Dalekboy

The original series of Twilight Zone. It holds up remarkably well, and it takes advantage of its anthology series format to tell a range of stories in a variety of styles.

Rod Serling wrote the vast majority of the tales, along with Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson. Some were original, some were based on short stories written by others, and the vast majority are, at the very least, good.

In fact, the biggest issue that Twilight Zone has is that it's entered our collective consciousness - so many of the stories we know the ending of before we've even seen them - and even the DVD intro menu has spoilers. But it's to the show's credit that even knowing the ending of some stories fails to dull the punch. On top of that, there are still so many good and great stories that we've not had spoiled, that it can still regularly surprise, even when you're looking for the twist.

Some of you will have had this on your 'one day I'll watch such-and-such' list. Well the show's been around for fifty years, those other newer shows can wait a while, make a start.

For my non-spoilery review of the first season, go here.

I'm going to mention two, and I make no apologies for this.

Pretty easy for me, this one. Time and the Rani is a stand-out stinker from the original series of Doctor Who. Bad in so many ways, from dreadful writing, poor acting, lacklustre direction... there is little this story does well. Pip and Jane Baker are writers who have only written one story I liked, Mark of the Rani, and even that was pretty ropey in places.

From the new series of DW, End of Time stands out. So poorly executed by people who have shown they are capable of so much better that it's insulting to its audience. I liked David Tennant, but this story basically highlights every wrong decision they made with his character through the series and hyper-sensitises you to them, so when you see those minor elements appear while rewatching earlier stories, they piss you off where previously you weren't fussed.

The Bakers were always ordinary writers, but RTD is one of the best of his generation, and as such I hold him to a higher standard. EoT was poo.

Ok, going to try to catch up a bit now I'm back from sleeping in forests.

So far it's been interesting how closely angriest and I match. When I was thinking about this topic, my first thought was 'something like The Footy Show.' Then I decided that I'd go for something I hated that I had actually watched more than a bit of.

There's V the Series from the 80's, which is a text book example of how not to make SF TV. Seriously, think of any mistake you've seen appear regularly in TV and SFTV, and V made them all.

Dollhouse I found to be misogynistic and painful to watch. It had it's good moments, but it really felt like Whedon's problem was that his whole starting premise was flawed and hard to build into a decent show.

But in the end it really is a toss-up between Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise, because what I really, really hate in most shows is watching something that's crap because of lacklustre writing and missed opportunities - things where the show could easily have been good, because it wasn't a problem of budget and the like hurting it - ST:V & Ent have both in abundance. While they do have their occasional good episode (or in the case of Enterprise one good season, the fourth) overall both are weighed down by show-runners who were lazy, uncreative, and uninventive in the extreme.

In the end I feel I have to go for Star Trek: Voyager, since Enterprise did at least manage one good season.

ST:V also had the initial theoretical advantage over Enterprise in that ST:V had no history it needed to try and conform to. On top of that, you have a concept to die for - two crews with opposing viewpoints are flung to the far reaches of the galaxy and have to work together on board a single ship with limited resources as they make their way home through unknown space. With the effects technology of the day and such a fabulous premise just brimming with potential drama, Voyager literally had more scope to tell fabulous, stunning, and human stories than any Star Trek series ever created, including the original.

By the end of the pilot, both crews have agreed to work together under Federation guidelines, and they do so with barely a hiccup from that point on. The next two episodes are built around temporal anomalies, which many SF series resort to when they have no other ideas. Through the series, episode after episode hits the reset button so that by the last episode, the titular ship hasn't changed a jot, even with everything it's been through.

It ran seven years, continuing to do lame, half-baked, stories that usually failed to take advantage of a stunning premise. Being part of the Star Trek franchise, it had the chance and backing to do really brave confronting stories, and instead usually did run of the mill dreck.

And I can't help but wonder how many other well-written and thought out shows could have been made with the resources allotted to Voyager.

For a slightly more detailed rant, with extra swearing, look here.

Only seen a few new shows this year, Archer, K9 Adventures, Happy Town, and far and away the best has been Stargate: Universe.

Let me say, to begin it started slow. It wasn't bad, and it was trying to be realistic, but it didn't quite grab me. It's taken time to grow on me, in fact it was only around episodes 14-15 that I started to really like it, prior to that I merely thought it was good. And now, with episode 20, I'm actively hanging out for more.

I've only every seen bits of the original Stargate series, which seemed fun, and I saw all of Stargate: Atlantis which was dumb but enjoyable enough to keep me going, but Stargate: Universe, even when I wasn't enjoying it as much as I am now, was good.

More importantly, it's Star Trek: Voyager done right. In SGU there are genuine issues with food and water, there are problems with the ship, there's real conflict, disagreements, bad decisions, and all these things have consequences. And on top of that, you have an ongoing power struggle between the military and the civilian sections of the crew. None of these people want to be here, and they aren't happy about it or having a good time.

All up, good stuff.

I pinched this from angriest who pinched it from a bunch of others. Figured it might be a way to get some posts out of me. Of course, I'm vanishing for a couple of days over the weekend, so that'll mess things up a bit, but we'll see how I go.

There were so many choices I could have gone for, so many good or just unusual or interesting shows I could have picked. Normally I would have gone for Alien Nation because it was a truly great TV series. But since Grant has already snaffled that one, and everything he says is spot on, I figured I'd go for -


The Middleman
I think what I liked most about The Middleman was that it was a joyous show. Not cynical, or mean spirited, but fun and full of whimsy. Its humour came from fabulous characters and weird situations, not embarrassing circumstances or people being horrible to one another (unless you count Ida, an android locked in 'domineering schoolmarm' mode, who was delightfully horrible to everyone).

The main characters of the Middleman, Wendy, and Ida were well drawn and realised, and the supporting cast got their moments pretty much every episode as well. Plus it played against the stereotypical laziness of TV writing without ever cracking a sweat, easily passing the Bechdel test, as well as Deggan's rule.

It played knowingly with the tropes of villains and heroes from comics, TV, and film, but with the deft touch of someone who loves the genre and isn't trying to show how smart they are, but how enjoyable the genre is. Some episodes were 'themed' so that subtle references to a specific show or book were scattered throughout - one episode grabs its names from Dune, another from Back to the Future - the real wit of this was that they seldom went for the obvious references.

Was it a perfect show? No, but it certainly wasn't bad and it had a lot more heart than most TV. Most of all, one came away from The Middleman feeling happier, and not many shows can do that.

( Embedded videos... )

A definite improvement, darker and more interesting, drawing on concepts used in the original series while adding one that would not have been out of place in that show.

5/10 as a Prisoner remake
6/10 as a TV show

( Major spoilers below the cut... )

Had chills and been substandard the last two days. Blah!

But I needed to watch through a few things before the The Best TV Shows That Never Were panel I'm on at C5, and being sick suddenly means I'm better able to make the time to do so. Just rewatched the pilot of the 2000 series The Invisible Man (also known as I-Man in some countries), and pretty much instantly remembered why I enjoyed the show. ( Read more... )

Just some extra things I forgot to mention...

* While seated and holding Lex in the kitchen the other week, he head-butted me, driving my head back into the wall. *Whack* *Thud*
"Nice one, Lex," I said, prompting him to do it twice more in rapid succession. *Whack* *Thud* *Whackthud!*

* Lex is now shit scared of my dalek.

* hehehehehe...

* Lex only started to properly crawl a week or so back. Within a couple of days of nailing crawling, he started to pull himself up to standing using things like the couch. A day after that, he started trying to actually climb up onto things like the couch. Too fast!

* Tomorrow night at 7:30 on SBS is the Botswana episode of Top Gear. If you've never seen the show, or have seen an episode but didn't like it, try this one. This is the one that turned Sharon into a fan. I've been married to her for over a decade, and I have literally never seen her laugh so hard for so long. She was in real pain by the end.
Basically, if this episode doesn't get you in, Top Gear will never be a show you'd enjoy.

* She's sitting beside me and giggling now, just thinking about it.

* I have decided that at some point, within the next few years, I will have to get a theremin.

* Continuum 5 seems to be shaping up well. We're going, who else is?

* Lex also gets to listen to Uncle Terry on PaleoCinema fairly regularly.

( * Four Lex pictures below the cut... )

I got an infringement notice for downloading Stargate: Atlantis! MGM doesn't want people downloading their stuff, which when Channel 7 doesn't want to show it, is basically the equivalent of MGM not wanting people to watch their stuff.

Here is my reply to them ( Read more... )