The Wrong Door

It's happened to me a couple of times.

Details

Hen weed? Henbane? What's the difference?

Oh, yeah. That.

Electric Nightmare

The Dream

Panorama looks at the G-Wiz and hails it as the "electric dream" of the "green revolution."

The reality

To be fair, it does point out that it doesn't meet safety standards, but that's like saying that crashing into a mountainside in an egg crate is less than optimal.

Ghostwatch

Orson Welles was unavailable for comment.

After I watched this for today's posting I had a couple of bad nights when it came to shadows.

Midnight

Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look, for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

Mugatu

I feel Mugatu's pain. Reading reviews of "Midnight", the Doctor Who episode that aired in the US on Friday, I keep having the feeling that I must have a television that receives broadcasts from an alternate dimension. It's been called the best episode of this series, Davies' finest work, a classic, a brilliant claustrophobic gem and God knows what else.

Let's just step back a bit. We are talking about the episode where the Doctor leaves the dreadful Donna on the sun deck of an interstellar resort sometime in the future while he goes on a day trip in a tour bus only to have an alien "something" rip the driver's cabin off and possess one of the passengers, which causes the other tourists to descend into snarling paranoia? That the one?

No, can't be. That was, in technical terms, a steaming load of poo. We'll pass over Davies' standard missteps, such as the strange idea that, no matter what time period, people in the future will dress in 21st century clothes; the gratuitous homosexual reference; the collection of "realistic" characters treated with patent condescension by the writer who don't fit the setting or story at all, "moments" that has bloody all to do with the plot and just bring it crashing to a halt; or this season's annoying teasers for the Big Secret later on that no one will give a toss about when All Is Revealed. The story itself has enough in it to loathe and, amazingly, I wasn't the one to cast the first stone this time (In my defence, we only had it on because my daughter was in the room and I refused to watch Spongebob Squarepants, which I now regret). As the storyline about people fearing what they don't understand and turning into savages unfolded my wife, who has acted in and directed dozens of stage adaptations of the Twilight Zone in Seattle and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, pointed at the screen and said "It's 'The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street!'"

I couldn't help but agree, except that, heavy handed as Rod Serling had been half a century ago, at least he wrote dialogue for his characters while Davies, apparently went in for (bad) improv with everyone shouting "Stop it!" for half an hour interposed with thespian depths not plumbed since The Blair Witch Project. Then the creepy bit of demonic, sorry, "alien" possession occurred (why should one be any more likely than the other?) and the possessed person (with the appalling name of "Sky") starts repeating what everyone else is saying to her (*cough* Buffy *cough*). Many a review called this a tour de force of acting, though my better half just snorted and said, "Great! Now we're getting first year drama school exercises." And she knows from whence she speaks.

This was the highlight of an episode that wasn't helped by the fact that it merely demonstrated how weak David Tennant's Doctor is compared to previous incarnations. This 10th incarnation can't even control a busload of emotional cripples while Tom Baker's could silence a gaggle of homicidal telepathic priestesses with a glower and a glib word.

It was, however, marked by the new series' trademark of the action pushing forward at a furious pace to cover the fact that the actual plot doesn't move at all, but this this at least covers the fact that a) in the end, the Doctor does absolutely nothing and b) the panicky loudmouth who wanted to shove the possessed woman out the airlock was right all along.

Still, I must give Russell T points for a good moral: "If it looks dangerous, then it probably is, so kill it quick before it gets another shot in."

I don't think that's quite what Mr. Serling had in mind.

Bonekickers

Bonekickers is a new BBC series that, judging from the previews, is the sort that as a writer I'd run down a side street to avoid. Maybe it has something to do with its self-consciously ethnic and gender balanced cast, painfully cliched "feisty" female lead and publicity stills that uses the dreaded Pose™ that says "We think we're tough and edgy with that indefinable rock-star vibe, though nobody over the age of 15 who doesn't live in their mother's cellar will agree." It looks predictably awful in that hideous trendy way that fills in for creativity these days and I'd probably put it with Torchwood, Robin Hood, and Hex in the Do Not Watch Unless Threatened By Lord Olivier With A Pair Of Dental Pliers file if it weren't for the fact that it is about a load of archaeologists.

This would have been worth a laugh because as a retired archaeologist I've very low expectations about how my field is portrayed in popular culture as a glamorous sort of licensed tomb-robbing and treasure hunting rather than the meticulous, often boring enterprise that it really is. I'm even willing to forgive that the average archaeologist is never shown in truth as a chronically skint bastard forever on the lookout for a decent job. True, according to the reviews, one character is shown as a hard drinker, but the fantasy lies in it being one character.

But I'll let that pass. Let them forever be Indiana Jones chasing after the Holy Grail or the True Cross or the Lost Bus Ticket and more power to them. There are worse ways for a profession to be portrayed (*cough* Casualty *cough*).

Even the BBC is willing to admit this by running an article that points out the... "heightened" nature of the programme. Except they leave one tiny detail out.

You'll notice that I said that it "would have been" worth a laugh. That was before I noticed the buzz on the Internet about the premiere episode that tried to be "contemporary" by having as the villains a load of crazed, white Christian fundamentalists who want to drive all other religions out of Britain and start off their reign of terror by decapitating a peace-loving Muslim.

Marvelous. One moment I'm anticipating a nice MST3K giggle and the next I'm confronted by the BBC using the licence fee to produce something out of an Al Qaeda recruiting video. Suddenly my sense of irony is lacking and I don't feel much like laughing.

"Lounge Concept"

I've been on road trips like this–though, thankfully, not in a Smart Car.

Top Gear G&T

The BBC Trust has wagged a bony finger at Top Gear's polar special for allegedly "glamourising" drink driving by showing a scene of Jeremy Clarkson sipping a gin and tonic while motoring across the arctic wastes to the North Pole. Leaving aside the bizarre notion that Mr. Clarkson could glamourise anything, the producers quite rightly put forward the defence that the North Pole is outside of British jurisdiction and therefore no offence was committed.

Now if they'd had the presence to also point out that since the programme aired there have been remarkably few incidents of drunken British young people tearing around the Pole in SUVs, its impact may be emperically regarded as minimal.

I can't, however, say the same for the scene in another episode where they showed of James May driving an Aston Martin in Italy stark naked because his car was a racer and therefore didn't have air conditioning and couldn't open the windows. It's of such things that eye bleach is made for.

Update: James May responds– and not to the nude Aston Martin bit.

DIY Mechnical Television

For £28.56you can get a kit from Middlesex University Teaching Resources that allows you to recreate a 1924 Baird mechanical television.

This would be pretty neat except a) it uses modern electronics, which takes a lot of the fun out of it and b) once TV broadcasts go digital you'll have a thirty quid paperweight.

Appointment on Mars

Best argument for unmanned exploration I've yet seen.

The Crystal Egg

Classic Sci Fi from H. G. Wells.

Videophoning

Pros and cons of the videophone.

Mostly cons.

Top Gear USA

Top Gear, the only car show in history that got me to watch a car show, is to be transmitted on NBC television in the States. Sorry, not the BBC original with Clarkson, Hammond and May, but an American version that somehow is going to catch lightning in a bottle twice running.

The creative ineptness and poor judgment of American network television never ceases to amaze me–particularly when it comes to buying successful foreign shows.

Any other broadcaster for anything other than game shows would simply have bought the broadcast rights for the original programmes and left it at that, but the major American networks operate by their own bizarre rules due to a little episode in the 1960s when Britain's ATV started making heavy inroads into the syndication market, followed by The Avengers becoming a smash hit on ABC television. The Hollywood production companies had a collective infarct when they saw the possibility of competing with British programmes that they threw down the gauntlet to the networks and told them that if they ever bought another foreign product the producers would boycott the lot of them.

Since then, not a single British series has aired on a network unless it was essentially an American production filmed in Britain and so certifiable hits like Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Spaced are relegated to cable while the networks indulge in the strange practice of buying formats, but leaving everything else behind. Sometimes this worked, as in the case of All in the Family and Three's Company, or The Office, though all were pale imitations of their parents. More often it ended up with painful abortions visited upon such classics as Fawlty Towers and Couplings that vanished in a mercifully short time.

But, fools and their money, as they say.

Rome

The wife and I saw Rome on the DVD last week and, to be honest, it wasn't quite what I expected.

Doctors' Daughter

Science has decreed that marrying first cousins in now hunky dory, but what about an actor dating his television daughter who is also the real-life daughter of another actor who played the first actor's television character previously.

My brain hurts.

The Adventures of Robin Hood

I'm in Canada at the moment, so I'm leaving you in the capable hands of Sir Robin of Locksley.

This should put that BBC crybaby to shame.

The Andromeda Strain (2008)

"An attractive cast".

When SciFi Weekly used this phrase to describe the 2008 remake of The Andromeda Strain, I could feel the cold hand of foreboding resting lightly on my shoulder. Any time a television production pairs "attractive" with "cast" it invariably means something that looks like the image on the left; a load of pretty people with solemn expressions taking the place of real actors on a pseudo hi-tech set with odd lighting.

And that pretty much sums up the production that aired on A&E last Monday and Tuesday evening. It was originally supposed to be on the Sci Fi Channel, but the parent company noticed that some of the screen personalities had somewhat recognisable names and therefore deserved to air on a channel it was less likely to rub shoulders with repeats of Boa vs Python.



I had a difficult time coming up with a way to describe this remake of the 1971 Robert Wise film until I realised that this was not, in fact a remake of the The Andromeda Strain, but Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Or Alien. Or whatever other story revolves around a malignant life form invading an unwilling host and taking it over for its own disgusting purposes. In this case, The Andromeda Strain has been infested with a strange hybrid of The X Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Outbreak, and (God help us) Resident Evil.



Since this is 2008, it's a union rule that The Andromeda Strain must be "reimagined" and screenwriter Robert Schenkkan reimagines the hell out of it. All you have to do is look at the main cast (who will, against screaming protests, be referred to as an "ensemble") to see this. Where in the book the scientists were all middle-aged white men and in the film they were middle-aged white men and a middle-aged white woman, in 2008's version the producers used an "inclusive" criteria that reduces the cast members to ethnic representatives in a fashion that is at the same time so self-congratulatory and so cynically racist and sexist that it makes the bad old step-n-fetch days of Hollywood look like the height of enlightenment. Without exception the main cast is all young and attractive with a Germano-Peruvian Indian leading a black woman, a female doctor who is (another union rule) a hot babe, and a Chinaman late of the People's Republic who inexplicably speaks with a flawless American accent. Oh, and there is a white guy, but he turns out to be gay. To balance the latter out, he's also a US Army major, which means he's belligerent, racist and constantly advocating nuclear strikes, but who suffers a risible death at the hands of an unlikely atomic reactor. Nowadays this is what passes for imaginative.

The basic plot of the original book and film about a team of scientists in an underground laboratory studying an American satellite that returns to Earth with a deadly alien germ on board is kept, but Schenkkan seems almost embarrassed by his source material. Where Robert Wise focused on a taut, claustrophobic thriller/mystery about characters racing against time trying to understand an alien menace while cooped up in an antiseptic facility so artificial that even eating and sleeping are banished, the 2008 version looks and feels like every other sci fi offering on television since somebody thought that scientists only work in oddly furnished, windowless places underlit from entirely the wrong angles and populated with a highly improbable assortment of characters–in other words, Torchwood. The plot, as I said, is still there, but where Wise made the hunt for Andromeda (the code name of the germ) into almost a procedural that used the mechanics of science as a way to build dramatic tension, the 2008 version treats the science in an offhand way–except when it gives an opportunity for pointless slow motion shots of someone walking through bubbly liquid. Where in 1971 we'd see the intricacies of testing for amino acids or preparing blood samples, 2008 has people walking in and casually mentioning that the germ has no DNA as if they were commenting on the weather.

This is surprising, given that the 2008 version runs at almost twice the length of the original, but maybe they needed more time for the pointless soap opera plots about Bill Clinton reborn several stone lighter and without the sleaze, divorces, estranged teenagers and laboratory romances that would only be realistic if the super secret laboratory in the midst of a crisis was run along the lines of a television production company office. Or maybe it had to do with the ramped up violence and horror as the disease spreads with a virulence and pure bloodymindedness that made me wonder why they didn't just go whole hog and have the übervirus bring the victims back as zombies and be done with it. Then at least we could have had Milla Jovovich blazing away with an Uzi in each fist. The horrible thing is, this would have been an improvement. As it is, we have to make do with dream sequences and double-talk about buckyballs and wormholes.

Don't even get me started on the time travel rubbish that makes the current series of Doctor Who look like Out of the Unknown.

Some of the violence is downright disturbing, though not in the way that director Mikael Salomon intended. The grisliest ends in the film are reserved for women with one committing self-immolation and a (union rule) female fighter pilot trapped screaming in the cockpit of a crashing F-16. These are depicted with such loving detail that one wonders if the director doesn't have certain... issues.

Writer Schenkkan justifies all this because "If you're going to update the story, which is our mandate, you have an obligation to reflect the world as it is."

That's updating as in ignoring the fact that the United States gave up bioweapons development forty years ago. And it reflects a world "as it is" where there are no straight white men–at least, none that aren't in the pay of the Military Industrial Complex or a coke-addicted journalist who wants to both Woodward and Bernstein who is caught in the web of a hideous conspiracy perpetrated by an American government run along the lines of the Cosa Nostra.

The latter is part of the "updating" that Schenkkan grasps so tightly to his chest. Wise's 1971 approach to the story is far too old fashioned, so Schenkkan updates it with a paranoid storyline about an evil government bent on evil conspiracies, which is far more modern.

If you define "modern" as 1967.

Dollhouse Update

Spurred by a visitor's comment, Ephemeral Isle is proud to present this exclusive sneak preview of Joss Whedon's cutting edge and absolutely original new series about programmable secret agents.

Dollhouse

Over at Wired, we get a look at Dollhouse; Joss Whedon's new series about (all together now!) bioengineered assassins in the involuntary service of a corrupt, super-secret government agency.

In a nod gritty realism, Whedon confronts today's grim fact that anyone who looks like a model, dresses in dark tones and sports a solemn expression must be up to no good.

Remote Topic

I had one of these sonic remotes once. Not the television; just the remote.
Times were hard.

For those of you with absolutely nothing better to do, we present a history of television remote controls.

Kerr Avon, Call Your Service

Sky One announced that it is reviving the cult sci-fi classic Blakes 7.

Rumour has it that in an edgy reimagining of the series, the title will include an apostrophe this time.

Personal Video: 1938

Cool, but I notice that the word "portable" is nowhere to be seen, which may explain why we're not shown where the flex goes.

Doctor Who Egg Cup & Spoon

I know they were smoking crack when they thought this up. The only question is, how much?

Famous Five Follies

Disney has demonstrated that their bolderisation of Winnie the Pooh was not a one-off and is bringing back Enid Blyton's Famous Five-- or, at least, an "updated" animated version.

Unsurprisingly, one of the girls is now a Californian "shopaholic", the other is, in accordance with the 1975 Childhood Integration Act that requires that any gathering of more than two juveniles must include a member of an officially recognised ethnic minority, Anglo-Indian, one of the boys is a computer nerd and no doubt we will subsequently learn that the blond boy is homosexual.

What character atrocity is planned for the dog remains undetermined.

According to the BBC,

Producers say the animated tales remain faithful to the themes of storytelling, mystery and adventure central to the original books but add a contemporary twist.

That's "contemporary twist" as in looking like every other PC cartoon on television.

Big Brother in a Box

I think I'll stick with satellite.

Dark Ages at Chez Szondy

Due to a billing mix up, the satellite television service at Chez Szondy has been interrupted for a couple of days, to which my wife remarked last night, "I guess we'll just have to go to bed early."

I could only agree. After all, we only had DVDs, the Internet, Youtube, itunes, online games, streaming audio and video broadcasts, and digital satellite radio to fall back on. Oh, and reading, board games, cards, playing with the dogs and child, watching the fireplace, or just talking to each other.

Yup, in our house survival tactics are how to get from the hot tub to the remote.

Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold

If you can't trust celebrity chefs, then what hope is there in this vale of tears?

Star Wars Holiday Special

Everything that The Phantom Menace could have been and more.

Will Chewbacca get home for life day? Will Harrison Ford ever live this down? Has Harvey Korman no shame? Did Mark Hamill need the money this badly? And what is Carrie Fisher breathing besides oxygen?

WARNING! Bea Arthur sings!

Space Striptease II

A commentator on yesterday's entry said that Barbarella would do, if I didn't have Lt. Ellis. And it just so happens that I do.

James Burke slips into third place.

Another Nail

Comedienne Jennifer Saunders is in talks to play Doctor Who in a one-off episode; the first time a woman has been cast in the role (not counting parodies).

According to the Sun,

TV bosses are keen to get a woman on board the Tardis for one of those shows.

Translation: We want fans of the show to know that we have no artistic integrity, we hold the character and format and their history in contempt, and that there is no depth to which we will not stoop for cheap, trendy "shock" value wherein we demonstrate nothing more profound than that we cannot differentiate between shock and flat-out bad taste. Oh, and we hate you all, too.

The Return

As a writer, I've always been impressed with short stories and films done well. Here we see Johnny Vegas and the P G Tips Monkey doing a complete narrative in under two minutes. This is especially impressive, given that one of the actors is a sock puppet.

The Brain

The Brain: Basically a wrinkled bag of skin filled with warm water, veins and thought muscles.

Thirteen to Centaurus

For your Saturday sci-fi feature we present this disturbing little J.G. Ballard tale from 1965: Thirteen to Centaurus.

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 6)

London becomes a Martian colony and it's up to Quatermass to save the Earth.

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 5)

Can Quatermass convince the government of the danger before it's too late? Find out in Part 5.

Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion.

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 4)

Are we the Martians? Find out in Part 4.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 5

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 3)

What mystery is behind the history of Hobb's lane? Find out in Part 3.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 4.