hadn't had to stop for a meathead fight scene, that being pretty much all Kirk Jones was capable of contributing.

While the show served it's purpose in that it brought the series arc to a head, with the Aurora project being exposed and Marcus making his move against the Purebloods, and it set the various regulars in new positions for a prospective second year they sadly felt the need to end on a cliffhanger, which we'll never see resolved due to the shows cancellation. Now, I have nothing against serialised storytelling, prefer it in fact, but I've always felt that unless you are absolutely sure you are coming back you should end the season in such a way as to have it work as a series finale, which this show would have done if not for that scene. The fact is though, even if the show was coming back, that cliffhanger didn't work for me. It came out of nowhere and pretty much contradicted a lot of the character beats from earlier in the episode. It felt like a shock for the sake of a shock and it didn't sit well with me.

True Blood

I'm a bit behind on this show, having had to wait for CH4 to show it due to loss of FX subscription so it's one of those shows that I can't really engage with the online discussion of, for fear of spoilers. Which is a shame,because if ever a show would have had me raving on the forums it would have been this one.

S2 was a massive improvement over S1, already a great show, thanks to the years Big Bad, Marianne, being a much more interesting and chilling character than S1s mystery serial killer. A nutjob who who kills women who consort with vampires is never going to be a match for an immortal nutjob who brainwashes an entire town into animalistic orgies of sex and violence in order to resurrect an ancient God. Stands to reason.

The real standout characters in S2 for me where Jessica, Jason and Andy. It's all to easy to dismiss them as comic relief, given that their storylines were so often played (successfully) for laughs, but these characters were rife with genuine tragedy (Jessica) and heroism (Jason and Andy).

Jessicas shyness and awkwardness around the older but equally inexperienced Hoyt, leading to their eventually sleeping together and her discovering that, due to her vampiric nature her physical virginity would reassert itself, meaning that sex would forever be painful was one of the most endearing, tender and real love affairs you'll find in vampire fiction. Not for them the heightened, epic love affairs of a Buffy and Angel, Edward and Bella, or indeed a Bill and Sookie. This is human/vamp romance in the real world, and it's heartbreaking.

Jason and Andy meanwhile, are probably the most truly heroic characters in the show during this season. They have no abilities to speak of, like Bills vamp strength and speed, Sams shapeshifting or even Sookie with her telepathy. They are simply ordinary people who see their town in danger, a town that has belittled and ridiculed them for years, and step up to do what they can anyway. That they failed is not the point; they tried, knowing full well that they were walking into a situation that would likely see them killed. Proper heroes, in my eyes.

Merlin

And so we move away from vampires, and hit Merlin, the BBC Saturday night adventure show based on the Arthurian myth. I was, when this show was first mooted many moons ago, one of those skeptics whose first impressions from the premise (young Merlin comes to Camelot and has to hide his powers while working for Arthur who is the same age as him) were that the show would be, not to put too fine a point on it, shit. I based this on the age of the Merlin character. They could do what they wanted otherwise but having Arthur and Merlin as contemporaries just seemed wrong.I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt though, and reserve judgment until after I'd actually watched the thing (radical concept, I realise). The show has, over the last 3 seasons, managed to completely assuage* my fears and is a show which I now enjoy immensely.

Colin Morgan (Merlin) and Bradley James (Arthur) are a solid central double act, with a good line in warm friendship disguised as mockery and Angel Coulby (Gwen), Richard Wilson (Gaius) and Anthony Head (Uther) round out a quite frankly stellar regular cast. Katie McGrath is also in the cast, playing Morgana, but she doesn't rate the 'stellar' tag. She barely qualifies for the 'actress' tag, to be honest. One weak link can't sink the ship though, and the others more than carry her.

The 2part finale of the shows 3rd season was, in many ways, an answer to the criticisms of those, unlike myself, who never got over the whole 'that's just not right' attitude to the show. The relationship between Arthur and Gwen becoming public, the introduction of the Round Table, Lancelot Gawain and others being made knights, the Lady in the Lake and of course the Sword in the Stone; all of these exciting developments and many more served to bring the show closer to 'proper' Arthurian history. Not that there is any such thing as historical fact with these characters. Still, some people have a hard time telling the difference being History and Myth, and those people had been complaining about this show from day one. With a bit of luck, these developments will calm them down a bit.

While certain of these elements had been hinted at previously this was the first time they had all been explicitly shown. To introduce them all in the space of one story could have been a massive mistake by the producers. As much as the viewers wanted to see them, bringing them all into play at the same time ran the risk of the show turning into one big exposition heavy info-dump, with the story making way for a simple checklist. Julian Jones, writer of this 2parter, was well up to the challenge however and managed to produce something that was, above all else, a rollicking good adventure story for all the family. What more can you ask for on a Saturday night?

With all of these departures from the schedule, it's looking like the Quest pickings on the basic channels are going to be slim on the ground in the run up to Christmas. A delve into the DVD shelves (and possibly *cough* the intenet *cough*)is looking likely.

*I'm not entirely convinced that this word means what I think it means but what the hell, right?

Top Blokes

2010-11-29T12:29:00.013Z

I thought I'd do some lists. Top 5 type things, you know, because everyone likes lists right? So I put on the old thinking cap, and came up with some of my favourite shows, favourite actors/actresses, favourite characters, favourite episodes, etc. etc.

It made me stop and think. If anyone asks me what my favourite genre is, I tell them that it's science-fiction/fantasy. Always has been, always will be. Hence the Quest and this here blog. Yet the majority of my individual faves that I came up with are from other genres. How does that work? So while cumulatively, sci-fi remains my first love, and the primary focus of the Quest and these ramblings, I will be posting a few bits and pieces about other genres when doing my lists. Which I'm thinking will be roughly once a month. Or whenever I'm at a loss for a show to waffle about come Tuesday night.

First things first. Favourite (recent/active) Actor. Which means I'll probably struggle to crowbar in any pictures of luvverly ladies this week. Or will I?

5. JD Williams.

Whether it be naive and perennially in over his head Kenny 'Bricks' (bless) Wangler, the tragic Bodie or the (I'm guessing, cos, I aint seen the whole thing yet) doomed Mr Cat, Williams has the enviable ability of being able to make flawed, even downright unpleasant, characters likable. So likable in fact that when Kenny and then Bodie suffered the inevitable fate of the drug dealing murderer, you felt genuine grief at their passing. Good writing played it's part, no doubt, but it would have been much more difficult with a lesser talent in the roles, to get the viewers so passionately on-side with these flawed individuals.

4. Bruce Campbell

Now, he of the chin may be known, primarily, for his B movie roles but he's far from quiet on the small screen either. Pick pretty much any genre series and he'll have made a guest appearance at some time or another and I can think of but one (Charmed) that managed to drag him down rather than him elevating the material. Plus of course, his recurring and starring roles in any number of classic (if not always successful) shows. He basically plays the same role over and over again; the cocky but charming hero, never short of a quip or a sarcastic put down, but also actually capable of backing up his words with deeds.

Witness Autolycus, king of thieves, from the Hercules/Xena franchise,

or Brisco County Jr. from the rather wonderful show of the same name.

Most recently of course, he has managed to steal the show from the supposed lead in his current gig; Burn Notice. Bruce Campbell playing Bruce Campbell, long may it continue.

3. Mark Valley.

Currently to be seen as the lead in Human Target, but a veteran of many a cracking show like Fringe and Boston Legal, Valley actually came to my attention first in a little show called Keen Eddie. Destined for early cancellation Eddie was, for a brief shining moment, my favourite show in the whole wide world. It was funny, it was charming, it had a (then relatively unknown) Sienna Miller being very foxy and it had one of my favourite 'buddy' partnerships since Starsky & Hutch. The idea was that a New York cop (Valley) was 'loaned' to Scotland Yard and partnered up with a British copper (Julian Rhind-Tutt) to investigate crimes in London. It remains, to this day, the closest an American show has ever come to an accurate depiction of England. Not perfect, mind you, but very close.

Valley was a revelation, because to look at him, he's a bland meathead (sorry), but he has a charisma about him that major movie stars would kill for. Quite why he isn't a household name by now is a mystery to me.

Not an actor...

...but in a show with vampires, just like this guy.

2. Chris Bauer.

A God among actors. Simple as that. Put upon husband in Third Watch, tragic victim of circumstance and poor judgement in The Wire and bumbling but lovable cop in True Blood, Bauer invariably steals every scene he's in. In fact, it was only the quality of his performance in Third Watch that allowed me to forgive the way that family pretty much hijacked the show for a long time.

I'm a season behind on True Blood, having only just seen the finale of S2 (which saw Bauer play a much more prominent role than he did in S1) and I'm always keen to avoid spoilers but I've been getting the impression that Andy could be getting an even higher profile role to play in S3. This can only be good for the show, in my opinion. In particular, the Andy/Jason partnership is pure gold and needs to be explored.

1. Bradley Whitford.

The West Wing and Studio 60. Two of the greatest TV shows ever made and this guy was a huge piece of the puzzle in both of them.

It's hard to say just what makes him so great. He's not especially good looking, insofar as I can tell and he doesn't do anything anyone else doesn't do. It's just that, well, he does it with such seeming effortlessness. It's like he oozes sincerity and class from every pore and you just can't help but like the guy.

Oh, I don't know, I just watch the shows, no-ones paying me to analyse them. It's not like I went to film school or anything. All I know is, when he is on screen, you aren't watching anyone else, and with ensemble casts of the the quality West Wing and Studio 60 had, to command the screen like that you'd have to be pretty bloody special. I could watch him all day. And I often have.

Slayer talk

2010-11-24T14:55:00.008Z

Disclaimer : The picture of Alyson Hannigan that will appear randomly at some point in this post is in no way relevant to the point Im trying to make. I just like Alyson Hannigan and figured, I'm talking about Buffy so what the hell.

So there are plans afoot. Plans to make a new Buffy Movie. Yay, you might say. Well, that wasn't exactly the reaction when the news hit on Monday night. What's this? A Reboot? No involvement likely by any of the TV cast? No JOSS? Madness, Blasphemy, The End Is Nigh. And so on and so forth.

Except...

Here's my thing. I don't, as a general knee-jerk rule, approve of remakes. Remakes, reboots (except the show of course), and the dreaded re-imaginings are, to my mind, a product of lazy storytelling. I feel roughly the same way about prequels and the dreaded 'missing story' approach, where writers try desperately to cram new adventures into every 5minute gap they can find in the original chronology, just so that they can use a character during his or her most popular period.

All of that said though, it can sometimes work. Case in point; I read a lot of comics. I tend to avoid Superhero titles, but by frequenting comic book internet forums I have met any number of people - people whose opinions I trust - who tell me that modern Batman comics are some of the best superhero comics they've ever read. How many times has that character been rebooted?

Not Batman

Or just look at his screen history. A TV show that spawned a movie. Then rebooted into a movie franchise that gave us 4 (variable) outings. The modern movies, again rebooted, are gearing up for their 3rd outing and are being touted as classics; not just classic comic book movies, but classic movies, full stop. The animated version of Batman has also been rebooted twice since I first showed an interest in it, with the Batman:Animated Series/Justice League/Batman Beyond franchise giving way to year one revamp The Batman (Note the use of the definite there. Trifle optimistic in my view) and now of course we have Batman:The Brave And The Bold.

The geek in me would of course be remiss if I didn't point to Battlestar Galactica. Oh the consternation when Richard Hatch s long mooted and fan craved faithful sequel was shelved forever by a total remake from some bloke who used to do Star Trek. It's not like that turned out well, or anything, is it?

Further afield, Nikita. A movie which spawned a reasonably succesful TV show (5 seasons is nothing to sneeze at) is now back on our screens as, yes, a new TV show with no connection to the proto-24 Peta Wilson starrer. Doing quite well for itself too, from what I hear.

The fact is, my own (perhaps irrational) prejudices aside, I have long since come to appreciate that - in the sci-fi/fantasy genre especially - remakes are gonna happen and that is not neccesarily a bad thing. I mean, how many people were crying out for a crazed man-child to 'reimmagine' Planet of the Apes and look how well that... ah, well, you get my point.

Ah, but you see, and here be the rub of the nub, we aren't just talking about a reboot here. No, we're talking about a reboot of Joss Whedon, The Mighty Joss, The Whedonator, er, Joss The Boss, ..., hang on a minute, ..., no that's it, I'm out.

We all know Joss Whedon is a genius. He is one of the best television writers alive today and he's no slouch with a camera either but the fact is, he doesn't own Buffy. The producers own Buffy. And the producers want to make a movie. So I say let them make the movie, and wish them well in the endeavour. Best case scenario, we get a decent Buffy movie. Worst case scenario, we don't. In which case we can all go back and watch the 12 seasons of fried gold Buffy-verse magic that we already have. And do you know what? It'll still be great. It won't have suddenly turned to shit, any more than Star Trek turned to shit when they made Voyager or Law and Order when they made Law and Order : UK.

Here's something else to think about. An awful lot of people are using the old 'raping my childhood' argument. Now, if you feel this strongly you could always, you know, not watch it, but try this on for size; maybe, just maybe, this new version will affect a new generation in the same way. Who are you, or we, to begrudge them that.

After all, as great as Joss Whedon is, he wasn't the only person writing that show. Not by a long chalk. Others 'got' it. Maybe this new woman (Whit Anderson) will as well. I mean, I'm not sure of her qualifications, since most of the discussion seems to be based around her looks, or rather a certain sites reporting of her looks, but being an attractive woman (and she is an attractive woman)
doesn't preclude you from being abe to write a decent Buffy script. Just ask Marti Noxon.

And so, to sum up all of the above waffle in one sentence - Instead of assuming it'll be shit, try hoping it'll be good, because we've nothing to lose and everything (well, a good movie) to gain.

Until next week : grrr, aaargh

and Phwoarr

The Sarah Jane Adventures Mk1

2010-11-17T13:07:00.009Z

The Sarah Jane Adventures (SJA). Sounds a bit naff doesn't it. Well, it isn't. Far from it in fact.

SJA is, for those who don't know, the second spin-off to come from Doctor Who (the first being Torchwood) following it's very successful relaunch 6 years ago. It stars the perpetually lovely Elisabeth Sladen as the intrepid investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who traveled with the 3rd and 4th incarnations of the Doctor back in the day and now carries on the good fight, assisting nice aliens and foiling nasty ones whenever they arrive on Earth. Or at least, whenever they arrive on Earth near where she lives, which to be fair, seems to happen pretty regularly. She is aided in this by a group of youngsters, including her adopted son Luke (who has been effectively written out recently), Lukes best mate Clyde and neighbour girl Rani, who is fine as far as she goes but not a patch (the character or the actress) on Maria, whom Rani replaced when the actress left a short way into S2.

Say what you will about Russell T. Davies, the Head Writer/Executive Producer/Showrunner/Whatever you want to call it, of Doctor Who when it relaunched (and I have, oh I have, at length and with naughty words), but it's only fair to point out that whatever his failings as a writer (or more accurately, a writer of science-fiction), he did what few others would have even bothered to try to do, and he did it with style. He brought Doctor Who back, and he made it a force to be reckoned with, not just on British Television but around the world. Crap writer* he may be, but as a producer and a showman, he got the job done.

SJA (and Torchwood) may actually be a bigger deal than Who, when you stop to think about it. Who ran for 26 seasons first time around. 26 seasons, with numerous producers and writers at the helm at different points in it's run, and numerous very popular characters coming and going. Yet at no point did any of those producers manage to launch any of those characters into a successful spin-off.

The closest anyone got was John Nathan-Turner, who had a pretty mammoth stint as producer on the show towards the end of it's life. He managed to produce a pilot episode for a proposed spin-off series. Guess who the lead character was. Yes, I know you all know, I'm not claiming for a second to be telling anyone anything they don't already know on here because frankly most people know more than I do about this stuff. I'm just doing a bit of preamble to make myself feel clever, OK?

Anyway, the Adric spin-off. In which the deceased maths troll returned as a ghostly spirit to work alongside the Brigadier in a Randall and Hopkirk-esque journey into the heart of darkness that is Skegness in the off season. No, hang on... It was Sarah Jane wasn't it?

Of course it was. Although you wouldn't know it from the title. The show was called K9 and Company, and would have focused on Sarah Jane (the Company, presumably), working with K9, the robot dog who had also traveled with the Doctor for a time.

I had never watched this pilot, despite owning it on DVD for a good long while. I had intended to slot it into a full chronological re-watch of Doctor Who, but circumstances beyond my control meant that I couldn't buy any more DVDs and many of those I already owned were lost so that idea went for a burton. It sat, languishing at the bottom of the pile, forgotten and neglected.

So I'm at a loose end at the weekend, having lost my internet connection for the umpteenth time and being deprived of my beloved twitter, and I'm ruminating on the fact that the current series of SJA is about to end, and one thing leads to another and in goes the disc. It doesn't get off to a particularly promising start, it has to be said, but the title sequence has been mocked before, by wittier men than I, so I shall move on.

What of the actual story? Set in a none more cliched rural community the story sees Sarah Jane and K9 up against a coven of witches, intent on a human sacrifice to get a decent crop. You know, like every other rural horror of the last 9trillion years. (Shamefully, the Whoniverse would return to the concept of rural folk all being dodgy psychos as recently as 4yrs ago, with the God-awful Torchwood episode Countrycide) There aren't really a lot of ways to big up a story where the villains of the piece are a fat old farmer and the lady from the post office. I will say that the revelation of the female villains identity did come as a bit of a surprise, so there's that, but it was a surprise based more on the facts that a) the character was barely present for most of the show, and b) another, much more prominent character could not have been more obviously played as a villain. Fair play to them for giving it a go but the swerve felt like a cheat rather than clever. (Had the eventual villain been around more and the red herring played more subtly, dividing suspicion and keeping you guessing, the finish would have had more impact. As it stands, I barely recognised the villain when she was unmasked.)

Even Elisabeth Sladen, and by God it pains me to say this, comes across as somewhat lacking. Without a decent foil, be it The Doctor or, as in SJA, strong support from her younger castmates, her natural charm has nothing to bounce off. Her relationship with K9 is the same one that everybody else has (he's a snarky know-it-all and she rolls her eyes) while her cousin/nephew/I'm not really sure is exactly the kind of stuffy and obnoxious character that we narrowly avoided when Luke turned up in SJA. Both are abnormally smart for their age but whereas in the modern series it is played with a knowing, self deprecating air the guy in K9 and Co. is just stuffy and obnoxious. Not to mention redundant; since this was meant, on paper at least, to be K9's show, why did they need another brainbox?

And in perhaps the biggest disappointment, it's not even sci-fi. Well, it's got an ex-time traveler and a robotic dog so in that respect, of course it is sci-fi, but the actual mystery they are trying to solve...? There is no sign that these people are achieving anything with their rituals. They are simply misguided local yokels with one foot in the past. What is the point of doing a Doctor Who spin-off if you aren't going to embrace the genre?

I'll be honest, it's hard to be completely objective about the whole thing, given that we now know, thanks to SJA, what the possibilities really are but even allowing for artificially heightened expectations and giving a bit of the old benefit of the doubt to compensate, it's still difficult to muster up too much enthusiasm. Sadly, the budgetary and shooting limitations that were becoming all too apparent in the Doctor Who shows of the day were all present and correct here, with none of the 'push the boat out' attitude you might have expected from a high profile launch. On the contrary, the whole thing looks rushed and cheap. It's telling that Sladen, normally a very enthusiastic presence on Who DVDs, finds it difficult not to slag off this show on the audio commentary. It seems she spotted a lot of the flaws herself at the time but was unable to do much about it.

So all in all, a bit of a failure. Points have to be given though, for getting the thing made at all. Well done, John Nathan-Turner. A forger of new paths.

* Crap writer may seem very dismissive and not particularly constructive. This post is not about him though, and the comment was designed purely to move past him to the meat of the piece. I would not dismiss any writers work out of hand and have very defined reasons for disliking his work. I shan't go into them here though because I'm trying to watch my blood pressure.

Pretty Little Liars

2010-11-10T01:44:00.002Z

You know that thing? Sure you do, that thing? The one where you watch a show and some sweet little girl in pigtails comes skipping on and you go "aww, isn't she cute", and then a few years pass and she's still there only now she's 15 and you think " Hmm, she's quite pretty, I bet she'll turn a few heads when she grows up" and then a few more years go by and she turns 18 and suddenly you can't move for bikini shots in the tabloids and pin up calenders on canteen walls and she's getting her norks out in the lads mags and wearing a piece of string to red carpets and you're thinking "Phwoar yeah, I definitely would". And then you catch a repeat of that old show and you suddenly feel really old, and not a little bit dirty. Yeah, that thing. You know what I'm talking about. Well, if you're a man you do. Can't speak for the fairer sex.

All of which is why I don't have all that much of a problem with the American casting method of having 20 year old pre-pubescents and 40 year old teens. It eliminates a lot of the guilt. Alyssa Milano and Hayden Panettiere aside of course.

Why do I bring this up now? Well, it's my transparent excuse to post a shedload of rude pics of hot young women, bwahahahah...ahem...er...no, actually it's because I've just looked up the actresses in a show I'm watching, in which the core characters are High School girls. There isn't one of them that's under 20. One of them is older than I am and was playing teenagers 10 years ago. Sickeningly, she looks no different now than she did then.

Pretty Little Liars is a strange one. I'm not going to lie, I love me some teen based soap opera. So when I saw that Lucy Hale, the best thing about Privileged (and one of the few people to come out of Bionic Woman with anything resembling credibility, which gives her some Quest validity), was all set to star in a new mystery/thriller/soap about a bunch of teens with a secret I was a wee bit chuffed. Not least because all indications where that there was set to be a supernatural basis for at least some of what was going on in the show.

Three episodes in and I have to say that, while they are still trying to tease a ghostly presence, I'm not buying it. I've not read ahead on the internet, nor have I read any of the books on which the series is based so I can't say for sure but I reckon a good old fashioned psycho/blackmailer is at the heart of it all. When it comes to the supernatural aspect, I'm not sure their hearts are in it to be honest. Feels a bit perfunctory. However, while the possibility (however slim) remains, I am taking the opportunity to write a little bit about it for The Quest because the show does have a lot of the elements I look for in a genre show.

Premise is simple enough : Four teenage girls are reunited at the start of the school year, having spent the Summer apart. Their bond is rekindled as a dark secret from the previous year comes back to haunt them in the form of text messages and threatening notes. The notes are signed 'A', which just happens to be the initial of the missing girl. When the girls body is discovered, they realise she couldn't be behind the messages. Or could she? Dun Dun Durr...

It's all a bit "I Know What You Did...", to be fair. Obvious inspirations aside though, the strengths are many. For a show aimed primarily at the teen market it has managed to amass a pretty full blooded cast. The 'teens', whether the core four or the supporting characters, are pretty decent, and the adults are played by household faces, if not household names, like 'The actress on Charmed who wasn't Alyssa Milano or Rose McGowan'. "Who is...er...Julian McMahon?" Or that "Hey, he looks a bit like Rob Lowe only not as good looking" guy.* And Laura Leighton, who should qualify as a household face but somehow doesn't, on account of how she seems to have turned into a completely different person. As someone who knows her primarily from Melrose Place it took me three episodes to figure out who she was meant to be playing. I kept seeing her name in the titles but I'm buggered if I could recognise her. She got, well, not old as such...

The show was described by some as being similar to Gossip Girl (a show I'm yet to see but I get the impression it revolves around text messages?) and a junior version of Desperate Housewives. Housewives is a show I have watched. I came to it on the basis of the Mary Alice ghost character, assuming the show to be supernatural in nature but once it became apparent that that whole thing was just a gimmicky excuse for a voice over I stayed, at least for a while, for the murder mystery and the shadiness of the Mike character. Once the mystery of the first season was tied up, and after the second season arc proved such a damp squib, I drifted away. Of course , that show is still chugging merrily away and could well have regained it's early form for all I know but I'm afraid I don't have the stamina to find out.

The biggest vibe I'm getting from the show is more of a Veronica Mars deal. It's not as good as that show, and the cast lacks any real stand out characters like Veronica herself,
or Logan (who remains one of my favourite television characters ever), but there is that feeling,which Neptune had, of the whole town being a hotbed of deceit and absolutely everyone having something to hide that makes me think that if they play their cards right, fading numerous mysteries in and out, paying off on their clues and keeping things fresh, Pretty Little Liars could well turn into something a little bit special.

Having said all of that, I am prepared for the fact that it could just as easily finish off the 'A' plot and quickly devolve into just another soap. Or that b) it could stick slavishly to the books. Since I haven't read them I don't know whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing. I'm debating whether I should pick up the first one to check it out. My problem is that without knowing beforehand how close they are I'm wary of spoilers. I'll probably leave it until the show has a few more episodes under it's belt.

*I do actually know who they are, by the way. I is only joshing like.

Connery, Greene and Costner? This guy pisses on 'em

2010-11-03T17:09:00.005Z

Way back in the dark and desolate wastelands of this blogs archive there is an entry entitled 'How The Quest Got Started'. It documented my childhood love of old Irwin Allen shows and how I'd rush home from my paper round on Sundays to watch Channel 4 and its classic shows like the Allen canon and the Planet of the Apes series. The entry ended with me getting my first proper job and declaring that MVC didn't know what was about to hit them.

I really did spend a ridiculous amount of money in MVC. If Sci-Fi was my religion then that shop was my cathedral. Every payday I'd make the trek into Durham and splash a good 40-50% of my wages in one swoop on VHS tapes (yes, everything was still VHS then, I am old) of things like Blakes 7, The Prisoner and of course Buffy and Angel boxsets. Gerry Andersons UFO was another one, which had the added advantage of the ultimate nerd bait, a Vol 0. Of course, had we but known what was coming, a scant couple of years later, none of us would have been buying these tapes at all. For those too young to remember, the average price was £12.99 per tape and for that you'd get 2 episodes. 3 if you were very very lucky. That's gonna work out at well over £100 to collect an average US season of 22 eps. And you'd have to rent a warehouse to keep all the tapes. Hard to reconcile with todays DVD world.

Of course at the time I didn't begrudge it. I'd spent years reading about all of these legendary shows and never having the opportunity to judge them for myself.I was in heaven, and probably the biggest delight of those heady days was the first time I watched Robin of Sherwood. This show was spoken of in awed tones by all who'd seen it, not just in the sci-fi and fantasy press but also in my family. Normal people that usually had no time for anything other than Eastenders or Emmerdale Farm would, when it was mentioned, talk of it's brilliance. It was at the top of my list of must sees and MVC provided it to me.

I was wary when I played the first tape. I didn't know what to expect. Could it possibly live up to the hype? How would I feel if it disappointed? I had waited so long to see it, was I setting myself up for a crushing comedown? No way. Robin of Sherwood was, and remains to this day, an absolutely classic piece of television. I had purchased the first 2 seasons at the same time and I was transfixed from the first moment until the final, heart rending finish. I had managed to avoid being spoiled as to the ending of Season 2 and I won't give it away here, because I believe that anyone coming to it now unspoiled would be as genuinely shocked and moved as I was by it. If you've never seen the show, watch it, and if you don't already know how it plays out, lucky you.

Seriously, Robin Hood has never been done like this and no-one, from Richard Greene to Jonas bloody Armstrong, by way of Sean Connery and, dear lord, Kevin Costner*, has made Robin a more sympathetic, honourable and tragic figure than Michael Praed. He was backed up by a stellar support cast as well. As good as the chemistry was between Jonas Armstrong and Lucy Griffiths in the recent BBC series (and it was, even if everything else about the show was execrable) it couldn't hold a candle to the sheer poetry when Praed and Judi Trott are together on screen.

Ray Winstone gives one of the best performances of his career as the borderline psychotic Will Scarlet. Clive Mantle and Phil Rose could have stepped right out of your bedtime story books, so perfect are they as Little John and Friar Tuck respectively.

And Nickolas Grace as the Sheriff was a masterpiece. Ridiculously camp at times but never overstepping to the point that he was no longer credible as a villain, he was the Sheriff Keith Allen could only dream of being. This was a cast that knew what it had with these scripts and played them for everything they were worth. Here was a show that was infused with magic, literally in it's stories but also in it's storytelling, able to evoke in it's viewers emotions that no other family action/adventure show would aspire to, let alone be capable of achieving.

I knew going in that the show ran for 3 seasons but I could not for the life of me see where it was going to go after the events of the S2 finale. And in truth, it would never reach those heady heights again. But it was never a poor show, and the 3rd year, whilst perhaps suffering from being the same length as the 2 previous ones combined, meaning genius writer Richard Carpenter had to outsource a number of scripts to lesser talents** to make up the numbers, was still a brilliant slice of fantasy drama that, without wishing to be vulgar, pisses over any version since.

*Although at least his version gave us the single greatest pop ballad ever written. And no, that's not irony.

**One of whom was Anthony Horowitz. I am well aware that today it seems perverse to call Anthony Horowitz a 'lesser talent' but at the time he was a total newcomer and lesser talent is exactly what he was. I'd pay good money to see him write this show now though.

Teenage witch MKII?

2010-10-25T01:39:00.009+01:00

Last weeks blog was intended as a pretty basic round-up of what I had been watching but it was missing one vital ingredient. I don't know why I missed it off, it certainly wasn't intentional, but it's kind of fortunate that I did because pretty much straight after knocking that post together I watched an episode of the show in question that I think warrants a bit of waffle all of it's own. That show is Sabrina The Teenage Witch.

Sabrina was one of the least funny teen sitcoms ever made I reckon but nonetheless successful enough to run seven seasons with a couple of TV movies in the middle. Normally, with a comedy as unfunny as this one was I'd question why it managed to last as long as it did but in this case I reckon I know. There was a charm to this show that transcended it's shortcomings and that charm came from it's cast. No matter how lame the jokes, the cast never gave it any less than their all and this, combined with the obvious chemistry amongst the leads, (although some of the supporting cast were less at home), meant that you never begrudged the 30mins you spent with them.

I watched bits and pieces of this show in my younger years and will admit to liking it quite a bit back then. This may have had something to do with the fact that it inherited a lot of goodwill by having the very lovely Melissa Joan Hart playing Sabrina. For myself, and indeed most boys my age, Hart had been a major factor in our first noticing girls, in that way, thanks to her lead role in Clarissa Explains It All. That lingering crush meant that our tuning in to Sabrina was pretty much a foregone conclusion, with our critical faculties unlikely to be fully engaged when we did so.

Sadly, like most shows aimed at the young, especially imported ones, it's scheduling was erratic to say the very least and so I'm currently engaged in a thorough, chronological re-watch. A re-watch which has thrown up quite a few surprises, not least the way in which the cast seems to be in constant flux with all bar Sarina and her Aunts (so far) being lucky to last a couple of years.Anyway, Season 5, which I am currently nearing the end of, sees Sabrina leaving High School and going off to college, leaving half of the supporting cast behind and gaining a whole bunch of new ones.

I've read a few comments here and there on the old interweb, putting down the new characters and bemoaning the loss of the 'much better' originals (forgetting that the 'originals' of which they speak were in fact replacements for even earlier characters) but to my mind it's academic since the support cast was always pretty interchangeable. Besides, the majority of the criticism was in the murky world of the youtube comments section and as we all know, there hasn't been a deeper pit of deranged mentalism than that merry lot since Torquemada and his lads were plying their trade.

One thing I have noticed about S5 is the distinct lack of magic in many episodes. At times the writers get so caught up with the soap opera aspects of the show that they seem to forget that they're writing about characters with magical powers. Given that the only reason I'm watching the show at all (sorry Melissa) is due to the supernatural aspect, this can become a trifle annoying and I hope it's something that is addressed in the last two seasons.

That's S5 in general, but what of the episode I mentioned up top which deserved it's own write-up? Well, it was called Witchright Hall. The basic idea was that Sabrinas cousin Amanda (played by Harts younger sister Emily) was sent to live in the mortal realm and in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for her the family send her off to a boarding school for wayward magical youths. So off she goes, with Sabrina as chaperone (because the Aunts had a romantic history with the Headmaster that would have soured him against the family), to try and get admitted.

While I was watching it I got the distinct whiff of the dreaded 'backdoor pilot' from the whole affair and a quick Google search told me I was right.

The impression I got, (which may be right or may be wrong because finding out that it was definitely intended as a pilot was pretty much the extent of the background research I did) was that the mooted show was intended as a route back to the younger days of Sabrina. Being in college and quickly closing in on the point where the 'Teenage' part of the shows title would become redundant meant that the character of Sabrina was beginning to deal with more adult concerns. Perhaps the producers were keen to go back to the more innocent hi-jinks if the shows early years. By launching a spin-off with a younger witch they could do just that, while still allowing Sabrina to mature as she aged.

Choosing Amanda as the lead in this proposed spin off was a sound one because, well... I'm not sure how to word this without sounding slightly dodgy, given her age at the time and my age now but... Sod it, she looked a lot like her sister, which meant that young boys then would likely have come to the show for the same reason I and others like me came to Sabrina years earlier.

And that would definitely have been a factor, have no illusions, since sitcoms about teenage girls, with strong romantic elements, are not the first choice of viewing material for most young boys boys. On top of her aesthetic appeal though, Emily Hart had something else (and I'm not talking about nepotism) in her favour. She had proven, in her earlier appearances as Amanda, to have something of a flair for the style of over the top, slightly arch comedy the show traded in. Indeed, I've found during this re-watch that the (roughly annual) Amanda episodes were usually a highlight of each season. Not only did the younger Hart shine in the role but she brought out a little something extra in her sister as well.

As far as the rest of the characters introduced in this pilot, there really isn't much to differentiate them from their counterparts in early Sabrina. Two authority figures with an affectionate yet often bickering relationship, a cute boy for Amanda to moon over/get together with/split from ad infinitum, a best friend figure and of course, a talking animal. Where Sabrina had a talking cat Amanda would be joined by a talking dog, gym teacher at Witchright Hall and affecting a military drill sergeant persona. Strangely enough ,the dog animatronic was little better than the woeful cat animatronic that Sabrina had been dealing with for years. I say strangely because I have it on good authority (alright, a Doctor Who commentary track) that dogs are a lot easier to fake than cats. (The problem with cats being that they were too small to house the necessary machinery)

All in all, while I don't think a Witchright Hall series would have done anything particularly groundbreaking or epic with the premise, I also don't think it would have been any less of a show than Sabrina was. I certainly would not have begrudged however much of my time I would have inevitably expended on it. As it turns out, the show didn't go ahead, despite what a certain friend of mine (who knows about the Quest and delights in messing with me) insisted but the younger Hart continued to make occasional appearances on Sabrina until it's finale, so it wasn't the end of the world for her, although I'm sure she'd have preferred a show of her own.

Although technically she kind of got one, because she voiced Sabrina in the popular animated version of the show.

Roundup

2010-10-20T17:34:00.000+01:00

No review this week. Nor even a quick and dirty, dashed off in half a minute, piss take of something eminently deserving of a good dose of the old urine extraction. This is due to the fact that the only truly 'new' addition to my schedule has been the revival of V, and such is my love of old school Visitor action I just can't bring myself to write about it until I can say something positive. So not yet then.

Elsewhere, things carry on much as before. Vampires continue to dominate, with no less than four shows; Forever Knight (just okay but it's early days and I've heard good things) Vampire Diaries (far better than it's Twilight-lite, if that's not compltely redundant, premise/publicity would have anyone believe, this show is poorly served by it's promotion, although it seems to be doing pretty well in the numbers game regardless) True Blood (sublime show with an 'A' cast down to the smallest roles) and Blade (woefully miscast lead, meaning the writers are forced to write a show which barely features him in order to minimise the damage he can do). A mixed bag to be sure.

Non vampire action is thinner on the ground. Other than the aforementioned V there is the latest run of The Sarah Jane Adventures (SJA), proving once again to be one of the smartest 'kids' shows of it's era (although pity poor Yasmin Paige, who is to SJA what Christopher Ecclestone is to modern Dr Who, ie best thing about it but largely forgotten because a vastly inferior replacement happened to stick around longer). Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Smallville chugs along nicely enough, building to a finale that manages to both satisfy (decent final punch up and despatch of bland villain Zod) and disappoint (compare and contrast this with some of the season finales Smallville provided us with in it's earlier years) in equal measure. And where was Kyle Gallner during that video conference, that's what I'd like to know.

I've still yet to watch the end of Heroes, although even as I type this I know that an episode is the next thing up on my tape. It's indicative of just how far this show has fallen for me that after sitting through an episode of (the abominable) S8 of Falcon Crest I actually turned off the tape when Heroes popped up next. Once upon a time I would have latched onto it as a very welcome antidote. (To S8, not Falcon Crest in its entirety, which I've loved for the most part) Now, I see it as more punishment.

DVDs of The Net and Robocop enable me to occasionally drop an episode of those into my viewing, although the weakness of each means that I'm rationing them so as not to breed contempt. The really good news on the DVD front is that I was recently able to pick up some cheap X-Men (90's series) discs, so my viewing of that show, previously stalled mid-S3, will soon recommence with The Dark Phoenix Saga. Sure to be a cracker.

All in all, the Quest trundles along, managing to keep me only moderately entertained compared to how I used to feel. Could Sci-Fi be losing it's grip on me? I don't think so. I argued recently, and do genuinely believe, that televised science fiction is better now than it has been in a long long time. That I know this to be the case, and yet still fail to be enthused, is perhaps a sign of my mood more than anything and I reckon all it will take is 1 or 2 truly spectacular projects to kick start my enthusiasm, in the way that The X-Files, Babylon 5, Buffy, Farscape and Lost did. Flashforward had the potential to do it, had it not died so prematurely. Perhaps The Event, due to begin airing in the UK this coming Friday, will be the one that blows my mind. Hell, it's got Laura Innes in it so it's gotta be at least a bit good.

Robocop : The Series

2010-10-08T15:35:00.003+01:00

Okay, so here's the thing. Last week I posted a load of waffle about how I tried to get hold of some Robocop DVDs and failed. Well, not long after that post went up - the next day actually - I embarked on a day out that very nearly was, for real, as much of a fart on as the one I exaggerated. A bit of bureaucratic nonsense I needed to get sorted for my 'real' life sent me on a trip that severely taxed my patience. Silver lining though, I came across a branch of good old Poundland on my travels and managed to pick up the first two discs in the Robocop collection.

I have now watched the first disc, comprising Pilot 'The Future Of Law Enforcement', and the first episode thereafter. I have also comprised a long, reasoned, analytical post about its (many) shortcomings and (few) saving graces. Which disapeared when my laptop died. So now your getting the dashed off in 5 minutes version instead.

BAD THINGS:

The new characters are pale imitations of their movie counterparts, with even Blu Mankuma failing to do much to lift the material.

The Old Man, now renamed The Chairman, has been neutured, in order to allow him to be a regular. He's like a loveable old Uncle or something.

The ways around the lack of killing are comically bad. Shooting cabinet legs so it topples onto someone? Realy? Or dropping chandeliers on them? Weak.

The CGI is broken. I know it was early days for the form but if all you're using it for is a cheap gag and it doesn't work, lose the cheap gag. Better than embarressing yourself.

The actress playing Murphys wife is both blatantly too old and also as wooden as hell. Seeing as how the "I love you very very much" memory is, as in the movie, one of the lead characters primary motivators, and therefore shown quite a few times, you'd think they'd hire someone who could actually say the line without sounding bored.

There seem to be some very awkward tonal shifts in the show. When we are with the cops it's all very earnest and damatic. When we are with the villains they are virtually cartoon characters, so over the top and played for laughs are they.

The biggy - there is a cute kid. Yes, a regular character, in the titles and everything. She hangs around the station and helps Robocop. She's like his little mascot or something. She is even allowed to be hanging around in the Robo maintenance lab, messing about with equipment, when none of the scientists are anywhere to be found. I mean,a cutesy kid sidekick? For Robocop? Had they no shame?

GOOD THINGS:

The animated inserts in which a superhero flies around espousing the virtues of capitalism are a much subtler (and funnier) way of satirising the greed culture than all that "I'd buy that for a dollar" stuff in the movie.

I know I said the tonal shifts were a bad thing but if I'm honest, the pantomime villains did, at times,raise a glimmer of mirth. You have to take your entertainment where you can get it with this show.

Sight gags - Street signs, business names (I'll admit I grinned at Ecoli meat packers), and computer graphics (the mad genius Dr Cray Mallardo is revealed to have the middle initial Z when Robo reads his bio) are full of little bits and pieces for the careful observer.

Andrea Roth. And not just because she's a attractive woman who seems to wear formal outfits a lot, though I do like a woman in a posh frock. She can act, for one thing, which puts her above most of the rest of the cast (Mankuma excepted) and she somehow managed, against all the odds, to take the dire writing seriously and actually conjure up an affecting performance.

So there you go. A quick and dirty Robocop write up. I'm a bit peeved actually, because the one I lost was the first, I think, halfway piece of proper, no messing about writing I've done for this blog. I was genuinely quite proud of it. I'd done research about the movies and everything. Oh well, maybe next time.

Terrible Disappointments

2010-10-05T13:36:00.009+01:00

People, people people. Prepare thineselves (is that a word?, yeah, I'm sure it is) for a disappointment. It is, as I look at my calender here before me, Wednesday, and yet I have no musings of a televisual nature to share with you. I know, I know, it's a crying shame, but what can I do?

The only shows I've been watching since last I spewed forth my witless drivel, er, I mean sage words of wisdom, are The Net, True Blood, Blade... You know, the ones I've talked about the last couple of weeks and have nothing new to say about. Actually, that's a lie because I've also watched an episode of Forever Knight and last night I cast my critical gaze over the S2 premiere of The Vampire Diaries. You see my dilemma there though, right?

So what do I talk about? Well, I'm gonna tell you a really funny story. Well, a mildly amusing story. A story, anyway. It goes a little something like this:

Once upon a time, in a land called County Durham, there lived a boy. The boys name is not important but we shall call him Paul. This boy was devilishly handsome, as all heroes are, and exuded an air of casual awesomeness in his every action. The boy had only one failing, yes only one, and it was that he was completely useless when it came to computers. Didn't understand them at all. Which is why his online usage was confined to a couple of blogs (which he barely knew how to operate and were appropriately spartan), a twitter account (he was terrified by the looming form of the monster known as newtwitter, but that is a different tale) and membership of a discussion forum based around a comic he read.

It was on this very forum that Paul heard the wondrous news. At first it seemed too good to be true. He could scarcely believe his eyes. But there it was, in black and white, staring at him from the screen. Someone had posted a message, spreading the word that the discount merchant known throughout the land as Poundland was selling DVDs of Robocop:The Series for a mere £1 each. Several separate volumes with multiple episodes on each. Well, this was sheer poetry to the ears of Paul, for he was on a Quest (had I mentioned that part of the tale, I may have forgotten, sorry) to view every episode of every sci-fi show ever made. These DVDs would be very helpful indeed in his noble endeavor.

A problem though! Whereabouts would he find a vendor affiliated with said Poundland? He was unaware of any in the near vicinity. The answer was obvious, he would call upon the knowledge of his Sister, for if there was one thing that could be relied upon in the topsy turvy world of County Durham, it was that Pauls sister would know the answer to any question that had 'shop' in it.

And so Paul rang his sister and enquired of her the location of the nearest Poundland outlet. But what was this? Scorn, mighty and full of much meaty profanity. Whatever had our hero done to deserve such treatment?

Well, as it turns out, there was indeed a Poundland store in the very town Paul did all of his shopping in. Not only that, but it was situated directly between two specific places that he regularly used and directly opposite another. It seems that not having noticed it, given this somewhat obvious location, made him something of a fool in the eyes of his sister. Suitably chastened and feeling rather humbled, Paul had a bath and went to bed, this being his habit of an evening.

Saturday morning arrived. Paul was unaware of this because Paul does not rise before noon on weekends.

Saturday afternoon arrived and Paul prepared himself for his mighty pilgrimage to the next town. His goal, procurement of the kiddified, cheapified and bastardized offspring of a classic movie. His obstacle, pissing down rain and gale force winds. Undaunted, he set out. Now,I could, at this point, regale you with the many and varied travails of our intrepid hero but I fear that any attempt to describe the horrors he endured would sorely tax my descriptive prowess, not to mention curse your sleep with nightmares for at least 42 weeks, at a conservative estimate. Suffice it to say, it was the longest 37minutes of Pauls life.

Upon arrival at his destination, bedraggled but unbowed, our hero didst meet with a further problem. The storefront upon which he was casting his manly gaze did not cry out in bold font

Instead, and much to Pauls dismay, it read,

while several doors further down stood a store bearing the name

Could it be? Could the all knowing sister, so full of contempt for Paul and his 'stupid questions', have gotten it wrong. In any other field of expertise Paul would have no trouble believing such a thing but when it came to shopping? Surely not. She must just have been a little confused. So Paul set off, intent on finding the store he was looking for. An hour later, even more bedraggled and pretty resolutely bowed he realised that the truth could no longer be denied. She was wrong, no Poundland store existed in this town.

Vindication was his but scant compensation could he find in it. He had journeyed far and wide and faced oh so many dangers, not least the way the rain was making his hair all sticky-uppy at the back, and had naught to show for his ordeal. There was truly nothing else for it; he fell to his knees (getting his jeans all wet in a puddle), raised his arms to the sky and called out the most bloodcurdling of screams to the uncaring Gods. Then he went for his lunch in the cafe and caught the next bus home.

So there you have it. Had things been different I might have had a bit of something to say about Robocop but sadly you have been denied that rather dubious pleasure. We'll just have to wait and see what makes itself available for next weeks post

The Net

2010-09-29T14:54:00.012+01:00

Right then, qualifications out of the way first, because it's only right. I've not seen the movie 'The Net'. I know it stars Sandra Bullock and I pretty much had the idea that it's to do with identity theft and people being able to control you based on your computer usage but that's about it.

I have however seen a few bits of the TV version. Many years ago, when it first aired in this country I checked out a few episodes and wasn't impressed but it kind of got away from me and I'll be honest, it completely slipped my mind that the show existed until I saw the complete series on a DVD boxset in a discount DVD shop I frequent. 22 episodes for £6.99 is not to be sniffed at and of course, now that I had been reminded of it's existence I had to watch it, so into the basket it went. That was a while ago now though, because I've allowed the fact that my vague memories are not positive ones to put me off watching it.

Within minutes of switching on the pilot I was mocking it. From the ridiculously excited woman who was practically ready to sacrifice her first born to satnav, so awed was she by it's Godlike abilities, to the really clunky scene that sets up the fact that the lead never has contact with anyone and the delivery boy thinks her assistant is her (ooh, might that mean something later?) and culminating in the shadowy villains, shot so we never see their faces (there is a lingering shot of the female villains shapely legs as she climbs some stairs to meet with her boss that suggests the Director may have been extracting the urine with his brief), the whole thing just begged to be ridiculed.

I turned it off.

I wanted to come at it straight and I was allowing my preconceptions to shape my attitude.So I went off and watched some other rubbish and came back to The Net the next day. At which point I really got into it. The show is essentially a Fugitive for the internet age, albeit an internet age in its infancy. Brooke Langton stars as Angela Bennet, computer software genius who runs a freelance troubleshooting business over the web, being a bit of a recluse and refusing to meet her clients in person. She receives a piece of prototype tech, which a client wants her to debug, because it is very susceptible to viruses etc. She plugs it into her system and it latches onto and patches her into the private communications of a mysterious online presence known as Sorcerer, who promptly tells her to get lost. This fleeting contact puts her on the radar of a group of cyberterrorists calling themselves The Praetorians, after the Roman faction. They frame her as Liz Marx, a wanted terrorist, and she goes on the run, aided by the mysterious Sorcerer character, although her communication with him is limited to online chatrooms.

The pilot throws in some interesting kinks which may have been in the movie or may have been added here in an attempt to give the show a spine to build on longterm. Angelas father, who left when she was a child, is revealed to have been part of a radical thinktank in the 80's, which was run by the Praetorians and which is now being killed off by them. So on top of being on the run for crimes she didn't commit, and vowing to bring the rightful culprits down (so far so Fugitive) , there is also the idea that she is attempting to track down and help her Father. The intimation though, and it really isn't subtle, is that her Father may actually still be in league with the bad guys.

The bad guys are led by a man called Trelawney, who seems incapable of grasping that if he is in pursuit of a woman who claims to be being persecuted by a man called Trelawney, it would probably be easier to keep people thinking she was crazy/paranoid/delusional, if he didn't go around introducing himself as Trelawney.Thats gonna set the old alarm bells ringing isn't it?

Anyway, he's a bit sinister and dark and creepy, but has a seeming desire to see our heroine captured and brought to heel without her coming to any harm. Hmmm. He is assisted by an even more sinister and dark, but considerably dumber, henchman who just likes to kill people and an attractive female sidekick who may or may not be in love with him. She also has nice legs, which is not just me being shallow (this time), you can't avoid them. Seriously, I think it was in her contract that she had submit to lingering close ups of her legs at every possible opportunity.

Once Angela is on the run the show, sadly, falls into a bit of a cliche rut. She is arrested in the teaser of episode 2, for example. They couldn't have waited a couple of weeks to tease her recapture? The same episode is based in large part on her having the chance to reunite with her father. A chance she passes up to help out the troubled soul of the week. Yes, by episode 2.

Episode 3 is little better, with her foiling a Praetorian plot, helping a young homeless girl make something of her life and teasing a potential love interest that we will undoubtedly never see again, before having a big showdown with Trelawney, which she manages to walk away from far too easily.

I reckon this show would have done well to adopt the model used by The Pretender, and have separate storylines for Angela and the Praetorians, with occasional episodes were they meet. It would certainly help to keep the show fresh because the idea of them facing off, the villains getting egg on their faces and Angela running off into the sunset every week will get old quick. I've only seen the opening episodes so who knows, maybe they did go down this route and I've got something to look forward to.

The saving grace of the whole thing is Langton.

She throws off the 'soap star' stigma and crafts, in Angela, someone who feels like a living, breathing, real person. And a sympathetic one at that. In the pilot, when she is first arrested she doesn't play it brave, or bolshie; She plays it terrified and confused. When she is hurt in episode 3 she doesn't play the tough 'I aint got time to bleed' action hero; you see a young woman in shock and pain and desperation. Of course the scripts will only allow her to go so far in that direction, and to overplay it would make her seem weak but Langton pitches it perfectly. She impressed me.

Final point : what the hell is going on with the DVD release. I realised pretty quickly that something was up when the fourth episode started and some major changes seemed to have happened without explanation so I switched off and did a little checking. Turns out it has the episodes in completely the wrong order. 1,2,3,18,5,4, then 6 onwards. Last time I had to work this hard with a DVD was American Gothic, and at least they had the excuse that the episodes had aired in the wrong order originally, which doesn't seem to have been the case here. So what was the thinking with this decision? As I say, I switched off fairly quickly but even so, I now know of a pretty major cast change thats going to occur at some point. Disappointing.

Fangtastic. (I'll get me coat)

2010-09-21T22:47:00.011+01:00

A vampire themed Quest this time out, because I've recently seen a couple of Episode Ones in that particular sub-genre. But first, a question. What do all of the following have in common?

It's mortal woman, vampire man. Every time. Has there ever been a show where it's the other way around? I'm hard pushed to think of one. The Vampire Diaries did something last year with a couple of its supporting characters but that wasn't allowed to last when she was pretty thoroughly killed off in the finale. Could it work as the central relationship of a show? Is the problem the perception that women ,or girls, fall harder and faster, are more invested, so the relationship feels artificially heightened? Or that women percieve 'bad' men as someone to be redeemed whereas men see 'bad' women as potentially guilt free opportunities for no-strings dalliances? Of course it could be that writers still feel beholden, even if it's unconsciously, to the Dracula/Mina template of woman seduced by vampire. Just something I've been wondering. Anyway...

I recently saw the 2nd season premiere of True Blood and the 1st episode (really half of the first episode, given it's a sliced up 2hr pilot) of Blade : The Series. True Blood is currently airing on C4 (thanks to FX only having 1st run, rather than exclusive rights) and Blade on one of Fives freeview subordinates. Blade has been available on a number of occasions in the relatively short period of time it's been in existence but there has always been something getting in the way of my seing it. This is as close as I've come and I'm determined to see the whole series this time out.

Without further ado let us now indulge in a little in-depth critical analysis of True Blood S2 Episode 1.

Sookie gets her norks out.

What?

Okay, having brought the whole Rene storyline to a head and immediately setting up the fact that there is another killer operating in Bon Temps with the body in Andys car in the S1 finale the show just pretty much picks up right where it left off. I'd guess there is about a half hour time jump, just long enough for emergency services to arrive at the scene. From there it really is business as usual with Jason being a bit dim, Sam mooning around, Marianne being mysterious, Eric being vicious, Andy being a bit rubbish (at his job, Chris Bauer is a god among actors), and Sookie continues to get on Bills case about killing people before jumping into bed with him. And getting her norks out.

It occurred to me while watching this that HBO has managed to make the sensational banal. In that, all the sex, violence and foul language that they used to such great effect in their early days of scripted drama to court press coverage are now so commonplace that they no longer raise comment. We accept them, no questions asked, as part and parcel of a HBO show, without even really noticing them. It's well documented on here that I have a healthy(?) respect for the female form but joking aside, the Sookie/Bill sex scene in this episode was nothing at all to do with tittilation at Ana Paquin baring her breasts and everything to do with the state of their relationship and Sookies further acceptance of and descent into (despite her protestations to the contrary) Bills world. Sex and violence (and violence plays a big part in their sexual relations, in that she submits willingly to his biting her, drawing blood from her, even seeming to derive pleasure of her own from it) can be used and are used as narrative tools rather than sensationalist stunts. It's a fact that I feel certain other groups, keen to capitalise on HBO's taboo breaking, would do well to take note of.

On to Blade now and I'll be honest with you, I go into this series with some pretty low expectations. The fact that it was cancelled after only one season doesn't raise too many red flags given the early deaths meted out to so many shows in these days of 'succeed instantly or die' commissioning decisions, but the fact that no-one seems particularly sorry to see it go does. The show aired in 2006 which means it's long enough ago that people aren't discussing specifics (if they ever were) but recent enough that it occasionally comes up in conversation so I've been able to get a rough idea of peoples opinions without worrying about spoilers and the consencus seems to be that it was a bit meh and didn't really try to do anything particularly fresh or ambitious with it's set up.

Fom what I can gather so far, and remember this is still very early days for the show, the main problem for me is that Kirk Jones simply doesn't convince as Blade, and thats when he finally appears, because the focus seems to be almost entirely on the character of Krista (Jill Wagner), a military type who returns home from Iraq and sets out to discover the truth about her brothers death, which leads her into contact with vampires and, eventually Blade. The episode 'cliffhanger' if you can call it that (2hr eps never break properly do they?) is even based around her, as she walks into danger at a party attended by vampires.

I'll be honest with you, given Jones' limitations in the role, and his sidekick isn't much better, I wouldn't be at all sorry to see the focus stay on her. Wagner can act, seems capable of acquitting herself well in action sequences and is easy on the eye. A lot of shows have had worse leads. I can say that though because I know the show to already be cancelled and just want it to be as good as it can be for as long as it lasts. Had I been watching when it was still on the air I'd have been singing a different tune. The show is called Blade and for it to have any chance of forging a strong identity for itself and hopefully prosper I'd have been calling for a much stronger focus on the so called lead, ideally following a post pilot re-casting.

One thing this show does have going for it is the lack of any kind of sexual frisson between Blade and Krista. I hope they keep it that way, although I'm not pinning my hopes on it. (In doing some image searches after writing this post I came across a number of shots of Blade and Krista looking a bit 'close'. Say it aint so. Not to mention looking suspiciously like Krista with fangs. Have I just spoiled myself?)

So anyway, heres to the next 3months of vampire action, some of it classy, some of it not so, but all of it, if nothing else, necessary for the Quest.

Ulysses. Only he could do the things he did.

2010-09-16T21:10:00.012+01:00

There was a time, thankfully in the dim and distant past, when the prevailing wisdom among television executives was that live action sci-fi was, at heart, a juvenile genre. This being the case, they would often feel the need to furnish shows with an audience identification character for the kiddies. You know, a kid, because kiddies can only follow and enjoy a story if it has other kiddies in it. Which just goes to show that the average network executive understands the thought processes of a 12yr old boy about as well as they understand nuclear physics or the inner workings of the cardio-vascular system in an asthmatic donkey. Just ask Noah Hathaway how much respect he got.

Kids don't want to watch kids because kids can only do kids stuff. Floppy haired whiners stowing away in cargo holds are nowhere near as exciting as square jawed macho men having laser gun shootouts with robots or state of the art outer space dogfights. Simple psychology. In fact the only token kid on any sci-fi show ever that was anything other than a total dead loss was (and yes, this is absolutely just a transparent excuse to post a pic) Rachel Blanchard on War of the Worlds.

Innocent young me had one of his first crushes on her then.(Slight cheat here cos I couldn't find a War of the Worlds pic. Clueless will have to do, although she was a couple of years older in that.)

And quite frankly, the me of today would struggle to resist the older model. ( Seriously, did you see her in Peep Show? That woman does things to a man.)

But wait, I hear you cry, the title of this post had led me to believe we'd be getting talk of Ulysses 31, what's going on? Well, I'll tell you, I realised that I'd posted a blog about Smallville and not stuck any pictures of hot women in it. SMALLVILLE! The show with a hot woman:everyone else ratio of approximately 97000678763:1. What was I thinking?. Of course I couldn't not redress the balance, that would be immoral, so I settled down with my thinking cap and came up with a wonderfully subtle, no it's not blatant at all, method of shoehorning something into a post on an '80's kids cartoon. So, ahem...

When it comes to being a child and trying to watch a television show, perhaps the only thing more annoying than the presence of these 'identification' characters in live action shows is the presence of their spiritual cousins, the cute comic relief character, in cartoons. Grown up geeks such as myself are often shot down by those who just don't get it, whenever we bemoan these woeful creations existence, with the argument that the shows were designed for kids and we should not expect them to adhere to the standards of an adult show. "It's just for kids" they cry. "The kids love it. Get a life." etc. etc. etc. I never used to be sure just how to respond to that argument.Certainly it seemed to have logic on it's side and it was oft times expressed with a sheer eloquence than my own crack handed paraphrasing cannot do justice to .So I was left in a quandary. Was I wrong? Were my opinions, of which I had been so certain for so long actually worthless? I needed to know.

Much debate, research and perusal of dictionary, encyclopedia and thesaurus later I had my answer. I was armed with a rebuttal so eloquent, so insightful, so downright intellectual, that there could be no argument. It went like this. "Bullshit"

I loathed these hateful little monstrosities as a child just as much as I do now and I never had any friends that said differently. So there. Every show had one and be it Uni squealing, Snarf ...er..Snarfing, or Orco with those bloody magic tricks, you just wanted to punch the screen whenever they appeared.. The bottom of the barrel though, the absolute nadir, is NoNo. Yes, NoNo. I mean really. NoNo?

The robotic, well, plaything I suppose, of Ulysses' son Telemachus spends his time eating nails,looking gormless, complaining about being left out of things and being generally annoying. There is actually a scene in an early episode where Telemachus tries to dump him completely. I quote "Lets hide from him. He's so slow and stupid." Now at first I thought that this was a prelude to a story about friendship and loyalty and 'leave no man behind' and so on but no. Now the show being a French/Japanese co-production I'm willing to assume that the line was probably not intended to be quite so harsh and suffered from an over literal translation somewhere down the line but still, it made me laugh. It's made even funnier by the vehemence with which it is delivered by the dub artist.

Which brings us to the second of the problems with Ulysses 31. The dub suffers, as other shows have done, with the problem of trying to match the English translation to the foreign animation.This leads to some very odd pacing of dialogue and occasional lines that seem completely out of place, obviously added purely because the lips were still moving. In fairness though, this is a problem that is excusable in a kids show because kids don't notice shit like that. Certainly I was rather taken aback at how noticeable it was when I came to watch the complete series, having no memory of it ever having occurred to me back in the day.

The thing is though, dodgy dubbing (excusable) and annoying comedy character (par for the course) aside, Ulysses 31 is, quite possibly, one of the best cartoons of it's era. It's got a quite spectacular high concept, some absolutely stunning designs with the Odessy itself being a beautiful piece of work and the huge room stacked floor to ceiling with comatose crew members, doomed to lifelessness until Ulysses can escape the curse of the Gods is still a chilling concept all these years later.

Plus, of course, the insanely addictive theme song. Hear it once on the morning and you were guaranteed to be singing it all day. (At this point I was going to attempt to have a video here, of Philip Schofield and Gordon the Gopher in the broom cupboard, miming along to the song but I didn't for 2 reasons. I didn't trust myself to get it right and the video is all over youtube so I suspect I might be 10 years late to the joke.)

I'll be honest, I've had the DVD box set of this show now for quite some time but while I devoured a huge chunk of it in one go upon purchase I've only just gotten around to watching the final few episodes. Why? Well, as great as it is it suffers slightly from the fact that it was made in a time when childrens shows, and most live action shows in the action/adventure and sci-fi genres for that matter, were made episodically. That is, serialisation was frowned upon and every episode had to end with a big old push on that reset button. Robbed of any kind of forward momentum the episodes can begin to seem a little repetitive and the over earnest nature of the characters (seriously, this lot take humourless to another level) means it's not really suited to viewing marathons. More of a dip in and out show. I'm ashamed to say I shelved it for a while.

I have mixed feelings about these last few episodes. On the one hand was frustration because I knew the episodes were running out so all the resets were extra frustrating, especially since some of these later episodes could so easily have been building blocks in a grand finale. One episode sees Ulysses aiding a rebellion against the Gods in exchange for a map home but it comes to nothing. In another episode the comatose crew are awakened but at the end of the story they return to their curse to save Ulysses life. It was all so maddening.

On the other hand we have the finale which I loved. Given the above instances so late in the series I was kind of resolved to getting another open ended final episode that finishes like all the others with the Odysseus flying off to the next adventure, never to return home. But no, Ulysses defies Zeus, passes his final test and gets everyone safely home. Would it have been better if the episodes mentioned above and others like them had been allowed to play into the finale? First impulse is to say yes, but then we would be expecting it. Was it an elaborate double bluff by the writers? Nah, I reckon a fortuitous by-product of other factors more than likely but regardless, it fooled me. And I'm glad it did, it ended the whole affair on a proper high note.

Forever Young Superman

2010-09-04T21:22:00.003+01:00

I read comics. I read less comics now than I once did but there was a time when a goodly portion of my monthly wage was spent in Traveling Man, Forbidden Planet or Waterstones (or more usually all three), hoovering up TPBs by Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Brian K. Vaughan and their fellow scribes. As well, of course, as whatever was new from Rebellions fantastic range of classic 2000ad goodness. Those days are gone now, thanks mainly to the fact that I no longer have a monthly wage to squander in this fashion, but they will come again, oh yes they will, and when they do I shall be back there, filling my boots in an effort to catch up with whatever I've missed in my wilderness years.

The stuff I read though, which you'll know if you are at all familiar with the names I've mentioned above, tends not to feature a great deal of superhero stories. The majority of the American comics I read are from DC's Vertigo offshoot and while some (but not all) are set in the same fictional universe as the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman et al. crossovers with these characters are really rather rare. Vertigo titles, those set in the DCU, are usually based around the mystical/magical corners of that universe. So we have Sandman (Neil Gaiman), Lucifer (Mike Carey), Swamp Thing (various) and John Constantine (various) amongst others.

All of which means, when I sit down to watch a TV show based on a comic book character I am rarely in a position to judge its level of faithfulness to the source material, or recognise which episodes/scenes are derived from specific comic stories, given that it is usually superhero comics which make the transition. The only way I can judge these shows is in isolation. Taken separately from the comics, how do they rate as television shows? Do they stand up on their own? I'll be honest though, I do sometimes feel like maybe I'm missing out, just a little bit, knowing that that little fanboy thrill that comes from getting a reference could be achieved so much more often were I better versed in the books. The show that I am most aware of this with, the show that taunts me on a weekly basis with it's flaunting of the mythology, is Smallville.

The show purports to be about Clark Kent before he adopted the Superman moniker but has now left that premise so far behind that even Channel 4 have given up the pretense and stopped billing it as Superman : The Early Years. (And didn't that just wind me up. It was as bad as Batman Beyond becoming Batman of the Future.)

Anyone who has stuck with it for it's incredible 9yrs and counting run (S10 was announced as definitely being the last but rumours are now circulating as to the possibility that it could get a nominal spin off, effectively S11) knows that it is now essentially the entire DCU on a television budget. Lois and Clark are effectively an item now. Green Arrow has been a regular for a couple of seasons. Jimmy Olsen has been and gone. Zatanna has cropped up more than once (including one of the most recently aired episodes here in the UK). Aquaman, The Flash, Martian Manhunter and other members of a proto Justice League are recurring characters. And so on.Watching this unfold has been a torturous experience because while I recognise who they are and I know the basic facets of their characters, I just know that they are bringing with them years of backstory that will be referenced and homaged to the hilt; most of which will go straight over my head.

And then we get 'Absolute Justice'. Which is the point where, quite frankly, they start to extract the urine. The 2part story, which I think went out as a 'movie' type event when it first aired in the States, although don't quote me on that, is written by Geoff Johns, a big cheese in terms of writing at DC Comics. As I say, I'm not massively into Superhero comics but I get the impression that he is the 'main man' when it comes to crafting the big, multi character, Universe shaping storylines at DC. And apparently he's pretty good at it. So it should probably come as no surprise that he's up to the same tricks in Smallville.

Having been responsible last year for the episode that melded all the recurring heroes into the team that will one day be the Justice League (in an episode appropriately called 'Justice'), he's back this year to bring the leaders of this group - Clark, Oliver Queen/Green Arrow and John Jones/Martian Manhunter, into contact with their in-universe predecessors the Justice Society of America. And so, rather than the gradual introduction over a number of years that the League received, we have an influx of as many characters again within a scant 2 hour running time. Of course we then proceed to see a lot of them killed off almost instantly, which I'm sure probably rubbed a lot of fanboy viewers up the wrong way but I'll be honest, it's really the only way they could have gone with the whole thing.

You see, as saddened as I was to see the incredibly short shrift payed to Wesley Dodds, aka The Sandman (a character I was familiar with from his fleeting appearances in Neil Gaimans Sandman stories and the first couple of arcs of Sandman Mystery Theater) I quickly came to the realisation that it was really pretty inevitable. The introduction of the JSA was such a massive deal for the show that their was no credible way to then ignore it completely; it simply must be referenced again in future stories. To do that with the JSA back at full strength would seriously overbalance the show in favour of these newer, less established (in terms of the show) characters and work to the detriment of the established regular and recurring heroes. So the decision had to be made to streamline and choose maybe a couple of characters to go forward into future JSA themed episodes. Dodds,as awesome a character as he is, is simply not recognisable enough to have a hope of being chosen. Artistic merit aside, television is a business and the producers were always gonna go with characters they felt would bring in the punters. Hence 'cute girl in skin tight lycra' and 'brooding hunk played by established genre veteran' get the nod as most likely characters to be revisited. Such is life.

E4 has screened a few more episodes since Absolute Justice, including the aforementioned Zatanna one, none of which have come close to matching it in terms of quality. Indeed, the Zatanna one especially, dealing with a wimpy child who gets to be a hero for a day, or the Valentines Day episode that has Lois tranced into being the perfect '50's wife for Clark, are contenders for some of the most cringeworthy episodes of anything on telly this year. The thing is though, these less successful episodes, which if I'm brutally honest are actually in the majority with Smallville, never seem to sap my enthusiasm for the show. Where other shows are chores, which I watch purely because they exist and which I actively wish to see canceled, Smallville has enough charm and wit in it's characters to make every opportunity to spend time with them a pleasure.

And when it does work there is nothing on television like it.

'twas but a short honeymoon, yet a sweet one.

2010-08-09T18:35:00.006+01:00

I'm back. It's been a while, because the only real milestone I've reached in the Quest in the last couple of weeks has been finally seeing the Lost finale and if we're honest I think we can all agree that talking about Lost is getting a little old now. We all have our own opinion as to whether the finale was a heartwarming, tearjerking, masterpiece or a total betrayal of 6yrs of buildup that spat in the face of the fans. Myself, I'm in the former camp. I loved every second of it and I doubt we'll see it's like again, at least not for a very long time.

But if I'm not gonna do a long piece about Lost what am I gonna write about?

So I got to thinking, why must I only write about shows I've seen all of, why must every post be about a milestone. The very first show I ever wrote about on here was Power Rangers and I hadn't seen all of that, not by a long chalk. Of course the show had just reached a major turning point so I guess...no, my point stands. I've let myself fall into rules about what I can and can't write about and it's nonsense. It's my blog, no-one else cares, why should I restrict myself in this fashion. Enough I say.

So, without further ado I give you Heroes, Season 4, about halfway through.

First up, because I'm shallow, Claire appears to be turning lesbian, which would be loads more fun than it is had she not chosen the least attractive girl at school to fall for.

Her Dad meanwhile, is copping off with the good looking cop from S1 of Angel who doesn't seem to have aged a day in the years since then which just makes their affair seem slightly wrong.

The Petrelli family regurgitates all the same turgid soap opera we've been watching for the last 3 years. Sylar wanders around getting into various scrapes designed to give Zachary Quinto something to do while failing miserably to disguise the fact that the character should never have survived past the S1 finale. And the 2 stories are linked because Nathan is actually really Sylar and Sylar is just in Matts head and ooh, isn't it all complex and clever? And Ali Larter is still knocking around, off and on, plodding from one manufactured existential crisis to another without a hint of any real character development. Although this may be a good thing, since in her case the writers seem to think that character development means giving her a new character.

Then we have Samuel, the very very very dull Big Bad, who is played by Robert Knepper and therefore has absolutely no right to be dull. Whats going on? That his character is based in a carnival only adds insult to injury, conjuring up as it does some very unfavourable comparisons with another previous Knepper show, Carnivale. Although I hesitate to mention that stone classic in the same paragraph as this dross.

And of course Hiro and Ando, the adorable double act that we all fell in love with in S1, what are they up to? Well, pretty much the same thing they've been up to since then. Namely, finding new ways to be separated for long periods of time in order to deprive us of said double act. Despite every scrap of evidence pointing to the fact that neither character is a fraction as interesting on their own. Did Star Trek do a 6 episode arc where Spock sat on his arse in a cafe while Kirk went looking for his girlfriend? Did Miami Vice do half a season of Crocket doing some paperwork while Tubbs went off to find himself. I think not ladies and gentlemen, for one very good reason. It would have been shit.

There is also a woman who manipulates sound, or perceives sound in a certain way or something, I'm not sure. It's definitely to do with sound though. Anyway, it makes lots of pretty colours in the air. And she's a Doctor. And I think Peter fancies her. Or something. She's also deaf, as is the actress who plays her, who apparently used to play a deaf FBI agent. I'm not sure how that worked but I'm intrigued.

So does anyone remember when this show was good? No, me neither. Because it was never good. Before it was rubbish it was bloody excellent. The first season was an absolute masterpiece of serialised storytelling that had me for one on the edge of my seat for episode after episode after episode. Although those more versed in American comics history than I am may have something to say about how much of that was Tim Krings doing and how much was a blatant...er...homage. I couldn't possibly comment.

I even maintained the faith during the much derided second season with it's comedy oirish and bizarre time travel shenanigans. Even if Peter did get over his bit of stuff awful quickly. Is she still stuck in the future? I forget.

It was when Season 3 got underway that I realised my benefit of the doubt was being abused and the show was, in all likelihood, never going to be great again. It was truly a sad day. I watch a lot of tosh for the Quest and frankly, when something truly special comes along it's a real breath of fresh air. Sadly, Heroes legacy is more likely going to be a faint, lingering aroma of damp farts.

How does it all end?

2010-07-21T19:00:00.002+01:00

I'll admit it, I have been watching season 6 of Lost, via the computer screen, courtesy of Megavideo. Yes, I am aware that I'm probably committing all sorts of terrible online piracy crimes and yes, maybe even a netiquette faux pas for admitting it but the fact is, I have every intention of purchasing the box set when it comes out. I'm too much of a fanboy not to. I look at these streaming viewings, not downloads you'll note, nothing permanent, as advance screenings, if you will.

You have to look at it from my point of view. I don't have Sky, and since Lost is now exclusive to said network I have no chance to see the shows in any kind of timely fashion. It wasn't so bad when they just bought first run rights and let the terrestrials have a go afterwards but these days even that concession is denied us. So I watch online. Most shows I don't. Most shows I do my civic duty and wait for the discs, or the inevitable Sky 3 early morning wallpaper repeats that I can get through the freeview box, or I just don't watch at all until years down the line when everyone has moved on and no-one cares about the exclusive rights anymore and it starts to appear here there and everywhere in all sorts of obscure corners of the schedules.

You can't do that with Lost though can you? I mean you can, of course you can, but you'd be a muppet. The show thrived on unanswered questions. It encouraged the kind of fan debate that is second only to Doctor Who or the X-Files at it's peak. Which means that unless you stick your head in the sand, preferably whilst hiding under a big rock, in a cave, you have zero chance of avoiding spoilers. And this is one show where you really, really, don't want to have stuff spoiled. Already I know that Jack dies in the closing moments of the show. Okay, not too bad, since I don't know the manner of his death or the circumstances leading up to it but still...

Lost spoilers are no longer even considered spoilers anymore, are they? It's been long enough now that people are talking about the show quite freely, secure in the knowledge that anyone interested will have already seen the episodes. Go on the web now and spoilerific discussion abounds in forum threads that are not spoiler tagged and in many cases have nothing to do with Lost. It's almost like references to the show have become part of the geek vocabulary. To be honest, I reckon I've been pretty lucky to get away with staying relatively unspoiled for as long as I have.

So I decided to head to the web and get it out of the way as quickly as possible. Which I have been doing at a nice old clip. The episodes have rolled by, questions have been answered, characters have been culled and now, today, I get to the point that I have only one episode left to watch. The End II. The last chapter in a truly epic story and my final hurdle in finally being able to embrace the conversation.

"This video has been removed due to infringement issues"

Fuck. Just the finale mind, none of the previous episodes. Are they just toying with people now? "Let them see the buildup then leave the fuckers hanging, that'll teach them."

Someone definitely has it in for me when it comes to this show.

Next : ????

An oldie, but a goodie.

2010-07-20T18:25:00.005+01:00

From the beginning of time, many men have sought the unknown, delving into dark regions where live lie those truths which are destined to destroy.

Of all the eerie adventurers in the darkness, none was more driven by insatiable curiosity, nor went further into the unknown, than the unforgettable Baron Frankenstein.

So infamous were his exploits that his name stands forever as a symbol of all that is shocking, unspeakable, forbidden. Thus, in our day, any story that chills the soul and freezes the blood is truly a Tale of Frankenstein.

Now join us in the mystery, the excitement and the stimulation that comes when we tell a story so weird, so dark, so harrowing, that it deserves to be called one of the many TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN.

So says a floating disembodied head in a jar in the title sequence to this Hammer produced, 1958 pilot episode for a proposed Frankenstein TV series. Sadly, while the Baron would go on to notch up many appearances in Hammer movies and elsewhere, he wouldn't here. The show was not picked up, nor indeed was the pilot even aired at the time, although it has surfaced since in various graveyard slots.

I'll confess, I'd never actually heard of this show until I read a wonderful tome called 'The Hammer Story' by Alan Barnes and Marcus Hearne, which chronicles the Hammer studios somewhat bumpy history. It seems I'm the only person who hadn't though, because for half an hour of un-aired TV that's over half a century old it's doing pretty bloody well for itself in terms of recognition on the web, as I discovered when doing a little picture sourcing for this post. It seems that not only has everyone heard of it, they've seen it. Sadly, they don't seem to have much in the way of love for it.Which is something of a shame because to my untrained eye it was, if not an instant classic, then certainly a solid enough piece of horror fiction that kept me entertained for the duration.

It is, of course, nothing spectacularly original, but if we're honest, what else were they going to do in a Frankenstein pilot than some variation of the classic Frankenstein story? And that is indeed what we get here. Baron Frankenstein, played here by Anton Diffring - who's no Peter Cushing, but then who is? - dismayed to find that his creature is violent, blames the killers brain he used. He decides that he needs the brain of a good man to give the creation a conscience. Enter the Halperts, Paul and Christina, who need the Barons help to cure Paul of a never fully explained illness that threatens to kill him. Long story short, Paul (Richard Bull) dies and the Baron digs him up to steal his brain. Christina (Helen Westcott) confronting the Baron, is menaced by the creature who - because he's now 'powered' by her husbands brain - eventually recognises her and becomes gentler. She does get knocked unconscious though. There is a huge fight/chase sequence between the Baron and the Creature, which culminates in the graveyard and after Christina, now awake and seemingly none the worse for having been knocked unconscious minutes earlier, arrives on the scene the Creature ends up in Pauls open grave.

The episode ends with the Baron in police custody and Christina pleading his case, apparently believing that he did what he did out of compassion for her husband and guilt over not saving him, rather than a selfish desire to bring his experiments to fruition. Who knows, perhaps she was half right. Nevertheless, he is to be imprisoned. Have no fear though because as the Baron says "Time is of no matter.You see, there is always tomorrow".

That's quite a lot to fit into 27mins but they still find time for some of the old classics, like the carriage ride on a dark and stormy night, or the arrival of the Halperts at the local inn, prompting everything to go deathly quiet as the locals give them the evil eye, complete with many a lingering close-up on a raggedy looking yokel. These cliches aside though, it's a solidly staged production, deserving, in my humble opinion, of far more praise than it seems to receive.

The cast all acquit themselves well. In the thankless role of the Creature, Don Megowan doesn't really have a lot to work with but he manages to engender a fair degree of sympathy towards the end, when playing 'Paul'. The script, by Catherine and Henry Kuttner, from a story by Curt Siodmak, who also directed, is by necessity a pacy, fast moving affair but never skimps on the necessary character moments, giving Westcott and Bull ample opportunity, in a relatively short time, to craft a married couple who really feel like such, with genuine affection. Westcott particularly, although this may just be my much documented love of the pretty ladies coming out again, pretty much steals the show in what could have been a pretty shrewish role in lesser hands.

All in all, an entertaining slice of "might have been" that more than deserved a series. Especially when you get a look at some of the potential episodes they were planning. Could have been a classic. Never mind.

I am left with one question though, that I am far to lazy to look up the answer to. Why the Hell do the credits show Richard Bull playing someone by the name of MAX Halpert?

Next : Final thoughts on Lost (finally) or possibly first thoughts on The Net. Or maybe, just maybe, a list of things that are wrong with Tennant Who and why Matt Smith is so much better. Or something else entirely, I'm making it up as I go along.

Decisions decisions

2010-07-07T23:08:00.003+01:00

Well, as promised, here's a nice short entry with a picture of a good looking woman. 2 of them in fact. I'm nothing if not a man of my word.

My viewing has been dominated lately by Lost, as I attempt to get through Season 6 as quickly as possible before I lose the moral high ground re: spoilers. Not doing too badly either. I'm as far as 'Everybody Loves Hugo' so not long now.

I'm debating what to focus on next. It's gonna either be a complete run of Battlestar Galactica, which I recently acquired on DVD, or the complete run of the TV version of The Net, with Brooke Langton playing the Sandra Bullock role, which I not-so-recently acquired on DVD.

I have vague recollections of seeing a few episodes of The Net when it first aired here about 10 years ago and not being massively impressed so it's probably an idea to get that out of the way before apathy shoves it any further down the pile. It's a constant problem with the Quest that if I only watch stuff I think is gonna be great (the natural thing to do) some of the duffers fall by the wayside which isn't really in the spirit of the exercise.

Anyway, here's the second picture. The best looking woman in Galactica. Tricia who?

Ashes To Ashes

2010-07-03T02:24:00.001+01:00

Ah, Ashes to Ashes, what a disappointment you turned out to be. After two years of deep fried awesomeness with Life on Mars, you trundle into view, with your Quattros and your machine guns and your unfunny Gene and histrionic Alex, forever screaming like a lunatic and being all, you know, slappable. You even committed the cardinal sin, for which I did not think I could ever forgive you, of making Keeley Hawes look, whisper it, something less than the eye meltingly gorgeous Goddess we all know she is. Yes, it was the end of an era. A shining beacon of hope for British telefantasy had been extinguished.

But whats this? A second season that radically improves on the first and while not exactly being a Life... calibre classic still up their with the best of the rest. Gene back to being the iconic figure we know and love. Hawes, freed from the worst excesses of the writing team finally being allowed to craft a likable and, more to the point, relatable character in Alex. Montseratt Lombard, though still no Liz White, becoming less of an irritant. To top it all off, a cliffhanger ending that manages, in a stroke, to reinstate all the ambiguity, mystery and just plain wtfness that the concept seemed to have lost in this new guise. In fact, it's probably true to say that what was started with this cliffhanger was far more out there than anything they ever did with Sam Tyler on Life...

So we come to Season 3. The big finish. The finale to 5 years of work by Mathew Graham et al. And what a finish it was. Looking back at what a damp squib that 1st year was, and how blah my response to it, it seemed unbelievable to me that the same show could be the biggest thing in my life (TV wise of course) 2 scant years later. I was obsessed, theorising and debating and making all sorts of wild predictions. Miraculously, a lot of my predictions were actually correct, which surprised me no end I can tell you. I must confess, I didn't suss Alex' fate but the rest of that finale I got just about spot on.

There has been some speculation, some of it quite snide, about how the writers were making it up as they went along and never really had a plan for the conclusion, or even any kind of idea as to where they were going or what any of the mysteries meant. To this I say "so what?" Regardless of whether all the answers were in the writers heads from the get go or not, what we got at the last was a finale that worked on it's own as a piece of drama while at the same time answering a lot of long standing questions in a way that respected the concepts past without pandering to it. A perfect example (and an obvious one because I don't do subtle) was the appearance of Nelson as a kind of gatekeeper character. Do we believe for one second that this was his intended role from day one? Of course not, but it could have been. It certainly doesn't contradict anything from Life On Mars and actually makes a lot of sense when you consider how that character was heavily hinted to be a kind of 'spirit guide' for Sam on that show.

So Ashes is finished for good and so is that whole world. I'm sorry to see it go but I'd be even sorrier to see it come back, because what we have is a near perfect end to a very bumpy but nevertheless exhilarating ride.

And that's the end of my look at three shows that all ended at roughly the same time. Which was bloody ages ago. Seriously, I couldn't be any less topical if I was cracking jokes about Eddie Murphys paternity woes. Blame my laptop troubles, I've been online at home maybe 5 days in the last month.

Next : No clue. We'll see.

Flashforward

2010-06-22T12:31:00.002+01:00

So, Flashforward. Monotonous or Momentous? Intoxicating or Intolerable? Big pile of tripe or quite good after a while if you give it a chance and ignore Fiennes?

Flashforward was ABCs great hope for life after Lost and they spared no expense, either production wise or promotion wise but it never really took off the way they hoped. Some blame this on the slow pace of early episodes, others on the charisma black hole that is Joseph Fiennes but I believe it was down to impatience.

The show suffered from the comparison to Lost in a big way. I'd liken it to the way in which Harsh Realm and The Lone Gunmen suffered coming off the back of X-Files.
The X-Files, it's easy to forget in light of it's subsequent success, was a modest little show that got little in the way of press and wasn't exactly setting the ratings on fire in it's first Season. Nor was it the convoluted twisty turny thriller that it would become. It built both of those aspects over the course of a number of years.

Along comes Chris Carters subsequent shows and the eyes of the world are on them. They are The New X-Files. Massive ratings are expected overnight by the network and the viewers demand slickly produced, tightly plotted dramas with a firm identity in place and their mythologies intact from day one. There was no bedding in process, no latitude given for experimentation and feet finding. Hence the shows floundered under the weight of heightened expectations, the plug was pulled and we never got to see what could have been.

Flashforward was The New Lost. It was promoted heavily as the natural successor to that show and even featured a couple of cast members from it's predescessor, one of whom (Dominic Monaghan) would go on to steal the show from Joseph Fiennes. And because it was The New Lost, everyone expected huge things from it. They wanted all the bangs and whistles that Lost provides.

Here's the thing though. Watch Season 1 of Lost now. As awesome as it was then, and while it still holds up as quality drama, it's fucking glacial compared to the pace of recent Seasons. They took their time, they set up their mysteries, they established their characters and they built their world. Then, and only then, did they go batshit crazy and tear that world apart. Flashforward was not given the time to do that. And Flashforward was canceled. Now I'm not even blaming the network this time. It was the viewers. They tuned in in droves for the early episodes, complained for a few weeks that it was to slow, and stopped watching. Again, in droves. The writing was on the wall from quite early on.

All credit to the producers then for sticking to their guns. Yeah, they amped up the action slightly in the back half of the season but not in any massive way and certainly not enough to compromise the integrity of the shows plot. And they built to a finale that as well as being epic, exciting, and extremely fucking good also effectively answered a lot of the lingering questions of the season, tied in beautifully with the visions seen in the pilot. Then, in a move that could so easily be read as a massive "Fuck You" to the people, they showed, via a second flashforward, glimpses of what could have been, what should have been, and what looked absolutely brilliant.

I for one shall miss this show. I was hoping we'd get a 5 or 6 year epic, a la Lost, that we could look back on as one of the defining genre shows of this decade. Instead we got a damp squib and a lot of "what if's". A real shame.

Just for fun now I'm gonna quote my predictions for Flashforward Season 1 and beyond, that I posted on a forum I frequent. It was posted after I think 2 episodes had aired, maybe 3. I guess we'll never know how right (or wrong I suppose, though that seems unlikely) I would have been.

Season one will catch up to the flashforwards. Not really a spoiler cos producers have said as much. Seasons 2 through 5 will feature further flashforwards that the team need to fathom, in the vein of 24 with a new "case" each year. This would also allow different regulars to come and go as they are relevant to each case, with the core investigative team grounding the ensemble. These seasons will also drip feed information about who is causing the blackouts and why. Season 6 begins as just another case before the mid season discovery of the big answer followed by a breakneck pace to the cliffhanger and a showdown with the big man behind it all. He announces it has all been done to accelerate the discovery of certain mysteries that otherwise wouldn't have come to light because man (read Yank Gov.) needs the info to stop a big catastrophe. Cue season seven, stopping the big catastrophe.

I also reckon Fiennes will die in the finale after years of fan sniping about how he is the dullest bloke in the show so why all the focus on him? (see Losts Jack) His death will come after a big reunion with his estranged wife when it is revealed that her new fella and his kid, who will probably end up not really being his kid, are revealed to be part of the big conspiracy.

What do you think? I reckon I was bang on. Sorta.

Next : Ashes to Ashes and then I promise, pinky swear and everything, that I'll post some shorter bits of shit. With pictures of pretty ladies.

The Prisoner

2010-06-20T19:04:00.002+01:00

A few weeks back I decided to write a Quest entry comparing the finales of 3 shows that all finished for good around about the same time. Trouble was, I was trawling through all that horror channel stuff and then I went offline for a while and one thing leading to another I forgot all about it. So it now feels a hell of a lot less topical but fuck it, I'm gonna do it anyway.

The 3 shows in question are Ashes To Ashes, The Prisoner and Flashforward. All, coincidentally enough, shows that traded a great deal on ambiguity and mystery. And yes, I'm well aware that the ultimate in ambiguous storytelling, Lost, also ended at around that time but I'm a bit behind and have only just gotten around to watching the first few eps. of its final season.

To get on with it then, I'm gonna kick off with The Prisoner. Now, I have watched the original in its entirety but while I have fond memories of enjoying it, I have only the vaguest memories of what actually happened. A rewatch may be in order, if the complete set of tapes has remained intact on my travels. Point is though, I'm not someone who feels particularly territorial or protective of the original. It's not a sacred thing for me. For that reason I was able to go into this new version with much more of an open mind.

An open mind that was sorely tested. I hated the first episode before deciding that it wasn't that bad after all, quite liked the second episode and then spent episodes 3 through 6 moving through stages of confusion, irritation, anger and finally acceptance that yes, this really was pretentious wankery of the highest order and I was wasting my time trying to convince myself that it made any kind of dramatic sense. I mean, seriously, did anyone even read the scripts for this drivel before chucking money at it?

For a while I thought that it was just me. That I wasn't bright enough to fully comprehend the nuances and subtleties of it's intricately crafted world. Then I realised that it wasn't intricately crafted, it was just thrown together willy nilly in the hopes that an excess of weirdness would disguise the fact. I did 'get' what they were trying to do, with the whole 'giving the subconscious life in the village to help people in the real world' shtick, which isn't the most terrible idea ever but they got so caught up in trying to be clever, rather than just telling their story, that the whole thing just degenerates into a disjointed mess. I kind of wish that this series had been called something else because I can't help but feel that they felt compelled to live up to or surpass the ambiguity of the original and without that "it's The Prisoner so it has to be weird" mentality they could have been on to something quite special here.

No talk of this show would be complete of course without mention of the one thing that did entertain me throughout the run. I speak of course, of Ruth Wilsons mouth. I'm sorry, but the woman has a weird mouth, there's no getting away from it. The run of Luther on BBC1 overlapped with this show and she was in that as well so for a while there I had 2hrs a week of Ruth Wilsons mouth to cheer me up when I felt down. I'm not trying to be mean, and it's not weird in an ugly or unattractive way (quite the opposite, she's very bonny) but it is just ... It's the only thing I can look at when she's on screen, put it that way.

Shit, this one has dragged on again and if I do all three shows it'll be a fucking book so I'll sign off and do the others separately. If anyone is still reading this waffle I apologise, I'm still getting the hang of this blogging lark. This wasn't meant to be a series (nor was the horror channel stuff when I started writing it) but I just can't control my long windedness.

Firestarter Rekindled

2010-06-16T22:23:00.003+01:00

This post should have gone up a while ago but I spent a little over a week without any 'net connection and things got lost in the shuffle when that elusive connection was re-established. Anyway...

Well, after Friday 13th and Freddys Nightmares, I come to the third of the shows horror has graced me with these past couple of weeks. Namely, Firestarter:Rekindled, the belated sequel to the Drew Barrymore starring adaptation of Stephen Kings novel. Not the follow up to the novel you understand, the follow up to the adaptation. This is an important distinction to make because as we all know, King fans more than most, that when it comes to page to screen transfers, the end result is oftentimes borderline unrecognisable. So this is billed as a sequel to the events as depicted on screen, not on the page.

How big is the difference in this case? I'm going to be honest here and say that I don't know. I read Firestarter well over a decade ago and have distinct memories of disappointment but little else, plotwise or otherwise. I don't think that I'm alone in this; it does seem to have the reputation of being some distance short of Kings best work. As far as the move goes I have to hold my hands up and say that I've never seen it. I suppose it could be a Shawshank/Stand By Me level classic but I'd be surprised.

All of which means that I'm coming to Rekindled at something of a disadvantage. I of course recognised the characters of Charlie and John Rainbird, and the whole concept of Lot 6 and its aftermath came back to me quite readily but beyond that I had nothing. Which, perhaps surprisingly, didn't matter in the slightest. The plot of the movie was quite succinctly summed up in a few nicely staged flashback sequences and the thrust of the new story was sufficiently different that it was well able to stand alone. I found that I had no problems at all grasping what was going on.

The basic idea is that an investigator for a law firm is tracking down the participants in a long ago Drug Trial (Lot 6) in order to furnish them with cheques for their share of a big class action compen claim. He discovers that when he finds them they are in fact being killed and so he goes on the run with Charlie, whom he bumps into while she is running her own investigation of her origins , as the sinister blokes try to track them down to stop them causing any bother in the run up to the launch of their new project; a bunch of creepy kids with various powers, which they intend to market to the military.

Of course it all ends with Charlie confronting Rainbird (badly burned after the book and presumably movie climax) and his psycho sprogs, preventing their big 'kill loads of people in a mad way' plan from coming to fruition and killing Rainbird once and for all. Surprisingly though, Rainbird does kill the investigator blokey, inevitably now Charlies lover. Even though he had just promised to visit his dying estranged father. No teary reconciliation for him, he gets a blade through the ear into the brain. Shocking, but somewhat cathartic for the viewer, due to the fact that he was played by the pathologically annoying Danny Nucci.

Charlie herself is played by an actress called Marguerite Moreau. A woman I'd never heard of but who looks a hell of a lot like a slightly smaller chested Laura San Giacomo. The internet tells me that Moreau is fairly well known as an actress in her own right but I'm afraid I just got flashbacks to Just Shoot Me whenever she was onscreen. Not that she was in any way a bad actress, managing to hold her own in scenes opposite noted scene stealers Malcolm McDowell and Dennis Hopper. Slightly weirdly, Hopper showed up halfway through this, from out of the blue (I'd not noticed his name in the titles but it was there when I rewound the tape) not 5 minutes after I heard the news on the day of his death. Spooky.

Anyway, this is a miniseries which I've been wanting to see for a while now, ever since I managed to miss every single showing on the notoriously repeat friendly Sky network. I forget whether it was Sky One or Movies but I remember it seemed to always be on and life just insisted on getting in the way. I'm glad to finally be able to put it to rest and also that after such a long wait it didn't turn out to be a disappointment.

Next : ????

Freddys Nightmares

2010-06-05T20:39:00.004+01:00

I have never been a huge movie viewer. Sure, back when Sc-fi on TV was much more of a rarity I would watch whatever movies were available in order to feed the need but once the telefantasy boom really kicked off (early 90's) and I started having access to it (a bit later) I found that watching shows took precedence and when you watched as many shows as I did that didn't leave a lot of time for features.

Of course, I've seen the classics; Blade Runner, Star Wars, Alien, Planet of the Apes etc. and I have fond memories of some lesser movies that if I rewatched them now would probably disappoint, like Return of the Living Dead, Shockwave, Red Dawn, Last Starfighter and the like. On the whole though, I'm not a massive movie fan.

There are some characters however that, no matter how unfamiliar you may be with the actual movies, are iconic. Characters that have invaded the public psyche to such a degree that you are actually surprised when you confront yourself with the fact that you've never actually seen their movie. One such character is Freddy Kruger.

I've seen precisely 2 Nightmare on Elm Street movies. The original, many years ago as a child and New Nightmare, shortly after it's release on VHS. This one was actually a rare case of me seeking out a movie, intrigued as I was by it's "oh, look at me, I'm so clever" premise. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be something of a masterpiece. The point though is that I've seen 2 movies in a series of - looks it up, finds out it's 8, not counting the remake - and those years ago, and yet I feel like I know the character of Freddy Krueger as well as I know the dudes in a show I've watched every week for years. Why? God knows, but I suppose we must praise Wes Craven and Robert Englund for creating so memorable a villain.

Watching Freddys Nightmares on horror then is something of a strange experience, given that I went into it with quite a lot of preconceptions about the character that I now realise may not actually be correct. Those who read my Twitter feed (not many, I have only 20 followers and half of those are spammers) have had the dubious privilege of reading my thoughts on this series but it's only now that I do a little research for this post that I realise I could well have been talking shit. For one thing, I have been operating on the assumption that Freddy was a paedophile. Apparently this is not true, he just killed kids, with any reference to paedophilia having been excised from the script early on. So why was I convinced that he was? And if I've gotten that wrong, what else am I missing or misconstruing?

Even putting aside the fact that many of my ideas about the character of Freddy may be flawed, and therefore my complaints on that score unfounded, I still cannot bring myself to call this a good show. I wanted it to be. When I sat down to watch the pilot, "No More Mr. Nice Guy", I was genuinely excited about what I was about to see. The odd dodgy performance aside I wasn't disappointed but after that the series goes downhill fast. Freddy himself barely appears in most episodes, merely popping up to top and tail with a really poor pun in a kind of anthology host type of way.

Which would be fine if the show was presented as an anthology, but it isn't. Watching only the first 9 episodes, it's easy to spot any number of things that go against the anthology format. All of the stories are set in Springwood, the 'local legend' of Freddy Krueger is mentioned often, even if it's not a factor in the episode, locations such as the Beefy Boy fast food restaurant reoccur (with staff members mentioning events that occurred there in previous episodes) and one set of characters have returned for a 'sequel' to their initial appearance.

So, a confused format that keeps the star attraction off screen for a goodly portion of the run time. Is that the only problem the show has? Not really. The individual episodes don't really work either. Each episode is split into 2 chunks. Th first section features someone being tormented in some fashion, and ends with them either dead or insane. The second section takes a minor character from the first half, makes them the focus, torments them in some fashion and ends with them either dead or insane. It's so obvious that they wanted to be making a Twilight Zone hour with 2 distinct stories because the sections are often linked in only the most tenuous of ways and could easily be separate stories entirely.

Some of the episodes also suffer from the fact that they don't really have any kind of internal logical consistency. It's like the writers have taken the excuse of the dream concept to tell willfully bizarre stories that make no attempt to make sense. Weirdness for weirdness sake does not an interesting story tell. I should say that I have no problem with surrealism but some of these stories smack of laziness. "This script doesn't make sense, should we give it a polish?" "Nah, balls to it, it's all a dream isn't it?".

So, horror are showing this series, weeknights at 8:00. The show ran for 2 seasons but this channel does have a habit of repeating one season half a dozen times before moving on so I doubt I'll see season 2 anytime soon. Maybe that's a blessing. Maybe after this season ends I'll make the effort to track down a few of the movies, try to educate myself in a little Freddy lore before progressing. That way I can feel justified in slagging it off when they inevitably piss all over it.

Next : A made for TV sequel to a big screen adaptation of a sub par Stephen King novel.

Friday The 13th

2010-05-31T16:46:00.008+01:00

So for some reason that my technologically stunted brain doesn't understand we still get the horror channel through on the Sky box, despite no longer paying a subscription. I thought that the channels still coming through might correspond with the channels you'd get through a Freeview box but when I hooked one of them up recently there was little crossover in channel availability on the two systems.

None of which is important. This is about the programming, and of late the horror channel has come up trumps for me.

Friday the 13th : The Series is a curious beast, bearing as it does absolutely no discernible links with the movie series. It focuses on an antiques shop which, following the death of it's owner, falls into the hands of a niece and nephew. Great pains are gone to to emphasise that they are cousins by marriage only, to ensure that the requisite will they/won't they sexual spark can be played up. Although it does then fizzle out quite quickly to be replaced by a quite sparky and endearing Brother/Sister vibe. So much so that when the writers remember and have them be flirtatious again it feels a little awkward and just plain wrong. Ryan (John D. LeMay) and Mickey (Louise Robey, credited simply as Robey) are shocked to find that Uncle Louis had done a deal with the Devil and many of the items being sold in the shop are cursed. They set out, with the help of Jack (Chris Wiggins), an old friend and business contact of Louis, to retrieve these cursed items.

The series follows the trio as they collect items as diverse as a compact that makes men fall in love with the owner, a scarecrow that guarantees good crops, a scalpel that gives the surgeon perfect results on the table and a quilt which literally makes dreams come true when you sleep under it. The catch in all of these cases being that they require human sacrifice to make them work. It's all pretty formulaic, with some terrible acting from the guest (and occasionally regular) cast and the special effects leave a lot to be desired, but overall it's as good as you'd expect from a network television show trying to tell the kind of full blooded horror stories you would see in the slasher movie genre from which it took it's name.

To be fair, the writers and producers do push the boundaries of acceptable content, getting away with a lot more than was the norm for the time, especially with some quite nasty sexual threat aimed at Mickey in a number of episodes. One episode springs to mind however, where they chickened out big time. Happy as they were to bring their lead female to the brink of rape on a number of occasions they came over all coy when it was time to kill a few little kids. An episode that sees two neglected kids escape into a happy fantasy land by way of a cursed playhouse which demands children be sacrificed to it was notable as the only episode not to feature any deaths, as it turns out that the kids were in another reality and were returned at episodes end. Why the Devil would see fit to set this curse in particular to be non-lethal is not explained. He's obviously just a big softy at heart.

Anyway, I have now reached the end of Season 2 and apparently I have a cast change to look forward to, with a new recurring character having just arrived on the scene who will permanently replace Ryan in Season 3. I'm tempted to say that I think this is a good thing as LeMay is consistently the weakest link, but I'll reserve judgement. The new guy could turn out to be even worse, although he's looking good so far.
There actually seems to be something of a little proto arc plot spluttering into life here in the latter stages of S2, with the Devil actively recruiting agents to go after the heroes, as he's sick of them interfering in his plans in one episode and Louis old coven trying to infiltrate the store to retrieve items in the finale. Of course ths could come to nothing and never be mentioned again but it gave me hope that maybe the show was breaking free from it's oh so stringent formula, if only slightly. The slight change of direction coming at the same time as the new cast member makes me think changes are afoot.

One interesting thing that I have discovered while writing this post is that, while there remains no link between the show and the movies - a rumoured potential episode about the team tracking down Jasons mask was apparently just that, a rumour - one guy wrote a series of novels that managed to tie the series and the movies up to that point in a single continuity. I may well have to track them down.

The big question with this show is whether I go to the computer screens now that horror has ended it's run of season 2, or move on to something else and wait for them to get around to the next batch of episodes. Time will tell.

Next : Freddy's Nightmares. Another big screen to small screen jump, but this time the actors along for the ride.

Childhood Magic

2010-05-25T17:47:00.013+01:00

Okay, so it's another long post. I try to edit them down, I really do (you'd never make it through the first draft of one of these things believe me), but it seems that I can't write anything without rambling on. And I've just made it even longer by writing that . And that. And that. And... (Sorry)

The Chronicles of Narnia are among the most well loved works of childrens literature in the English language. At least among the kind of people who use phrases like "well loved works of childrens literature". To be honest though, (and this may speak more to the sort of communities I was raised in and still inhabit, than society in general), most of the people I know (Not me though, I is all cultural and shit) would be hard pushed to name one that didn't have Lion and Wardrobe in the title.

So I suppose it's fitting that when it comes to adapting the books for the screen the accepted wisdom is to start with Lion... and go from there, even though the internal continuity of the Narnia books has The Magicians Nephew as the first title. To be fair, even if Lion... weren't the better bet ratings/financially speaking, ...Nephew is pretty unrepresentative of the series as a whole and so probably wouldn't be the best bet artistically either.

All of which is just my roundabout way of getting to the fact that I've been watching the BBC's 1988 adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It was the first of 4 Narnia serials that the Beeb produced in the late 80's/ early 90's, and was followed by Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair, all broadcast under the umbrella title Chronicles of Narnia. I haven't watched them and shan't be in the near future. In fact the only reason I've been in a position to knock off Lion... is because I've come into possession of a DVD that came free with the Daily Mail a while back, courtesy of a family member who hoards these things despite not owning a DVD player themselves.

I'd been under the impression that these freebies were all "heres the first episode now piss off and buy the boxset" type deals but in this case it's a complete serial from a boxset of 4 so well worth the watch. I may have to pay closer heed to these offers in future, even if it does mean I end up buying the odd copy of the Daily Mail.

Anyway, to the show itself. The four lead characters (siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy) arrive in the country having been sent packing from London during the war. They are to be taken in by an aging Professor. While exploring the Profs big old house they find a wardrobe which on occasion, but not always, serves as a doorway to a magical land called Narnia, wherein they have lots of adventures fighting with the native Narnians (anthropomorphised animals mainly) against The White Witch who has taken it upon herself to cast a spell on the land, making it eternally winter. Thats as much of the plot as I'm going to type because frankly, if you don't know the story of this then shame on you. Read the first paragraph again, "most well loved...in the English language." Away with you to Waterstones (or an indoor market, or a library, or...) and get it read.

The four kids are played by your typical BBC kids of the day, all perfect enunciation and proper manners. To be fair, Richard Dempsey and Sophie Cook, playing the two eldest, acquit themselves quite well considering.

Their are also occasional flashes of something special in Jonathan Scott, playing Edmund.

I do feel duty bound to point out that Sophie Wilcox (Lucy), despite growing up to be a bit of a hottie, has at this point in her life the biggest teeth I've ever seen in a childs mouth. Frightening.

The effects work on the show is something a bit different. Obviously well aware that they didn't have a hope in hell of getting some of C.S Lewis' more fantastical creations on screen using conventional methods of the day they opted instead to go with animating some of the trickier stuff and dropping it into the live action scenes in a Roger Rabbit style, only not as slick obviously. It doesn't sound like the most elegant of solutions and to be honest it's far from seamless but it earns points for charm and I'd imagine it was far from cheap. Especially the scene of Edmund riding an animated flying horse.

Biggest fly in the ointment of the whole thing was Barbara Kellerman, playing Jadis, the White Witch. She's gives a completely overblown performance that makes you think that she thought she was in a pantomime. Even the people dressed as giant beavers managed to retain more dignity in their performances. She went on to star in the subsequent BBC narnia adaps, playing a different role in each. I can honestly say that this news has seriously dampened my enthusiasm for these stories.

In all though, it was better than I expected it to be and far from a wasted 3hrs.

Next : Either a 3 parter on the horror channel or a wrap up of the stuff thats just ended. They're both in the works but I don't know which will be ready first.

Girls Girls Girls

2010-05-21T21:30:00.000+01:00

I am something of a lech. It's true, I can't help it. I see a pretty woman, I get a little, well, you know. And that's just as true when watching television as it is in real life. Maybe even more so because in real life a combination of crippling shyness and fear of prosecution means that I rarely dare to stay in close proximity to said ladies for too long, whereas in the privacy of my own cocoon I can ogle for as long as I want.

Sometimes a really dull or unlikable or badly written character can be made watchable purely by the judicious application of a good looking actress, but what happens when you have the really attractive actress, playing the really nice character. I'll tell you what happens to me. I fall a little bit in love. Do I think it's healthy to fall in love with a fictional character? Not really. Do I recognise the inherent weirdness in this reaction? Yes, yes I do. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen though.

It happened to me when I watched The Time Warrior and a certain reporter made her debut.

It happened to me when I watched the Smallville pilot and a certain blonde best friend arrived on the scene.

And it happened to me when I watched Belonging and met a traumatised cow called Fred.

In recent years Jayma Mays did it to me in Heroes with just one episode. I was literally screaming obscenities at the screen when she got Sylar'd. It broke my heart and I'm man enough to say it. Other one episode wonders (yes I know Charlie reappeared in Heroes but really, does anyone think that was a good idea?) are Georgia Moffett in The Doctors Daughter and Carey Mulligan in Blink.

The point of this? It's not to make me sound like a reclusive pervert with serious issues, but rather to bring us around to two shows I've been watching lately. The first is Stargate Atlantis. I lost track of this show a few years back when I lost my Sky hookup. This would have been mid season 3. A while later, my homeless wandering over and firmly ensconced on my sisters settee, I began using her Sky box to catch up with the endless reruns of the show at ridiculous hours of the night. The problem was, the Gods were against me. I'd record and watch two or three episodes and then there would be a powercut or the video timer would glitch or it would clash with some obscure old bit of tat my sister wanted to see and I'd get gaps. I'd leave it for the loop to roll back around to that point and pick it up again but invariably I'd only get a few episodes before something else put the kibosh on it. Until eventually my sister cancelled her subscription and I lost it completely. Aaah! Anyway, I tried. I really did, but in the end I had to admit defeat and turn to the trusty computer. And now I'm slowly but surely trundling through the episodes on Megavideo.

It's a funny one Atlantis. It managed to go through more cast changes in 5 seasons than it's parent show did in twice as many, and none of the variations seemed to gel completely successfully. Getting rid of Tori Higginson for example, wooden as she was, seemed like a boon until I realised that the writers really didn't know what to do with Amanda Tapping in this setting, to the point that she didn't even appear in a number of episodes during her one season as a regular. Joe Flanagan is a charismatic lead deserving of bigger things but unfortunately his character is written in such a way as to come across as arrogant rather than cool. Mitch Pilleggi is wasted in a bland 'gruff military type' role that should have been so much more and the killing off of Paul Mcgillions character was a cock up of the highest order. Or was it?

You see, Dr. Carson Beckett was likable. He was warm and compassionate and good at his job and pretty much the most relatable person on the show. But without his death there would have been no place for Dr Jennifer Keller. Played by Jewel Staite Dr Keller is the latest fictional character to capture my heart in an wholly inappropriate way. I should have seen it coming of course, considering my borderline obsession with her character of Kaylee on Firefly a few years ago. I tell you, when it looked like she was for the chop in Serenity, when she was bleeding out, there were tears in my eyes. Not a little trickle, rivers of the things. I was ready to put a hit out on Joss Whedon at that moment.

Anyway, I am now entering the 5th and final season of Atlantis and the lovely Jewel is now a regular. I shall enjoy her while I can.

The second show I wanted to talk about was Warehouse 13. A syfy (shudder, will we ever get used to that?) series that is massively derivative of too many shows to count yet is nonetheless eminently watchable, this series also escaped me when my sister switched off the Sky halfway through it's first season but it's now getting an airing on Virgin 1, which luckily for me is available through the rickety old Freeview box we had lying around.

So it and I are becoming reacquainted, just in time for the Warehouse 13 debut of one Allison Scagliotti, playing Claudia, a new addition to the cast who is credited as a guest star but is set to be a full time presence for the rest of the season. I know that she is currently filming season 2 but whether she has been upgraded to regular status for that remains to be seen. Yes, you've guessed it, Claudia is my new obsession. God knows where my loyalties will fall next year though, now I know that Jewel Staite is set to guest star.

Anyway, as I near the conclusion of Atlantis, Warehouse 13 is just getting started. Proof if I needed any more that this Quest is indeed impossible but as long as there are ladies of this calibre to keep me company, I shall never lose the faith.

Next : A big cat with a Jesus complex, an unpleasant woman with a penchant for statuary and a nice bit of bedroom furniture.

The Tomorrow People

2010-05-19T17:51:00.000+01:00

Nowadays there are entire channels devoted to programming for children and teenagers. So many that there is an entire section of the Sky grid devoted to them. Back in the days of my tender youth however, things were different. BBC One and ITV would devote 2 or 3 hours, starting around 3:30ish, to programmes for the youngsters coming out of school and that was it. Some people got very territorial about which channel they watched as well, with many an argument breaking out in the school playgrounds over the subject.

I was staunchly ITV. Even the allure of Andi Peters and his little pal Ed the Duck weren't enough to sway me. Although I'll admit that I did betray the cause slightly by switching over to the Beeb for Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. You have to get your priorities right.

So anyway, one of the many shows that kept me entertained in the CITV slot was called The Tomorrow People, starring Kristian Schmid, late of Neighbours, and Christian Tessier, who would go on to do not much else that I know of for a few years before nabbing a recurring role as a viper pilot in Battlestar Galactica. There were other characters that came and went but those two were the spine of the show for the duration.

The basic concept, rejigged by original creator Roger Price, had teenagers manifesting powers such as telepathy and teleportation in a process called 'breaking out'. They would start disappearing from their homes and reappearing on a crashed spaceship on an island somewhere, before reappearing back where they started. They eventually teamed up to take on various weird villains and avoid the clutches of the pantomime military who wanted to harness their abilities. It was all good fun and surprisingly exciting at times. One sequence that springs to mind is one that sees them required to teleport blind into some Egyptian ruins, not knowing if they would materialise inside solid rock. Ooh the tension.

Schmid and Tessier were an amiable little double act with believable 'mate' chemistry and the constantly changing team managed, perhaps surprisingly, to avoid the curse of the child actor almost completely. I don't remember any particularly bad 'weak links'.

The whole thing was pretty much over before it started though, with the 3 seasons combined only amounting to 25 episodes but they did a lot with what they had. The guest stars alone made it a worthwile addition to anyones schedule. I mean, the aforementioned Egyptian serial even saw Christopher Lee turn up, playing Rameses. If that doesn't float your boat...

I loved this show, it has to be said, but I always had a slight problem while watching. Namely my Mother, sitting there all smug like, telling me how "It's not as good as the old one." Every bloody week. What did I care about some show that was canceled before I was even born? As far as I was concerned this was the real Tomorrow People and nothing was gonna convince me otherwise.

Yeah right.

Next : I'm not a perv, I just like the ladies.

How the quest got started

2010-05-18T19:36:00.001+01:00

I'm not sure just when I actually decided to embark on the Quest. I'm sure it must be well over a decade. It was never really a conscious decision so much as something that just sort of sneaked up on me over time. Certainly I've always been fascinated by sci-fi and fantasy and would eagerly seek out every morsel that there was to be had in the schedules of the 4 channels available to me as a child.

Yes 4. It may be difficult for some of the younger folk to comprehend - in fact I think my demographic was probably the last to live like this - but when I were a lad multi channel subscription set ups like Sky and it's ilk were, though around, very much in their infancy, with nowhere near the number of specialist and niche channels available. They were also considered something of a luxury, with far fewer homes possessing them.

No, all I had was terrestrial telly, and since Five, or Channel 5 as was, was still years away, that meant 4 channels. I suppose I should count myself lucky. Channel 4 launched within my lifetime so I actually lived the first few years of my life with only 3. Luckily I spent most of those years eating, puking, crapping and sleeping so having a wide variety of viewing options wasn't really something I was concerned about.

Channel 4 was probably the pick of the channels as far as my needs went. Sundays on there was sci-fi day. Not in any officially branded way that the channel was pimping but in my head it most definitely was. I would come home from my paper round and there would be a vintage slice of Yankland sci-fi. Be it the Planet of the Apes TV show (an underrated classic) or some Irwin Allen genius in the form of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or Land of the Giants I knew that they wouldn't let me down. Then at teatime a movie, often decades old and completely obscure but nonetheless, a sci-fi movie to eat your tea to. It was this slot that gave me my first taste of the Dr Who movies. In fact, as I'm typing this I realise that that was probably my first taste of Doctor Who full stop. Little did I know.

Even when BBC2 started showing more modern stuff it was 'modern' in only the loosest terms, being generally about 3 seasons behind. Nevertheless, we got pretty stable scheduling of a number of top shows in their weekday teatime slot, with the various modern Trek shows, Lois and Clark, Due South, Buffy and the sublime Farscape filling the slot for a number of years before it was decided that reruns of the Weakest Link and a bunch of cookery shows were what the audience really wanted. By that time Sky was properly bedded in and they were airing shows months rather than years behind their original transmissions. I suspect the BBC had simply seen the writing on the wall.

Anyway,by then I was starting my first job, meaning disposable income for the first time in my life. MVC didn't know what was about to hit them.

Next : The Tomorrow People

Come on lads, it's meant to be sci-fi.

2010-05-14T15:09:00.001+01:00

Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo.I know, I know, they've made movies and written video games and all that other good stuff that multi talented Hollywood types do but come on. Say the names Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams and people know who you mean; instantly. Say the names Joe Straczynski, Chris Carpenter, Don Bellissario, Daid Greenwalt and assuming the people you are talking to are even slightly geeky, they'll know who you mean; instantly. Bilson and DeMeo, though? Not quite on the same level are they?

Nor should they be. They aren't as good. It's as simple as that. Which is not to say that their work is without merit. Their adaptation of The Flash, starring John Wesley Shipp, is one of the best true comic adaptations I've yet seen and their two mid 90's shows, The Sentinel and Viper, are two very well put together examples of the car chase and shoot out school of cop show. What they are not, are good examples of sci-fi shows. And sci-fi is what they purport to be.

Viper is a show set in the future about a team of undercover cops fighting a crime wave in a sporty little vehicle that has the ability to morph into a virtually impregnable supercar complete with machine guns, remote control drone cameras, rocket launchers and, in the final season, a hovercraft mode for water pursuits.

And yet week after week they investigated murders, kidnapping, armed robberies and the odd bit of domestic terrorism when they felt like pushing the boat out. Where were the supervillains, the evil geniuses, the global corporations intent on overthrowing governments? The case of the week plots were no more fantastical or outlandish than your average TJ Hooker.

At least Viper had the car and the gadgets. The Sentinel had a cop with super senses. Which he used to sniff and taste evidence and read license plates from a long way off. That was about it. Detective Jim Ellison, played by stalwart 24 psycho, Harpers Island corpse and occasional resident of Wisteria Lane, Richard Burgi, is gifted with enhanced senses after spending some time in the jungle during his Army days. They lie dormant when he returns to civilization, until he goes camping. Or something like that, it's a long time since I watched the pilot. Anyway, he returns to the city with these new abilities and sets about using them to fight crime, alongside anthropologist Blair Sandburg (Garret Maggart), whom he agrees to allow to study him, in exchange for help controlling the powers.

There is some intriguing stuff in their about the origins of said powers in the South American native cultures but I'll be honest, it never really goes anywhere. Instead the writers seem much more interested in the same bog standard case of the week type episodes that Viper suffers from.

Burgi is, as he usually is, good value but it's Maggart who really made the big impression on the fans. Indeed, when the show was cancelled after 3 seasons, ending with Blair Sandburg apparently dead, their was a big fan campaign to save him, which resulted in a (truncated) 4th year. In fact though, I'm fairly sure I've read that the writers had not 'apparently' killed him to engineer a cliffhanger from which he would return but rather had fully intended to leave him dead in any 4th season, Instead, they brought him back for a fairly lacklustre final run.

This did at least mean we got to see more of new girl Anna Galvin, who had appeared as a new regular toward the end of season 3 playing another cop who learns Jims secret and would crop up a few times in Season 4, credited now with the "special appearance by" tag, since presumably the budget had been cut and no longer stretched to a full cast complement. Last in, first out, as they say.

Anyway, The Sentinel is toast as far as the Quest is concerned. Done, dusted and hands wiped of. Viper on the other hand has proved more problematic. FX (greatest channel on the Sky grid, bar none) screened seasons 2-4 as daytime wallpaper a few years back but omitted season 1, presumably due to the rights issues being more complicated. Season 1 had been a network show but after being cancelled it was brought back in first run syndication and I'm guessing thats gotta make a difference. Probably why Airwolf season 4 isn't in the DVD box sets. Although that could just be down to overall cackness.

Now, with season 1 unavailable I wouldn't normally have watched. And I didn't here, opting instead to go with filling up shedloads of vhs tapes. These tapes sat, neglected, until I did a little digging and found that when the show was ressurected it was an almost total reboot. Armed with this handy justification I decided to jump in. Problem was, having moved around since then I found that 2 of the tapes had gone astray. Aaah! So now Viper lies abandoned, for the time being at least, with 12 eps at the front and 8 at the back unnacounted for. I'll get them some day.

Final note - no matter how dissapointing his shows may be, Danny Bilson will forever hold a special place in my heart for 2 equally important reasons. 1) His part in putting The Rocketeer onscreen and 2) Rachel Bilson. Mmmm Summer.

Next : A look at the origins of the Quest. Or me moaning about the lack of channels when I was a kid. Take your pick.