From the Orient

The new album from Portishead, Third is available as a stream from last.fm. This is a minor incredible thing as it won’t be released until the 28th April.

I have to admit not being much of a Portishead fan at the time, but I’m rather liking this new album so far (first listen of half an album). More interesting is that last.fm are now able to get new albums like this and have the license to stream them. Certainly better for me than having to put up with Radio 1 or local stations.

n.b. if anything thinks this is a test of the wordpress 2.5 software wouldn’t be too far from the mark

What did Lawrence Miles do on the 11th June?

Checking my stats I noticed that I go a rather large spike of hits for “lawrence miles blog” on this page which oddly is the no 1 google result for “lawrence miles blog”.

Let’s get it off the No 1 spot. Lawrence Miles’s blog is The Beasthouse and it is a very interesting read (whilst it is up and he takes it down again). Every week he posts a review of the current Doctor Who episode (something I promised to do and totally failed at) and shortly after it disappears again. Blink and you’ll miss it.

There is an FAQ by Arfie Mansfield for it on Gallifrey One and I’ll quote just a short part of it.

1. Who is Lawrence Miles?
Lawrence Miles (aka ‘Mad Larry’) is the author of a number of controversial Doctor Who novels, including the acclaimed Alien Bodies, the two-volume epic Interference and the very highly-regarded Dead Romance. He is also the co-author of the first five volumes of the About Time series of books on Doctor Who. His 8th Doctor novels defined much of the underlying story of the series introducing, amongst other things, a rather familiar-looking time war, and Faction Paradox, later to spin off into their own series of audios, novels and comics.

2. Why do people care about his reviews?
Miles’s reviews are often in-depth, entertaining and thought-provoking. Even when they aren’t, they’re almost invariably argument-provoking, and they tend to lead to a great deal of interesting [often tangential] discussion.
Also, since he was one of the foremost Doctor Who authors while the series was off the air, his views are of interest to many of those who read the novels in that period.

I love Lawrence Miles’s books, especially Alien Bodies which was one of the first I read, everything was slightly downhill from there (if only I’d read War of the Daleks first). He does extremely interesting reviews of the current series which I don’t really agree with. If you take each point in turn, I’d agree with it, but I feel that his reviews are like examining each part of the mosaic and not looking at the whole picture to see if you like it or not. Of course, half the time, he never actually reviews the episode really.

Take for example, his review of Blink (no link as it has disappeared)

Exactly how does the Doctor “trick” the angels into looking at each other, when he has no reason to suppose that they’ll form a neat ring around the TARDIS? And when he might reasonably assume that they’re not stupid enough to arrange themselves around a wooden box which they know to be capable of dematerialising?

I wonder if I’m being unfair here. I don’t really think Lawrence is the sort of obsessive fan boy and he normally doesn’t pick holes like that. However it highlights something I want to point out for my next quote.

Unfortunately, “Blink” is only half a Doctor Who story, and the rest is almost as boring for regular viewers as it must be for any children watching.

Sorry, but my children thought Blink was the best episode ever (although also the scariest). There were stories of games being played at lunchtimes (move over Daleks and Cybermen!) and nearly a week later it is still being talked about by the neighbour (aged 6) that came round to watch it.

So what did he do on 11th June?

Series three starts with a bang as we get a new Rose in the shape of Martha Jones, excellently played by Freema Agyeman. The pace and dynamism of the first series was back and it felt far more of a new start than last season’s opener, New Earth. Odd, considering we got a new Doctor last time.

Martha looks like she will be a very good Companion. Different from Rose, but the same in a regenerated sort of way. She impressed both the Doctor and viewers with her attitude and character under pressure.

Child’s View

My four year old thought it was excellent too, liking the Judoon and the fast pace of the episode. It scored bonus points for having a New Rose and an alien that sucks people to death with a straw.

It scored points with Dad for having an alien very much like the Sontarans and the Doctor having to solve something without his Sonic Screwdriver (even though he simply made a new one in about 30 seconds).

This Years Bad Wolf

Clearly the theme is going to be Time Lords. In the first series [1] they were very careful not to mention the Doctor’s race, only that they’d all died. Now the Doctor is telling someone he’s only just met that he is a Time Lord. Plus I’ve seen one of the later episode titles in the Radio Times.

[1] Hang on, when did I stop calling it Series 27?

1: Indian in the mountain
2: Nazi building
3: Hidden Donut store
4: Cat in a bottle
5: Google in a bathtub
6: Big Fuck
7: Crop circle
8: Dutch sunbather
9: Weird black line and a fire on ice
10: Giant Firefox symbol

Don’t do it. Installing RPM’s appears to be like having your teeth pulled out by your dentist. Only the dentist will stop half way through the painful experience.

He will say “Sorry, in order to pull out the rest of this tooth I need to cut off one of your fingers. But you have to guess which one”

You pick a finger. He chops it off. After attempting to pull the tooth out again, he will stop and say “Sorry, in order to pull out the rest of this tooth I need to cut off one of your fingers. But you have to guess which one”.

Repeat until you have to type out your rant with your blooded stubs ruining the keyboard.

Thank god for Ubuntu and it’s Life on Mars coloured package manager.

Joss Whedon’s western in space, Serenity has been voted top sci-fi movie in an SFX polls, says the BBC :-

“The TV show may have been cancelled, yet the Serenity universe clearly struck a chord with fans, thanks to its likeable characters, witty dialogue and amazing special effects.”

Is it really that good? The DVD sits on the shelf at home and quietly whispers at me “watch me, watch me” every day. So far I have resisted. Ok, I haven’t had time. The Star Wars box sets get watched quite often by myself and my son. Serenity is better that the latter 3 Star Wars films, but the originals have turned into timeless classics that will not be beaten.

The excellent new episode of Doctor Who has inspired me to start up regular Who episode postings here (like I used to). Expect some more “what my son thought of Doctor Who this week” to appear.