meddow

Haven't been up to much lately. Have been watching a lot of TV though:

Flash Forward - I've seen the first two episodes of this show and I am completely hooked. The first episode was sort of the half way point between Lost and the first season of Heroes – Lost in its visual style and feel, but Heroes in it's theme of 'can you change the future?' - but in the second episode it comes onto its own. The second episode opening with the kids I felt was absolutely fantastic. Plus the writers seems to subscribe to the Steven Moffat school of making everyday things as creepy as hell to scare the audience.

Plus, on top of the awesome regular cast, which includes Joseph Fiennes, Jack Davenport and John Cho (Shakespeare! Norrington! Sulu!), Alex Kingston was in the pilot, Shohreh Aghdashloo's got a guest role and I believe Gina Torres is going to be in the next episode. Oh, and I actually give a damn about the love triangle. That so rarely happens. But then, the husband is Joseph Fiennes and the other man is Jack Davenport and there's a cool fate vs. free will aspect to it, so it's one of the hottest and most interesting love triangles that I've come across.

Only major problem that needs to be fixed is the clunky exposition dialog. It's not a Heroes level of bad, but it's still bad enough to let the show down.

Glee - Still ridiculously in love with the show, although I'm finding the pacing and the amount of things happening in an episode a bit weird. My favourite bits of late were the football team dancing to 'Single Ladies' and the sing-off between Lea Michele and Kristen Chenoweth to 'Maybe This Time'. And I ship Kurt/Finn.

House - The opening was so very good it nearly made up for the disappointment I felt with the season five finale. Nearly. It depends where the Huddy story goes (hopefully away to die). The next one was back to the same old, and was a bit of a miss. Although I've moved from hating Foreman/Thirteen to just finding the relationship boring, which I suppose is a positive step.

SJA - In case you haven't seen them: pictures have emerged of David Tennant's guest stint, and they are very squee worthy. Although, I do have concerns about the episode based on it's title.

Being that my travel plans have been postponed, for the first time in what feels like forever, I've actually had free time.

In recent television, the SJA finale was wonderful. The Brigadier was underutilised I thought, I was expecting something a little more School Reunion-ish. But Mrs. Wormwood was the magic. Heroes managed to shock me and come out with an episode which I would actually describe as 'good'. Meanwhile the latest Sanctuary episode was so god-awful I cringed all the way through. At least it was laughably awful rather than offensively awful. Hopefully, Sanctuary's sudden drop in quality is an anomaly and Heroes's sudden rise is not.

I was given by my wonderful flatmates a copy of The Dark Knight for Christmas and I've been checking out the special features today, of which it's pretty light on. However, I really kind of love those little Gotham Tonight fake news segments. I'm a big fan of fake non-fiction. Instead of watching that universe, it takes you inside it. I always thought back when The West Wing was my major fandom, how wonderful it would be to pick up a news magazine and see Bartlet on the front.

Also watched the 200th episode of Stargate SG-1 again (aptly named 200), which is quite possible one of the greatest episodes of television ever since it's pretty much a fourth wall bending prodigy of itself (and nothing escapes the lampooning), and also Star Trek, Farscape, Thunderbirds, The Wizard of Oz, Ewoks, the recent plethora of zombie movies, 'younger and sexier' television, shipper pandering and batshit paternity revelations. Best bit in my opinion is not one of the skits, but simply the bit where Teal'c calmly says "I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode."

And finally, watched a wonderful little docudrama, The Worst Journey in the World, about Aspley Cherry-Gerrard written by and staring Mark Gatiss. Cherry-Gerrard's another Antarctic explorer, blamed by some at the time for failing to save Scott, Bowers and Wilson. He was eleven miles from where they died, but didn't press on, instead obeying Scott's order not to risk the dogs. Anyway, the winder before the ill-fated pole expedition he went the journey with Bowers and Wilson to retrieve an Emperor Penguin egg. It was horrific, but they all survived, Bowers and Wilson to die later and Gerrard to be psychologically scared for life. More interestingly is that Cherry-Gerrard is a bit more meta about his experience than most if not all other polar explorers, posing the question of whether the suffering was worth anything. I really need to get a hold of and read his book.

Oh, SJA. Making me all misty eyed this week.

( Mark of the Berserker Parts One and Two (Mostly Part Two) )

The Sarah Jane Adventures...

( There is a time and place for an interview and being chased by a clown from outer-space is not it )

( Happy activation day! )

It's time for the Earth-bound (for the most part) adventures of Girl!Doctor

( Kaagh who has been watching too many Conan DVDs )

It's been posted around quite a bit, but if you happen to have missed it: The Sarah Jane Adventures Season Two trailer featuring loads of Clyde (hooray for their being more of Clyde! He's my favourite of the trio and he was sadly given very little attention last season).

I feel I haven't said it in a good six months, so I shall say it again: I freaking love this show. If it were a person I'd hug it and ruffle its hair and buy it chocolate and never ever let it go because it's just so very earnest and hopeful and cute.

You've got the three teens, reminiscent of the Harry Potter trio but without horrifically wanky ship wars and Emma Watson bringing them down. You've got Maria, the mini!Sarah, Luke who's so adorakable he could be the Tenth Doctor's son (those two need to meet – that moment in JE was not enough) and Clyde, who's sits at the half way point between Mickey and Captain Jack with maybe a smidgen of Donna.

And then there's Sarah. It could have been so easy for them to have Sarah in the Obi Wan role of dispensing wise advice to her protégés, but instead she's the main character and a considerable amount of the stories have her struggling with something; whether it's her sudden motherhood, getting older, or, you know, fighting aliens and saving the planet. In fact, one of the main themes seems to be that adults are just as confused and unsure about life as teenagers, which is really quite refreshing. And it's just so good seeing an Old School companion get the new series treatment of having her life pre-Doctor fleshed out and getting character development. One of the best bits of JE was Sarah's comment about the Doctor having such a huge family – it also perfectly summed up the message of the first series of SJA.

( Spoilers )

I finally caught Fragments because I wanted to see the origins of the UNIT controversy for myself and beyond ranting at the Torchwood writers and RTD I think the simple answer is that it was not UNIT.

Yes, it may have been UNIT at the time, but it was five years ago and isn’t the UNIT now because
1. Martha would not work for an organisation that, and
2. Sarah would not be loosely affiliated with an organisation like that, and
3. I don’t think they would be able to pull the wool over both Sarah and Martha’s eyes.

Besides, it really doesn’t sit well with the General in TCI that began a rant about the importance of Articles of War before being killed, or the occasional times they’ve been referenced in SJA since if they are a big bad organisation worse than Torchwood, then would they really be bothered bailing Sarah out when she’s arrested?

So the obvious conclusion is that either for a brief period around 2003 rebel fraction of UNIT broke of from the original and locked Tosh up, or UNIT came under new management and lost their way a bit, and this ended when an alliance of the old 70s crowd – The Brig, Liz, Jo, Sarah, Benton, Yates et al – found out about it, exposed them and brought them down.

That is my fanon and I’m sticking to it until The Sontaran Stratagem comes along at least.

It is a very good day to be a Sarah Jane fangirl.

( Spoilers )

ETA: It has come to my attention that 24 episodes = six months. Six months of SJA! XD

Due to being rather busy I haven’t made any posts lately on the Sarah Jane Adventures and how utterly wonderful it is, because it just is. Of the two Who spin-offs I would recommend it over Torchwood to everyone, and never ever think that just because it’s a kids show it doesn’t have a maturity at the heart of it. So far it’s tackled motherhood, divorce, war (with specific mention of Iraq), aging, consumerism, Alzheimer’s, the UNIT dating controversy and this week it deals with death, specifically the accidental death of a teenager, and it does this without ever feeling like an after school special. And don’t think that it’s small scale, so far the planet has been saved no less than four times and there has been time travel and space travel. Not to mention, it never fails to give you warm fuzzy feelings at the end of a the second part and watching a 59 year old woman kick butt from week to week is good for the soul.

What I’m basically saying is, if you like Doctor Who, and you can watch the Sarah Jane Adventures, and for some reason you are not, well you should be.

Okay, that’s my PSA done for the day. Now onto the main event:

( Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (parts one and two) )

I’ve been keeping up what’s been happening on Heroes lately, because I do love that show, in particularly Mr. Bennet. My love of that character knows no bounds. The Heroes writers better not kill off my favourite character, or I’ll…I’ll…whinge about it (and quite possibly get bored with the show and stop watching). I’m not having a very good favourite character year, they all tend to be killed off, and not in particularly brilliant manners either (what is worse – death by stick or death by randomly inserted sentence?). On the other hand, placing HRG in jeopardy is a bloody good way to keep me tuning in every week, and they would have to be idiots to kill him off and I think the writers realise that. After all, there is one general rule to Heroes and that is the further a character is removed from the Bennets, the more boring that character is (there are notable exceptions to this rule, but it holds for the most part). So killing off Mr. Bennet, resident bad ass and father of the year, would be a bad move.

Meanwhile, SJA is having something of a negative effect on me. It’s actually making me consider watching Casino Royale. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before, but I hate James Bond movies. This is completely at odds with my entire family and my best friend who happen to all love Bond films, which is probably why I’ve stuck my heels in and have been so adamant that I will not watch them for so long. Basically, when I was about twelve I decided I despised the treatment of women in the films and haven’t really watched one since. But anyway, I found out Joseph Millson, a.k.a Maria’s lovely too-hot-to-have-a-teenage-daughter father is in it. And now I want to watch. Damn it.

Though my desire to watch Casino Royale is pretty much nothing to the fact that having seen the trailer and something about it on TV, I really really want to see Atonement. This is also somewhat artic_fox's fault, since she put it on my radar in the first place. Something to look forward too when I emerge fully of my current assessment hell, I suppose.