It's been a while...

Whoa, there went the summer. We got most of the police scenes shot, but unfortunately, we're not happy with about half of them. When you see the finished movie, you'll realize that that's about 1/3rd of the movie, and we've got to re-shoot half that... so really the things' about 1/6th of the way done. I eagerly anticipate a Christmas '14 release!

What else happened this summer? I got a new guitar, which will feature in the movie. And I spent a lot of time putting blisters on my fingers and wondering what that ringing in my ears was. I learned a lot of Iron Maiden songs as well: The Trooper, Fear of the Dark, Killers, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wasted Years, Powerslave, Ancient Mariner... to my eternal surprise, the first album that I know half the songs from is not an AC/DC or Metallica album, but is in fact the Number of the Beast!

There wasn't a great deal of Doctor Who to be watched. I did see a couple more classic serials - The War Machines and The Power of Kroll. And I got Series 4 (30) on DVD... despite the production team's boasts, it did lag horribly in the middle, especially the Agatha Christie episode, my reaction to which alternated between "zzz" and "wtf" for most of the episode's running time. The Doctor's visited H.G. Wells (way back in a forgettable Sixth Doctor serial called Timelash), Charles "Paid-by-the-word" Dickens, Shakespeare, and Agatha Christie (and I don't hold very high opinions of any of those episodes, except maybe the Shakespeare one). High time he visited H.P. Lovecraft, in my opinion.

But here's the thing: they already did a story where the Doctor went to a Roaring 20s-esque setting, way back in the old series, in a serial called Black Orchid, and that wasn't very good either.

Now, my favorite part of Season 30 comes in the penultimate episode, when the Doctor starts going all nostalgic on Davros, in the same way he went nostalgic on the Master at the end of the previous season. Then he subverts it. Brilliantly: "After everything we've been through, I have only one thing to say to you... bye!"

As for the older serials I watched, The War Machines feels like a precursor to The Invasion, though I must admit that it is very, very good for the last intact Hartnell adventure. The Power of Kroll starts off very promising with the hovercraft stuff, but making a majority of the characters half-naked and covered in green paint was probably not the series' best move ever. Also, after the first episode the plot doesn't feel like it's going anywhere particularly fast, and while the giant octopus moster looks halfway decent by 1978 standards, the modelwork is godawful.

Everything said below is true.

"Many fans of Metallica insist that they released nothing after that bus crash. Others say that their recording career ended immediately before the Black Album, or immediately after it. The tiny fraction of fans left insist that they went on to make three more albums after this, but when faced with a copy of St. Anger, go into violent conniptions."
-tvtropes.org

In actual fact, of course, their studio burnt down during the recording of the Black Album, along with all the notes they'd taken about which songs to leave off. A studio exec somewhere left the last three songs on the album despite the fact that they were clearly slated for deletion. Lost in the fire was a glorious three-minute solo in 6/8 time that would have appeared on "Nothing Else Matters." In recognition of what they lost, Metallica never entered the studio again, except briefly in 2006-07 to record no more than three songs.

And just in case it's not obviously clear, nothing said above is true.

StudyFail

Collegehumor.com got this first, but hey, here it is:

Study = no fail
No study = fail

Study + No Study = Fail + No Fail
(No + 1) Study = (No + 1) Fail

Study = Fail

Okay, let's take a look at the math behind that. I'll assume the following values.
Study = 1
No = -1
Fail = -1

Ergo
1 = -1 * -1
-1 * 1 = -1

So far so good.

1 + (-1*1) = -1 + (-1*-1)
(-1+1)*1=(-1+1)*-1
1=-1

Turns out the wiseguy just did the old "divide by zero" trick made famous by the following riddle:
x=y
therefore 2x=2y
x-y=2x-2y (because they're both zero)
1(x-y)=2(x-y)
1=2

And the Doctors

Okay, let's do this. This is really going to hurt at the end, trying to figure out who gets stuck in last place.

1. Tom Baker (4). Um, duh.

2. Patrick Troughton (2). Simply magical.

(these two are a few light-years ahead of all the others)

3. David Tennant (10). He's clearly doing throwbacks to Peter Davison, but Tom's madcap lunacy shines through on more than one occasion.

4. Jon Pertwee (3). James Bond - Lothario + in space = Third Doctor. (Snappy dresser, too.)

5. Sylvester McCoy (7). He got off to a rocky start, and his script quality was always sketchy at best (JNT had a thing about not letting old hands write for the show, which was stupid^infinity).
6. Tie. Paul McGann (8). The Shada remake gives us an example of what could have been, had we only had a decent script. He was witty and charming and reminded me of Pertwee (who died just before the telemovie aired) in every way that matters. Christopher Eccleston (9). Manic and loony, just as the Doctor should be. They both come in so low because neither had a great deal of time in the part; given a couple more years, either one could be up in 3rd or 4th place.

8. Peter Davison (5). Coming in for only three short years in between the two most bombastic Doctors would make anybody seem bland. To his credit, Peter underplayed the part, which was exactly what the role needed after 7 years of Tom Baker. Unfortunately, he came off as a weakling. He'd rate higher if he could have, on occasion, saved some people. That, and he bears the unfortunate distinction of being the first Doctor to be stuck in a bad costume. A cricket theme would have been all right, but the end result was too much.

...Okay. I'm not really in a last-place mood, and William Hartnell (1) and Colin Baker (6) both have redeeming qualities. Hartnell comes in so low because he wasn't much more than a typical absent-minded scientist (and yes, there were real-life reasons, tragically, for his absent-mindedness) and Colin's Doctor, as I've said before, was an awesome character but was just all wrong for The Doctor. Ergo, cop-out and tie for 9th place.

...and the greatest Sci-fi show of all time is...

Wait, you really had to ask? http://www.wizarduniverse.com/25greatestscfishowsever6.html

A different sort of Who Review

Yeah, whatever I said however many weeks back when I said whatever it was... forget it. Not happening, primarily because the way my life's going at the moment I can't be bothered to watch the 75 minutes of boring that are An Unearthly Child episodes 2-4. Though there is some skull-crushery in Ep 4. Children's program my @$$.

Speaking of deaths, how about Tom Baker's plunge at the end of Logopolis? Love the absurdly fake miniature effects, the pointless grab-the-support-thingy, the fact that the Master gets away while the Doctor dies... Everybody talks about The Caves of Androzani being the greatest exit story, but really that thing's absurdly nihilistic. Everybody dies, Rose... just this once, everybody dies! Tom went out saving the entire freaking Universe, and all Peter managed to save was one girl with a fake American accent. (Granted, she was the only person in that serial worth saving, except the real Maj. Salateen, but hey, this being a Robert Holmes script and him being a somewhat bitter survivor, he was a walking dead man from the word go.) Not only that, but take a look at the villains the Doctor has to ally with. 4 has to work with the Master, the most evil evil evil evil ad nauseam person in the entire Universe (bar possibly Davros). 5 has to work with the Phantom of the Opera's cousin.

(That's another thing. Holmes already did the Phantom bit in Talons of Weng-Chiang, and oh he did it well there. Sharaz Jek was a somewhat disappointing re-do of Magnus Greel. Hell, Greel's costume beat Jek's gimp suit.)

The thing that's really cool about Logopolis is the fact that the Doctor knows, after a discussion in the second episode, that he's going to die. Gee, wait, in Caves, the Doctor also finds out that he's dying in the second episode.

I like the political complexities of Androzani, but in a post-9/11 world they leave a bit of a sour taste - the government's corrupt, the President's a tool, the army is apparently run by a corporation of some sort (can't really remember Morgus's deal at the moment), and the terrorist is just out for some well-deserved revenge. As I said, sour taste. At least there wasn't an economic crisis. Oh, wait, there was a hint of that too when they were talking about the Spectrox shortages. (I like how everybody was a Spectrox junkie. Not sure what the subtext there was, but I liked it.) Oh well, at least there was no Swine Flu. (Insert jokes about the Doctor being retarded enough to not immediately administer the antidote to himself when pigs fly here.)

See, when the Master tilts that platform, 4 knows it's the end. He's gonna yank that cable out, and then he's gonna fall. (Gee, cult television show, high platform, very bizarre and poorly-explained setup/solution that requires the main character to go splat in order to save the Universe... history sure doesn't repeat itself does it?)

The 5th Doctor's last word is "...Adric?"
The 4th Doctor's last words are "It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for."

Which is better? Seriously?

-James

Oh, and in case you had to ask, yes, that other show did it a hell of a lot better... but it was still poorly set up.

The Decline of the Music Industry (in deaths)

Here's the lowdown:

No Great Music was recorded after John Bonham (of Led Zeppelin) died. No Very Good Music was recorded after Cliff Burton (of Metallica) died (and certainly not by Metallica, "One" notwithstanding), and no Good Music was recorded after Stevie Ray Vaughan died.

This means:
Back in Black - Great. Just barely. In fact, the last Truly Great album, ever.
The Number of the Beast - Very Good. Very, very very very very very good. But Back in Black has four or five (depending on whether you count "Rock & Roll Ain't Noise Pollution") concert staples, and The Number of the Beast only has three.
Master of Puppets - Very Good. Just as on their previous release, Ride the Lightning, it seems as though the weak track comes in at #6 and leaves a sour taste in your mouth before the thrashfest/instrumental conclusion.
Blow Up Your Video - Good. It's not Back in Black, but nothing on it makes me gag. The same cannot be said for anything Iron Maiden would churn out with a Roman numeral in the title, and certainly cannot be said for Metallica's 90s decadebacle.*

*I am hereby updating the dictionary to include the word "decadebacle," which means literally ten years of Epic Fail. It is pronounced DE-KA-de-BA-kel.

The true Who

Oh dear. This is funny, but perhaps only if you know enough about the show to be able to discern the half-truths from the flat-out lies. Anywho, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJPhhaXiUTE

Oh, the criminally insane, what fun we have at your expense.

Planet of the Dead

Courtesy of Youtube, I finally have a chance to watch the Doctor Who Easter special. My thoughts thus far:

1) it's a damn shame Tennant's leaving

2) the 2008/09 version of the theme is rediculous.

3) "aw, the little dish is going around" is funny, but does not beat "it goes ding when there's stuff."

4) Thanks to Star Trek, turbulance acting never convinces me.

5) The plot evidently concerns a bus in the middle of a desert. Feels like a budget cutback to me.

6) Now they're doing the "what's your real name" routine. At least without the TARDIS in sight, there won't be any "it's bigger on the inside."

7) Doctor following orders is funny.

8) "The smell inside this thing is reaching quite atrocious levels." So stop sweating. Funny.

9) Ooookay, the UIT hero-worship is kinda silly.

10) Look, a crashed spaceship. Look, the interior set appears to be a single corridor.

Okay, that's the first half. Next half coming after lunch.

-James

Random stream of consciousness randomness

Have no fear, Sarah Jane. Where there's life, there's hope. And change. Loose change for the masses held in churches where the steeple lurches. Was Lurch a guy in the Aadams family? Probably. The probability that you'll die within 24 hours increases minutely each day. I'd like to know the value of that increase. Some increases, like the one I just mentioned and also taxes, are bad. Others are good. A naughty example comes to mind. "More naughty bits," ah, Monty Python. You crazy crazy lot. Douglas Adams collaborated with a few Pythons. He also, apparently, played rhythm guitar at a Pink Floyd concert once. Right before he was kicked out, Syd Barret came up with this song called "have you got it yet?" He'd play it to the rest of the band over and over, but they'd never get it. Alternatively, that is, from a sane perspective (a different point of view, if you will), he started playing something else as soon as anybody picked up the old pattern. Oh, different points of view. It's been probably close to 14 years since I saw Return of the Jedi and I'm still rather insistent on the fact that "betrayed and murdered" is in no way the same as "is." That's just Lucas covering his butt, because according to somebody, he didn't come up with the "Darth Vader is Luke's father" plot twist until 1978. But come on, Lucas had to know that "Vader" is Nazi for "father." Just like RTD had to know that "Mister Saxon" is obviously an anagram for "Master No. Six." New Who is the only show I can name off the top of my head where I liked the third season better than the second. However, I didn't like the Third Doctor quite as much as the Second. What was Three's last words again? Oh right. "Have no fear, Sarah Jane. Where there's life, there's..."

And so on. This is really how my mind works.

-James

Addictions

First off: http://www.asylum.com/2009/04/21/almost-one-in-ten-kids-addicted-to-video-games/
Apparently Nintendo's got a lot to answer for. Seriously, nine out of ten kids aren't getting hooked on living out vapid fantasy lives that range from beating up turtles to beating up hookers to playing guitar to playing freaking bass guitar.* Seriously, something is wrong with their advertising campaign.

*Look, a bassist is a critical part of a band. But seriously, the only song on any Guitar Hero game that should cause you to be fighting each other for control of the bass is Metallica's "Orion." I suppose they could put Pink Floyd's "Money" on there to bring the count up to two, but they'd have to make a saxophone controller to go with it, and that song's long and easy, which basically disqualifies it from being potential Guitar Hero fodder.

This segues directly into my next topic: namely my guitar addiction. As far as addictions go, this one's healthy except for where my ears, my fingers, and my neighbor's mental health are concerned. But he likes to watch movies late at night; he'll inevitably start one as soon as I hit the sack, and he apparently doesn't own a pair of headphones. By the way, the previous sentence makes a lot more sense if you remember that I'm in a college dorm. Anyway, I really don't care about him.

I was gonna write more about how at least a guitar addiction gives you some possible real-world potential, but I suddenly have an insatiable craving to play StarCraft. War out.

-James

Update: whenever I play against the Terrans, I pretend that their Command Center is manned exclusively by the Blizzard execs who decided it would be funny to make me kill Fenix.