alexsarll | No, I Still Don't Know Where Sodding 'Maddy' Is.

Free with today's Sunday Times - a ten track punk compilation CD. Who's spinning faster in their graves, the team from the 1976 Sunday Times or the 1976 punks?

Last night's Doctor Who managed the remarkable feat of making me nostalgic for 'Evolution of the Daleks'. What utter, utter rubbish.
- A spaceship seemingly designed by the same shipwrights as in Galaxy Quest, to maximise dramatic peril without any regard to plausibility. Oh, and it's also the universe's one piece of sonic screwdriver-resistant tech, because otherwise we'd have no plot - so instead the doors are operated by a pub quiz machine. And one requiring answers from the early 21st century, at that. And when Martha needs to check the answers to this inexplicable system, she doesn't ring a mate, or her sis - no, she rings her mum, the one person guaranteed to give her grief.
- Riffing off old episodes? Fair enough if you're talking old series, but don't rip off one from last year, especially not when that was a classic and all you're going to do is detract.
- Cyclops from the X-Men minus his personality does not make a good antagonist.
- If you're going to do real-time, do it properly, and if you're calling the episode '42' at least make some kind of effort at a 24 pastiche rather than just leaving it hanging.
- The big reveal was slightly less atrocious than what had come before, but "you should have run tests"? Seriously, Doctor, what kind of lifescan would pick up on something like a sentient star? And as regards the old sentient-star-doesn't-like-being-used-for-fuel bit - I wasn't expecting Star Maker but even Venus on the Half-Shell did it better, and that was the fairly talentless Philip Jose Farmer doing an extended and inexplicable Kurt Vonnegut in-joke.
Inexcusably bad.

pippaalice has cats. Cats who peer. The manner of the peering suggests that they are either plotting, silently judging humanity, or attempting to physically alter the world with their mighty feline brains. They alarm me.

For the particular attention of

augstone - http://www.funnyordie.com, a site with loads of toot but also exclusive online Will Ferrell goodness.