Gordon Brown Knows the Score?

A while ago, a petition was circulated, asking for Alan Moore's work to be recognised. Now, the petition seems to have been answered.

Thank you for taking the trouble to sign this e-petition.

The Prime Minister recognises the achievements of Alan Moore and the widespread regard in which he is held.

This is highlighted by the hundreds of people who have signed the e-petition on the No 10 website calling for him to be honoured.

I'll believe it when I see it.

New Who Clues (pt 8 & 9)

No clues last week, although the Confidential had incoming showrunner Steven Moffatt talking about other stories in which the Doctor meets people he hasn't met yet, in particular the Elizabeth I moment from "The Shakespeare Code", which suggests that we might be seeing that implied story at sometime. Still, the library two-parter was a great bit of storytelling, and the series is in safe hands with Moffatt.

A surprisingly good story this week too. Very tense, with some interesting things to say about humanity and the Doctor's faith in the race, quite spooky in parts, and a nice contrast with what looks like some epic storytelling coming up. We also got another cameo by Rose, another mention of a lost planetoid, and another mention of the mysterious "Medusa Cascade".

The upcoming story, probably another multi-part finale, looks to be quite epic, and I hope Russell T Davies is up to the challenge. I'm still not looking forward to bloody Davros though.

500: I Wish I Could Quit You, Ray Mears

It's been a slow and lazy day here at chez Brainsplurge, so we've been watching a fair bit of telly.

I introduced Meg to The Fall Guy on Five US today. It was a bog standard bit of 80's adventure television (and why don't they make adventure shows any more?), but for some reason, it was signed. Now, I'm completely in favour of signed television, but I did wonder how many deaf people are going to be watching The Fall Guy repeats on an obscure channel on Sunday afternoon?

Meg then went to the pub, and missed Ray Mears meeting the Bush Tucker Man. Ray and BTM are off camping in the wilderness, eating roots, berries, river mussels and the like, as you'd expect. What you might not expect is what happens at about 2:30 here:



Two blokes. Camping. Wilderness. That music. The BTM had even been talking about how his friends thought he was "fishing" when he was out learning his bushcraft. Was it an accident, or is there someone mischievous in the music department at BBC Bristol?

500th post, and it's about telly. Sorry.

New Who Clues (pt 7)

No clues that I could see this week, but it was a cracking episode nonetheless, with some spooky bits, lots of funny bits, more hints at the mythology (last time it was about the Doctor's name, this time it's a wife?) and some great ideas (the library has "saved" all the people as books, I reckon, because the air piranha things won't eat books). Doctor Who is definitely in safe hands with Steven Moffatt.

In other "news", I've got a new "Green Day" (ugh) column up here, this time concerning Spider-Man's sometime love interest, the Black Cat, and Marvel's rather dubious treatment of the character of late.

New Who Clues (pt 6)

No clues that I could spot this week, apart from a brief mention of the missing bees thread (and I'm really intrigued by that one; where are they going with that?). The recurring joke about the Doctor and Donna being a couple cropped up again, but I'm not sure that's going to be significant.

I was really looking forward to the Agatha Christie episode, as her mysterious disappearance seemed like good fodder for a Who story, and chucking the Doctor into a murder mystery seemed like it might be fun too, if a little obvious. For some reason, however, it just didn't come off; the mystery was choppy and convoluted in the worst way, with the clues available to the viewer not adding up to the eventual answer. I don't know, but if you're going to present a story as a Christie-style mystery, surely it should work like one, rather than just pay lip service to the genre? They also seriously squandered the author's disappearance, relegating it to an offscreen bit of plot mechanics at the end, when it should have been the core of the story.

I did, despite myself, quite like the nod to Cluedo early on, but they spoiled even that by explaining the joke almost immediately. Bah.

New Who Clues (pt 5)

I didn't spot any of the potential ongoing threads in tonight's Who. There was a vague suggestion towards the end of that "Doctor as hero/god/mythic figure" thing we've seen a couple of times this series, but it wasn't overt and was probably just me reading too much into things. There was lots of stuff about the Time Lords and the Time War, but that's been a theme since the show came back.

It was a cracking episode though. The underground city looked much better than a bunch of corridors with some junk strewn about had any right to, and the fish-men were really well done. The story was quite similar to last year's Gridlock, with an initially clichéd setting giving way to something considerably more interesting by the end of the episode. There wasn't much to Jenny (the titular Doctor's Daughter), but Georgia Moffett did well with what she had, and brought the character to life; I sense a spin-off, but I hope she'll be back in the main series to, if only to give the Doctor something to smile about.

It's the Agatha Christie episode next week, which is the one I've been most looking forward to for some reason.

New Who Clues (pt 4)

Well, I missed the first five minutes of this episode, so I don't know how Bernard Cribbins got out of the car, but the rest of the episode was quite tense and would have worked quite nicely as a series finale, so I hope they can top it with the real finale.

Which will probably be Daleks. Again.

Fascinating final scene too, with a TARDIS which doesn't seem to want Martha to leave, and the Doctor's Severed Hand (the ship is huge, so why is he keeping it in the console room?) going mental, which usually only happens when there's a Time Lord around. Hmmm...

I didn't pick up any of the "code words" this time, although there were echoes of the first episode of the series as the Sontarans too wanted to turn Earth into a nursery planet. We also briefly saw Rose on the TARDIS monitors, but that's not exactly a clue, since it's quite obvious that she will play a large role in the series' over-arching story.

There was also a nice nod to the Gas Mask Zombies in the episode, and a confirmation that the Brigadier was still knocking about (in Peru, apparently). Neither are probably clues, but they were welcome bits of fan service nonetheless.

Healthy Sales

I've never been much of a fan of the Grand Theft Auto games. I've enjoyed the freeform elements, but the plots are rubbish, so I've often spent more time trying to jump from one skyscraper to another on a moped than I have in beating up Generic Thug 1 because Generic Thug 2 said so, and there are only so many hours one can waste doing that. However, like Halo, the mediocrity of the GTA series hasn't stopped a huge fanbase developing around the game. People are very excited about GTA IV, so I was quite surprised to see that all the shops still have massive stacks of copies, but can I find a single copy of Wii Fit in all of Brighton?

The Wii, you'll remember, is Nintendo's vanity project, which will never be successful because teh grafx r suxxor5!

I'd be interested to know what the ratio of order to sales have been on the two titles, because despite my ambivalence towards the series, GTA IV should be selling shedloads. I can only assume that the shops all massively over-ordered GTA, and perhaps under-ordered Wii Fit, thinking it wouldn't catch on.

Let Down

So why is it that iTunes can't find album artwork for OK Computer? Seeing as it tends to jockey for top position with Revolver in pretty much every Top 100 album rundown ever published, it's hardly an obscure release.

Then again, I haven't checked to see whether it's heard of Revolver...

New Who Clues (pt 3)

The Sontaran Stratagem wasn't too bad at all. In hindsight, the plot was a bit rubbish, but there were lots of other good bits to make up for it; Donna's reunion with her family was surprisingly touching, and the Sontarans themselves were quite brilliant, coming across as outer space versions of the stereotypical blustering English colonel. It's always good to see Martha return, too.

Not much on the way of "code words" this week. Aside from a nod back to the Time War, with the Sontarans miffed that they weren't invited, the most notable nugget was a reference to the "15th broken moon of the Medusa Cascade".